{"id":24,"date":"2024-04-09T11:21:09","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T11:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aerowalsh.com\/mountaindevil\/?p=24"},"modified":"2024-08-03T02:45:38","modified_gmt":"2024-08-03T02:45:38","slug":"resident-evil-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/?p=24","title":{"rendered":"Resident Evil 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I played the original RE:2 the way it was intended to be played. Pirated and played on a tiny PSP screen in bed at 11pm at my Grandma’s house over the summer holidays. Watching polygonal zombies and lickers advance on Leon stuck in a fixed camera police station hell on a screen smaller than most modern phones. And I’m a better man for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This made me well placed to once again assume my position as chief zombie killer of Racoon City in glorious high definition 60fps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This really is a remake done right. It keeps all the best elements that made the original a classic, but isn’t afraid to modernise in the name of more enjoyable (and engaging) gameplay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The standout of this game is definitely the atmosphere. You never see the sun and it all takes place over a long night. You stay with Leon or Ashley over the entire night and as a result have a great grounded sense of continuity. The police station of the first third of the game in particular is a great piece of game engineering. As you gradually unlock it all and piece the puzzle of its layout together it does the heavy lifting of the story. The other locales are functional, but less diverse (the sewer and the lab being a bit monochromatic) in comparison and suffer for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of the way through, a big bad man (with a Trilby or some equally silly hat) appears and begins to chase you around the station. This gives you great organic butt clenching experiences when you hear his doomf doomf doomf footsteps coming at you from behind the next door. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story is a bit extra, but it knows what it is doing and at least leans into it. I honestly didn’t remember the story after the police station from the first time I played, so it was all fresh. That didn’t make it too much more interesting though. Again, the story is basically the atmosphere you experience as you play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gameplay is tight. It starts of as simple shooting, but you’re resource constrained and need to pick your battles to fight and think around them where possible. Later on different enemies add more challenge and a light puzzle solving element to the combat. It’s never punishingly difficult and you can generally run away, but you will lose items to heal up. Also, they removed ink ribbons (from the first playthrough) that used to limit the number of saves. This actually reduced the challenge less than I thought, but reduced the annoyance factor heaps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Puzzles are never that hard, mostly find something or interact with an item in your inventory. All staples of RE games done passably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the first game (apart from the suprisingly fun free game of Astro’s Playroom that came with the PS5) to fully embrace the haptic triggers. The guns all felt different and interesting to use as the controller had different resistance for each one. Big plus. Didn’t feel like a novelty, but rather adding to the game experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Music was meh. Worked fine to provide atmosphere and build tension I guess, but nothing I will remember later on. They all feel vaguely like this: https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/track\/0dK8Y1fYnQxsK233IRgzdU?si=iSwcRwCAR3Se2FpaLL4qpA<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Big plus is that it is not actually that long. It knows what it is and delivers that in a nice, artisinal package. By the time you’re just about to grow tired, it wraps up. You can play again from the other character’s perspective which is worth it as it is fresh enough and even quicker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m on team Leon. Sorry Ashley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rating: 5\/7, but definitely worth playing through once. I have a copy we tried to give to a man for Last of Us 2, but he never got back to us on Gumtree. Free to a loyal patreon in the greater Sydney area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Most of my screenshots from this game are me cheesing minor puzzles. Here, this is done so I don’t have to remember this code for 2 minutes later. Well done Declan.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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When people ask what is the most overpowered weapon in Resident Evil they may be thinking of the shotgun, the magnum, maybe even the rocket launcher? No. They are all wrong. It’s the wooden boards you use to cover windows and stop zombies getting in.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Combat is generally pretty solid and punchy. Zombies can take a lot of hits to go down making fights more tactical than reflexive.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No ones around\u2026 That\u2019s weird.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews_games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":276,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mountaindevil.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}