Resident Evil 2
PlayStation 4
Nostalgia Factor:
Resident Evil 2 for the original PlayStation is a game that I spent a LOT of time with. There was just so much to see and do in that game, particularly when you factor in that you could play through four different variations of the main story. I knew the game inside and out, and to this day I consider it one of my favorite video games of all time. When I heard that they were remaking the game with present day graphics, I understandably got very excited. Before I knew it, the release date was upon us. Everywhere I went on Facebook, people were talking about this game. Reviews kept popping up on Youtube. I saw people on my PS4 friends list playing it online. I couldn’t escape the RE2 fever.
Normally I am not a person who rushes out and buys a game brand-new. I like to wait for it to go down in price first. But seeing this game pop up everywhere I turned was starting to really get to me. I wanted to play the game, and I wanted it bad. As luck would have it, I had received a 50 dollar gift card for Christmas. I figured that if I put the 50 dollars towards Resident Evil 2, I could pay the rest out of pocket. Ten bucks wasn’t too much to pay for a brand new video game that I really, really wanted, was it?
So that’s what I did! And here we are now.
Story:
If you played the original Resident Evil 2, you should know what to expect here. When the game starts out, you are given the choice of selecting either Leon Kennedy or Claire Redfield as your playable character. Whoever you end up picking, the game starts out with your character arriving in Raccoon City. Claire is looking for her brother Chris, who has been missing since the events of the original Resident Evil game. Leon is arriving because he has been hired by the Raccoon Police Department, and this is his first day on the job. You quickly discover that things aren’t exactly right here. Zombies, dead bodies, that kind of thing. A zombie attack at a gas station brings the two very confused main characters together. They hop into a police car, looking to head to safety, when a violent crash with a semi-truck separates the two.
After a tense opening sequence where you have to dodge zombies on the carnage filled streets, your character arrives at the police station, only to discover that it has been overrun by the undead. The game heads the same direction regardless of which character you select, but the path to get to that destination is different. Leon encounters a mysterious woman named Ada, who seems to know a lot about what has happened in Raccoon City. Claire meets a young girl named Sherry, whose father is one of the scientists responsible for the outbreak.
Just like in the original RE2, this game also contains “B” scenarios for each character. For example, if you beat the game with Claire, you unlock Leon’s B scenario. This tells the story of what Leon was doing at the same time you were playing through the game the first time as Claire. Because each character has both an A and a B scenario, this makes Resident Evil 2 basically four games in one.
Gameplay:
This game does not feature tank controls like the original game. Instead, Resident Evil 2 takes place from a behind the back perspective, similar to what we’ve seen in games like Resident Evils 4, 5, and 6.
The goal of the game is to explore the police station and find a way out of the city. Resident Evil 2 differs from its behind-the-back predecessors in its style of gameplay. Rather than being focused mainly on action, the tone of the game shifts back to survival horror. You are going to be taking your time in this game. There are many poorly lit areas that you have to explore with your flashlight out. You'll slowly walk through corridors, fearing zombies that could be lurking and jump out and attack you at any moment.
The left analog stick controls your character. The left shoulder button pulls out your weapon. The right analog stick aims your weapon, and the right shoulder button fires it. You run around, you examine things, you pick things up, you open doors. The game is very easy to get a hang of, in particular if you are familiar with classic Resident Evil. You've got the square inventory grid, you've got the red and green herbs you can mix, first aid sprays, you save at a typewriter, you shoot zombies, you find keys shaped like spades and diamonds and hearts, you unlock doors, you solve puzzles. The game is a remake, but aside from a few familiar sights, they changed a LOT of stuff around from the original game. As familiar as I was with the '98 version of the game, most of what you see here is all new territory. You could consider this to be a brand new Resident Evil game, simply inspired by the original 1998 hit. This is less of a remake and more of a re-imagining of the original game.
The main enemy type in the game is the zombie. Zombies are much tougher to take down than they were in the original version of the game. In that version, you could take down zombies with a minimal amount of ammunition, and once you took them down they stayed down. In this one, the zombies are much harder to hit. You have to line up head shots in order to kill them completely, but the zombies are always staggering around and bobbing their heads. Expect to miss a LOT. Sometimes it takes several clips of ammunition just to take down one zombie. This makes it very difficult, and sometimes frustrating, to kill them.
You won't just be fighting zombies, however. Many different enemy types from the original RE2 make an appearance here. Dogs, lickers, those plant creatures in the laboratory. This game introduces a new, completely disgusting enemy type located in the sewers that likes to vomit all over your character, repeatedly. I don't like these things.
One of my favorite baddies from the old version of the game makes a comeback here: Mr. X. What I remember most fondly about him in the original game is how he scared the ever living crap out of me the first time I encountered him. I had already beaten the game once, and hadn't encountered him. Then I started up a B scenario, and OMG this guy drops out of the sky and the music changes and he's stalking you around, and it is very terrifying and intimidating. You couldn't kill him, and you never knew when he was going to just burst through a wall and attack you. To me, this made the B scenarios more tense and terrifying than the A ones. I feel as if they missed the mark in this game with Mr. X, however.
First of all, he appears in every scenario in this game, both the As and the Bs. That is all four scenarios. He stalks you around for long periods of time, following you from room to room. You can run from him, but when you think you are clear of him, you can still hear his footsteps echoing loudly throughout the police station all around you. He is very persistent and doesn't give up looking for you. The game does do a good job at inciting panic and terror whenever you encounter Mr. X. The feeling of being stalked is quite unsettling. What I find wrong with the way he was handled, however, is that he is utilized too often.
In the original game, you only encountered him in the B scenarios, and even then your encounters with Mr. X were few and far between. That made them more unpredictable and thus, more terrifying when they'd take place. In this game, you encounter him a LOT. He becomes less and less terrifying, and more of just a general nuisance the more you play. I think the way he was used more sparingly in the original game was the way to go. He was a lot more terrifying when he wasn't being shoved down your throat all the time.
Graphics/Sound:
This game looks phenomenal. Words can't describe the level of detail that was put into bringing the police station and the entire world of this game to life. All the environments look like real, practical spaces that could actually exist out there somewhere. Just look at the desks in the police station, all the books, crime scene photos, papers printed out everywhere. Coffee mugs, family photos. The game is littered with small personal touches galore. As a fan of the original RE2, it fascinated me to see the environments of the old game re-imagined with present day technology. It looks better than I could have ever imagined.
The character models are fantastic. I like Claire, Leon, and Ada's new looks. Particularly Claire, she's a fox. The zombies look fantastic too. It is the small touches that count, like how they all look different and aren't just clones of one another. Different heights, weights, races, genders, different outfits, different screams. There is no lack of representation among zombie characters. Mr. X and all the bosses look terrific too.
Where the game's graphical style excels is in the atmosphere it creates. I have to give the game's sound credit here too. Play this in the dark with headphones in, and you will find yourself transported into the world of the game. When you are sneaking through dark, creaky hallways with a storm raging outside the windows, the game really sells it. When you are tip-toeing through a flooded basement, flashlight out and handgun at the ready, and you see the licker hanging on the wall just a few feet away, slowly breathing in and out, the game overrides your senses. You see and hear everything, and it is a thing of beauty.
Voice acting is good. The music of the game is very good. I have no complaints about the game's audio or visual style whatsoever. This may be one of the most well polished games I have played in my life.
Overall:
I had faith that this game would not let me down, and it did not! Great graphics, great presentation, a really immersive world. The game controls like a dream and stays true to the survival horror roots of the series. Capcom did a tremendous job with this game, and if other developers would follow suit, the possibilities are endless for classic games being rebooted with today's technology. The Resident Evil 2 remake is a great game by any era of gaming's standards. The audio and visuals are some of the best we've ever seen, and the game also appeals to nostalgia with all of the re-imagined characters and environments from the old game.
If you ask me which of the two games I prefer, I would still have to say the original version. I think this is a great game, but it has lost some of the charm of the old game in its transition to modern times. Maybe this is nostalgia speaking; it is hard for me to tell most of the time. But as good as this game is, I just didn't find it quite as fun as the original. Sure, the graphics and presentation of the remake are far superior. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the game at its core is any better. Mr. X is a big time pain. You backtrack quite a bit. The enemies are more tedious to take down, and they often come back long after you've given them up for dead. Don't even get me started on the laboratory section of the game with the plants. Ugh. The underground part, too, with the chess pieces is very annoying. Too often this game feels like a chore to play. I can't say the first game ever felt like a chore at any point.
If I have to nitpick, I would further add that I don't think that the differences in the A and B scenarios are very pronounced in this version of the game. Resident Evil 2 truly felt like four games in one on the original PlayStation. This version feels like four slightly different variations of the exact same game. I think that hurts the game's replayability factor.
But just because I don't think this game is as good as the original, doesn't mean I don't think this isn't a good game. In fact, I would go so far as to say this is a great game. I imagine someday twenty years in the future when Resident Evil: Nemesis and Code Veronica have been rebooted in the fashion of Resident Evil 2. 60 year old Dan is going to have a marathon session playing the old versions of the game. Then he is going to marathon the new versions of the game as well. Two completely separate versions of the same basic story line, both amazing in their own, separate ways. And there is nothing wrong with that.
Is this game as good as the original Resident Evil 2? In many ways, it is much better. But in my heart, it will always play second fiddle to the original. Other people may beg to differ, and there is nothing wrong with that either. When you get a chance to play a game, heck, a series this amazing, it doesn't matter which games we think are better and which are worse. The real winner is us, the gamers, for getting to play and enjoy the series to begin with.
Final Score:
A
If you liked my review of Resident Evil 2, please read some of my other reviews:
Resident Evil: Director's Cut
Resident Evil 2 (PS1 original)
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil: Revelations
Resident Evil (Gamecube remake)
No comments:
Post a Comment