The Police Station (Resident Evil 2)
There’s no getting around the Raccoon City Police Department in Resident Evil 2. The 2019 remake establishes this maze-like office building as one of the iconic locales in video game history. This thing isn’t your normal police station. Every corner of the structure is populated with unique details, puzzles, or rewards for careful exploration. From the imposing entrance hall, to the two-story library, all the way down to the multiple unique offices, armories, and puzzle-filled nooks — the RPD building might even top the terrifying mansion from the original Resident Evil.
What makes this area truly special isn’t just the design, but the function. Requiring multiple playthroughs to unlock the full story, you’ll learn every spooky angstrom of this building, slowly mastering the puzzles inside — even when they’re subtly altered in subsequent playthroughs. And I haven’t even started to talk about Mr. X! The complex environment forces you to carefully navigate while avoiding an unkillable foe. It’s game design perfection.
Fountainhead Palace (Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice)
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice saves the best for last. The Fountainhead Palace is the final location of the game, and one of its most frighteningly bizarre, alien environments. Famous for telling story through its locations, From Software has outdone itself in the Fountainhead Palace, creating a place that’s both beautiful and sinister in equal measure.
The vast lake and gigantic castle walls hide frightening, moaning, deathless nobles that scutter along the floors and hide in the shadows. Outside, an eagle-eyed archer snipes your shinobi from afar. And don’t try to sneak through the water. An enormous man-faced fish hunts for prey below the waves.
The Fountainhead Palace is the true font of decadence and rot at the core of Sekiro’s fallen feudal kingdom. A heavenly place that has succumbed to its nightmarish tendencies — and all this story is told without a single line of dialogue or exposition. It’s the most otherworldy location in the game, and the place most defined by decay.
Explore more amazing levels on the next page of our best-of 2019 list.
