its graphics, which many critics said were a substantial improvement upon those of the first installment. Sanchez and Weigand said that the pre-rendered backgrounds were an impressive leap ahead of those in the original Resident Evil, due to their increased detail and interactivity. Next Generation said that the character models now stood out less from the backgrounds. Shawn Smith of Electronic Gaming Monthly found the rendered cutscenes far preferable to the live action ones of the original. Mac Donald praised the model animations for having reached "true realism", and commended the use of body language as a means of seamlessly communicating the condition of the protagonists' health. Allgame's Shawn Sackenheim awarded its graphics the highest possible score, as he found the backgrounds to be "rendered to perfection", the cutscenes "a work of art", and the animation "fluid and eerie". The audio was well received by critics. Weigand cited it as an "excellent accompaniment to the visuals". Sanchez went as far as to say that Resident Evil 2 "may have the best sound design yet for a console game". Next Generation said it had "the most precise and realistic sound effects ever heard in any game". Sackenheim described the music and sound effects as "spot on perfect" and the soundtrack "perfectly composed", and Mac Donald likened the use of audio to that of classic horror films. A common point of criticism was the inventory system, which Sanchez called "a pain". He disliked the player's need to retrieve objects from item boxes, and Mac Donald criticized the system for being unrealistic, as the boxes are "[magically]" interconnected and all items take the same amount of space when being carried, regardless of their size. Furthermore, Mallinson and Mac Donald disapproved of certain puzzles, as out of place in a police station setting. Sanchez said that the puzzles were paced better than in the first game, but less interesting and too easy for experienced players. Next Generation praised the game's massive length and said that the differences between each character's scenario were great enough to make the replay value ten times greater than that of the original, which used a similar two-scenario system. Sackenheim said the game was brief, and remarked that the individual scenarios are not different enough to hold the interest of casual players until the end of the game. He found the controls to be "easy to pick up and play",