Summary

Resident Evil 2 is a survival horror game developed and published by Capcom. Perhaps you're familiar? It was originally released in 1998. The version we will be playing is the 2019 remake. Because, you know, it's nice when we can have remakes that are actually good and nice and not just attempts to get more money without actually doing anything meaningful to improve on the original. In RE2, you play as either Leon Kennedy or Claire Redfield. Unfortunately the zombies were not in fact confined to last game's mansion. Umbrella be Umrella-ing and Raccoon City is foul now. So one could say that the stakes have in fact been upped.

I'm rather excited to delve further into Resident Evil. I had a good time even while playing the first one and so far as I have heard it's all up from here. We got a huge bump in technology here to enjoy as well. The jump from the prior game to this one is wild.

Review

Love. RE2 was basically better than 1 in all ways. And I totally liked 1. A comparison to Silent Hill 1 to Silent Hill 2 doesn't feel totally unfounded. I'm sure no small amount of praise is coming from the big jump in quality, owing to the remake that I played of RE2 being noticeably newer than the RE1 one.

I liked that we had more room to play with in terms of inventory space. There was way way less going back and forth between save rooms to manage inventory. I recall numerous times in RE1 debating what I needed in terms of consumables vs key items. Heading out and 2 minutes later having to make an immediate U turn because I left the oven on. That happened a couple times in RE2 but it was significantly more rare and also more importantly, it felt a bit more substantial. "Oh shit, I forgot the doohickey! Now there is a large angry man in between me and the doohickey!" It afforded more opportunities to get to know the paths through the police station. A pathway gets blocked off and now you've gotta reroute under pressure. It feels good.

Speaking of large angry men, we must speak of Tyrant. I quite liked him. He is a wretched piece of shit that made me want to cry every time I heard those goddamn footsteps. He's great. Very curious if he was as present in the original game as a stalker. He was giving big xeno vibes from Alien Isolation (2014), which is a personal favorite of mine. Not nearly as smart as the xeno, but also he's not quite as core to the experience of RE2 as the xeno is to Isolation, so I'm super fine with that. (And to be clear what I mean, I'm aware Tyrant is a super notable part of this game. But he's not the totality of the game. Every part of Alien Isolation is colored by the xeno's presence or blessed absence. The xeno is Alien Isolation) And as I said, it is very clever what we do with him blocking off paths and forcing you to reroute through, potentially, unsafe territory. The best laid plans immediately falling to pieces when that shithead shows up is quite fun.

Still enjoying the story in general. I'm aware that there is a turn somewhere, where we start going crazy and over the top. Now to me, it feels like we are already fully entering the foyer of action hero land, so I'm curious to see where I come down on it when the time comes. It was a pretty satisfying curve, though. Going from creeping around the station with naught but a pistol and a sparkle in the eye to spraying a rampaging monster with a flamethrower in the end. It's pretty well-done, each stage leading naturally into the next without feeling like a total out-of-left-field advancement in terms of what you're being asked to do.

Leon is my boy. Claire is my boy. We've still got good protags that I quite liked. We never get quite as much dialogue from them as I'd want. I think what's really missing here is Silent Hill-style in-head narrations when examining objects. It's a great way of getting across more personality from the character that I'd love if the series made use of. But they're still pretty likeable and make you want to root for them. This trend surely must be bucked at some point. Not every Resident Evil protag can enter the my boy pantheon. Chris, at the very least, is in good company.

On to Resident Evil 3.

Links

Playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru-J73Cr6hc&list=PLXbBIoFOxaQuucs5XPQTQgYwVhmII9aXL