Few franchises have made such an impact on the video-game genre in the last sixteen years than Resident Evil: the game practically popularized the survival horror genre and has been a constant innovator of the industry. Resident Evil is also fairly unique as it has made a successful jump onto the big screen - I haven't personally been too impressed with the films, but they are certainly a popular money-spinner. Sadly, the latest games in the franchise have taken a similar vein to the films, with little or no innovation but plenty of mainstream success, but the current state of the Resident Evil franchise should not diminish the achievements or success that the games enjoyed up until a couple of years ago. The second game in the series is widely seen as one of the best. It is from this game that we get most of the images we associate with the Resident Evil franchise; the licker, a city full of zombies, the police station and two of the franchise's best characters - Ada Wong and Leon Kennedy. Resident Evil 2 does the classic sequel routine by replicating the original game but also making the game larger, more full of life and on a bigger scope. In other words, Resident Evil 2 didn't do anything fancy; it polished up and expanded the story from the first game and brought a level of story-telling that was missing from the first game as well as most games at the time. The fact that there was the choice of two characters with their own branching story-lines was an attractive feature but more so was the feeling that the player felt genuinely trapped in Raccoon City just as they had done in the Spencer Mansion from the first game. In 1996, Capcom had released a good but slightly short horror game. By 1998, they had evolved this monster into Resident Evil 2 which had a better story, better characters, better scares...The fact that Capcom keep trying to bring us back to high points of Resident Evil 2 with the most recent games is all the evidence that is needed to prove that this is one of the best sequels ever. What can be learned: Don't go out of your way to please the mainstream audience, especially when the game is already fairly popular. Honourable Mention: Resident Evil 4 Resident Evil 4 is one of my favourite games ever, I enjoy it more than all of the Resident Evil games but is it a good sequel? It re-launched the series but at the same time, a little bit of the original franchise died... and it's only gone downhill from there.