Having grown up playing the resident evil series of games and having especially played through RE2 several times as a kid as it had a number of unlocks for completing multiple times I needed to play through the remake to see how it stood up both to the nostalgia but also in terms of making this a modern playable game.
First thing to note that while many of the area’s will remain familiar with enemies and puzzles there are distinct differences especially when it comes to the storyline and how things unravel, and while the original had very distinct A and B storylines which varied quite a bit, in this the plot is rather more set regardless of who plays the A or B scenario.
The gameplay is stepped up from the original, that comes in the form of not only camera’s being free to look around all aspects rather than fixed angles to setup a horror vibe but also in the freedom to aim down the pistol anywhere on zombies, which on controller can come with it’s own issues as zombies have evolved to be very wobbly and dodge when you’re aiming at their head perhaps a little too aware at times. This also applies to weakpoints on bosses where the trope of the highlighted weakspot does apply but more often than not this is very challenging to aim down at in limited time while the enemy is coming at you and obscuring this weakpoint, so it does make the game more challenging.
There are a number of familiar sights to be seen from the original, with locations and events which unveil but more often than not things will be very different to the original timeline, especially when it comes to playing through for the first time as in the original only the B playthrough would be pursued by mr X however in the remake everyone is pursued by him throughout the station to make life more difficult for you.
One aspect that I didn’t particularly enjoy was the “balancing factor” which accounted for the ammunition you had in order to make enemies and especially bosses stronger or weaker depending on how much ammunition you had, because sometimes a zombie would take one hit to the head to explode and others it would take 8+ and then when it comes to the bosses you would go in and it would take pretty much all the ammo you had plus whatever is available in the arena just to take down the boss and always leave you empty handed, which then places you in the position of wanting to go in with no ammo just because the boss would take more damage from the hits you land rather than having to take 80 more shots just to finish the boss. This felt very unfair in my opinion as while I can see what they were doing it just punishes you for saving ammo as opposed to rewarding you a quicker boss kill for having better ammo saved up.
Whether it’s being pursued by mr x or the clever adaptations to the layout it did feel a lot less like you were collecting X from the other side of the station and back over than the original but they did fail in leaving in the varying puzzle codes so you can just memorise them on a future playthrough to get items early. It was a nice touch that they not only left in the additional game modes like hunk and tofu escape modes but also added survivor story modes you could play through as well to create even more content, especially as the survivor stories were varied to the original in quite a way so it was nice to be able to play through and experience their story from their point of view.
I did choose to play through on the hardcore difficulty mostly because I wanted to keep in the limited save aspect with ink ribbons even if that does become irrelevant when you find so many throughout the game, to the extent that I do feel normal mode could have kept the ink ribbons too and just made less of them for hardcore difficulty because it’s a bit too easy to just save whenever you want after the smallest thing especially if this is your first time playing through the game, and believe me there are more than enough as it is for anyone to save often.
With regards to the atmosphere, even without the fixed angles highlighting certain horror tropes the game does a good job of framing scenario’s that up the intensity and do give you those horror vibes, this is done through clever level design and the enemies making their entrances at just the right times and in the right ways to keep you feeling on edge and like your life is in danger in the game. The scenery itself also evolves from being simply inside an infested police station which does feel abandonned and devestated by the zombie onslaught, it manifests as you enter the sewers which have been overtaken far more with nature and the virus’s spread becomes far more apparent.
Nostalgia aside and definitely putting aside that I feel they ruined leon B’s emotional story by removing the whole ada kiss part without spoiling too much, the game was a very enjoyable experience and it was nice in a modern aspect that the zombies were more challenging to just run past than in the original and you have to be more creative in how you deal with the zombies especially when they can absorb so many bullets before finally going down.
If you take the game as it is being just a modern horror adventure game it’s got some good puzzles and does challenge you, the bosses can present a challenge so you won’t just win first time but with persistence you can master the challenge, and there’s a lot of game to enjoy whether you’re searching for all of the loot or speeding through, and if you’re a fan of the horror adventure genre you will enjoy this title whether you’ve played the originals or not.
