3. Resident Evil 2

Resident Evil 2 deals with the aftermath of the events from Resident Evil. The T-Virus has spread into Raccoon City, where Leon Kennedy is headed for his first day of work as a rookie cop at the RPD, because apparently no one told him not to show up for work now that zombies have taken over the city. At the same time, Claire Redfield arrives, looking for her brother, Chris. Leon and Claire are separated shortly after meeting.

You're once again able to choose which character you play as. If you choose Claire, you'll meet a child named Sherry Birkin, the daughter of William Birkin (who has injected himself with the G-Virus). As Leon, you'll encounter Ada Wong, a woman who to this day, after many appearances in this series, I still don't know the motivations of.

Resident Evil 2 is a nice change of pace because you're taken out of the mansion and given a chance to explore the city a bit. You do spend a significant amount of time in the police department (and later on, the lab), but it's nice to see Raccoon City at all. My favorite thing about this game is the way the A/B scenarios work. You can play as Claire or Leon first and then follow that up by playing as whichever character you didn't choose initially. What you do with the first character affects what happens when playing as the second. You'll have to solve different puzzles and fight new bosses and it was really well done and made playing through the game multiple times interesting.

Unlockables include Extreme Battle Mode (which gives you limited health and ammo and sends you off to fight through hordes of enemies, while planting anti virus bombs), 4th Survivor (a canon mini game about an Umbrella operative, HUNK, who has to escape from Raccoon City with a sample of the G-Virus, while sparingly using what few items you're given to start with) and Tofu Survivor (exactly like 4th Survivor, except you play as a piece of Tofu and you're only armed with a knife and a couple healing items).

I rate Resident Evil 2 a 9/10 (I rated it higher than the next title on my list, but it's still third). I love the way the A/B scenarios were implemented in this game, it really added a lot of replayability to RE2.