I played this during a full Resident Evil series playthrough and though it’s early in that journey, this is the first game of that playthrough that I’ve never played before now…and that’s probably for the best! I’ve always heard this is one of—if not THE—worst games in the series. In some ways it was a little better than that reputation had me expecting, but still quite bad. Gun Survivor 2 was developed as a coin-op light gun arcade shooter and it really shows. I played the PS2 version using a controller. I try to view games in context of what they’re trying to be and truthfully, I didn’t get the full experience, but I can’t really read in context I didn’t have. As a PS2 game, while there’s a little dumb fun to it, Gun Survivor 2 is plainly not a good game.

As the title implies, this game attempts some form of an adaptation of Code Veronica’s story. This is mostly just window dressing, likely to entice people to try it out rather than it being some random story with the Resident Evil name on it. The story is unsurprisingly barebones, coming down to a few lines of unvoiced dialogue between Steve and Claire at the beginnings and endings of levels, and nothing that really creates much of a plot. I’m not sure if this is true, but I heard that at one time Capcom tried to insist that the game is somehow canon. While I’m not sure why that even matters, this is a pretty goofy claim considering the order of events and “plot” bear very little resemblance and—perhaps most surprising—in every level, if you take too long, Nemesis appears and comes after you? Supposedly they later claimed that it is canon as a dream Claire is having about the events of Code Veronica, which is for one a pretty big cop-out for the claim, but also still makes no sense given Claire does not know anything about Nemesis. Anyway, the upshot of it being based on Code Veronica is that the environments are pulled straight from that game. In some ways this is always kind of cool, seeing the familiar sights from a new angle in new graphics. But it is also was likely just another development shortcut to avoid coming up with new environments.

Given I played the PS2 version with a controller, the controls likely weren’t quite what was initially envisioned, but they were pretty jank all the same. The game mostly controls similar to Survivor with an off-rails first-person perspective, though in this one you don’t need to aim to shoot, the gun is always up. The most bizarre aspect is that while you move with the left control stick, you turn with the L1/R1 buttons rather than the right control stick which goes unused. Even by the end of the game, I still wasn’t totally used to this and kept expecting the shoulder buttons to strafe or something. I considered remapping the shoulders to the right stick but the game was short enough I just sucked it up till I was done.

The gameplay itself is extremely basic. You have an infinite ammo handgun and occasionally pick up limited-use stronger weapons like an assault rifle, shotgun, or magnum. Each of the five levels has you navigate a different part of Rockfort Island, needing to reach an exit or make a detour to get a key then go to the exit, fight a boss, and you’re out. There is a timer at the beginning of each level and if it goes all the way down, Nemesis appears and pursues you through the level. While not glitchy or anything, the gameplay feels very basic and legitimately looks and feels like you’re playing someone’s demo of their practice game in Unity. It’s not terribly challenging and the entire story mode takes about 30 minutes. There’s a bonus Dungeon Mode in which you have a more classic Resident Evil experience in some ways since even your handgun has limited ammo, but it’s a quasi-mercenaries mode in which you just blast through enemies in a series of rooms. While that sounded kind of fun, I tried it for a bit and it was way too confusing with so many doors and no map to help you through the plain rooms that all look the same. It also looked way too long with levels lasting about as long as the entire story mode and the resources were overly abundant to the point there wasn’t really much point in having a greater limitation and in fact I felt like I just had way more ammo with the more powerful guns than I’d ever need.

So no, in short, I don’t recommend Gun Survivor 2. It’s certainly not the most unpleasant experience I’ve had—after all, I’m giving it TWO whole stars—but it’s easily one of the most skippable games in the series. My desire to push on was more a result of academic curiosity than actual enjoyment. Still, I could see it being a bit more fun if you have the ability to play it more how it was intended in the arcade version or with a light gun.

My other Resident Evil reviews:

• Resident Evil (1996) - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 2 (1998) - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 3 (1999) - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil: Survivor - ★★★
• Resident Evil Remake - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 2 Remake - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 3 Remake - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 4 VR - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 4 Remake - ★★★★★