Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Size: 2 GD Roms
VMU: 8 blocks
No. of players: 1
Got it for: $19.99, new.
After the "incident" at the mansion, Racoon City is hit by a horde of zombies that take over the town in a matter of days. A police officer, Leon, and the sister of one of the original STARS team members, Claire, meet up and work together to save as many survivors as they can and uncover this mysterious virus outbreak that has decimated the town.
What's it all about?
It's "survival horror" as its clunkiest. Playing as one of two characters, you'll attempt to make your way through the three major areas of the game as you scavenge for ammo, solve puzzles and occasionally blow the head off a zombie. Like other RE games, using the male character yields in a harder game, with less ammo and more powerful enemies...using the female character is pretty much the opposite(and a much better game). If you've played the PSX original(and let's face it, who hasn't), there's nothing really new here except for some slight graphical tweaking(a la the port from the PC version) and some cool usage of the VMU unit.

Graphics - Piss-poor. The game uses the exact same models, complete with the exact same low-res textures from the PSX version...they're all just anti-aliased now. Every single polygon entity in the game just looks horribly mediocre in both graphic detail and animation. The 2D bitmap backgrounds look alright, they definitely benefit the most from the DC's high-res output...but they still can't shake the same flat look they had on the PSX original. To make matters worse, anytime there is an in-game cut scene it runs at a devastatingly low framerate(why, I don't know). All in all, it's a very sad presentation.
Sound - The sound effects are nice and creepy, with the moans, slithering and the general gross-out effects you'd imagine. The music, what little of it there is, does its job and presents an ominous mood.
Control - Sucky. Now, if you've played any older version of RE, you know it's that whole "walking backwards" scheme. Things haven't changed here. The control layout does allow for digital or analog movement, though the analog seemed a little too inaccurate for my taste(it's almost like it's too loose). Once you set up the buttons the way you like it, it's managable...or as much so as an RE game could allow for. Unfortunately button layout for the menus seem to be a bit PSX-ish, relying more on X and B rather than the A and B most DC, Saturn, Genesis, 32X and Sega CD games have been using for years now. It's not really anything I should gripe about, it's just annoying and another sign of Capcom's laziness on the porting job.
Quick note: For some reason or another, the "system" file that's supposed to save all of your custom settings simply will *not* save your preference on the Jump Pack. If you want to use one, you'll have to turn it on EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU PLAY THE GAME. Thanks Capcom!
AI - Brutal, but nowhere near as brutal as the actual gameplay. Ok, it's bad enough you get a fucking *six* item inventory, like eight rounds of ammo for the entire Leon game, a knife that takes 167 thrusts to kill anything, all on top of a seriously hindered control scheme, but then to put enemies in the game who move at two to three times as fast as you...it's just overkill. For the most part, it seems like if an enemy gets behind you or to your side, it's over, your character is just too slow in turning and the control scheme is just too clunky for a quick recovery. For the most part, anytime you run across multiple faster enemies like the dogs and one of them gets a hit off, you just have to make a run for it or you'll end up getting gang raped.
Replay value - Moderate. Though I can't imagine playing through the entire game more than once with each character, playing it in a different order does yield a slightly different experience for each of our poorly drawn heroes. Also, there is the "Extreme Battle" mode where you essentially start at the end of the game and try to make your way allllllllllllllllllllllllll they way back to the Police Station, finding time bombs along the way to help you blow it up. In this mode, there are no puzzles, just a shitload of ammo and a shitload of zombies. You can pick from four characters(Leon, Claire, Ada and Chris{Claire's brother})who all start with different weapons and items. It's kind of entertaining just because it's what I thought Resident Evil should have been all about in the first place....and an actual reason to keep the game after you've finished both story campaigns.
Tips for better gaming experiences:
When using the shotgun, aim high. Not ceiling-high, but a bit up from the default aim level. If you hit an enemy in the head, it *will* blow it off and kill them in one hit.

Ditch the knife in the stash the first chance you get. That thing is beyond worthless and if you run out of ammo it's just better to make a run for it than attack *any* enemy with that thing. Also, don’t run around with ink ribbons, there is almost always a stash next to any of the typewriters in the game.

At some point in Leon's game he may say “I should leave this for Claire”. Fuck Claire, that bitch has ammo coming out of her ass, make Leon take whatever it is, he needs it(trust me).  

Cool Stuff on the VMU:
The VMU is used in a very innovative way, giving you your life signs and ammo count right there on the screen. As hip as that is though, I kind of wish we could have had a HUD on the gameplay screen...but as *none* of the RE games have that, this is better than going to the fucking inventory screen every time you need to check. Past that, it'll display the RE2 "eye" as well as some messages when saving your game.
My rating: 68(out of 100) - To start, it's already simply just an "ok" game...but then seeing how lazy Capcom was with this obvious PC port really brings it down a couple more notches. Sad, sad PSX-like graphics and framerate, plus the fact that *nothing* on the game seems to be optimized for the DC really make this a hard title to like. Still, it's old school RE, so you either like it or you don't. The archaic inventory system and control scheme really kills a lot of the fun that one could have had with the game...but then I suppose the Extreme Battle Mode kind of makes up for that. Still, all in all, a mediocre effort by Capcom..but hey, it's probably the best version of the game out on the market...and that's gotta count for something...er, right?
As there are no working Dreamcast emulators to get custom screenshots from, I have borrowed pics from various sources. Please note that these particular screenshots are of really poor quality and do not accurately portray RE2's graphics

Fun with puzzles. Alright, you got me, there's actually no fun in any of the puzzles.
Alright, time to get bitten...
Roast'em!
It's the mansion...er, police station!
Porting the night away:
Along with RE2, Capcom also ported the PC versions of RE3 and Dino Crisis, without any optimization I might add, to the Dreamcast. Hurrah for laziness!