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dkirschner's Resident Evil 2 (2019) (PC)
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| [May 5, 2024 02:19:33 PM]
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This one blew me away. Utterly engrossing and intense survival horror. I am sure I played RE2 way back in the day (I remember the police station), but this is the one I'll remember in the future. I was a little worried that the remake's excellent reviews were biased for nostalgia, but that's not the case. It's incredible in all respects.
One thing I was thinking about while playing was how effective it is at making me tense. Other good horror games do some of these things too, but this one ties all these tricks into one package. When you kill a zombie, it might not actually be dead. By "kill," I mean shoot it until it falls down and appears dead. I learned that these zombies will sometimes begin groaning again and get back up, sometimes as you walk past, and other times they'll be reanimated when you return to an area. If its head explodes (by shooting it in the head with a shotgun or occasionally with the pistol), then it's really dead, but if its head doesn't explode, I was always anxious that it would come back. And you can't just go around blowing up all the zombies' heads with the shotgun because, as a survival horror game, ammo is a scarce and valuable resource. Later in the game, there are these plant zombies that will always come back unless you kill them with a flamethrower.
Another thing that constantly had me nervous were the corpses. Enter a room, see a corpse, and you have no idea if it's one that will animate or not. You have to go about your business always watching and listening in case it gets up. This uncertainly about enemy states is really nerve-wracking! Another type of enemy, the "licker," is blind. If you make noise (run, slam open a door, fire a gun), it attacks you. If you are quiet, you can walk around it. But if you get too close, it will become alert, although it won't *know* that you're there. When it becomes alert, it will start moving around, which means it might run into you, since you're trying to quietly creep by. Those things were scary.
And THEN, as if I wasn't already holding my breath half the time, there is this hulking enemy called Tyrant (that you can't kill) who, at several points in the game, appears to stalk you through an area. Tyrant is attracted to noise. If you're running, slamming doors, you'll hear his footsteps getting closer and closer. When he finds you, he relentlessly pursues you until you can get far enough away from him so that he goes somewhere else. So, whenever Tyrant was around, I was being quiet. Being quiet for Tyrant and the lickers is hard given that there are zombies around, who may or may not reanimate!
And you're constantly under pressure to conserve ammo, manage your inventory, and navigate these labyrinthine areas with maps and various keys and puzzles. In the police station, you do a lot of backtracking and criss-crossing as you gain access to new areas. One room was a darkroom where you can develop rolls of film. Every time you find film, you want to go to the darkroom. But, getting back to the darkroom meant going back through this terrifying hallway where there was a licker lurking and a few zombies strolling about. So, just finding a roll of film made me scared in anticipation of what I was going to have to do!
Oh yeah, one other thing to note, which made me feel kind of dumb, is that you'll find gun upgrades in the earlier part of the game. I had three upgrade parts in my inventory for some named gun, and had assumed they were for a gun that I didn't have because I didn't notice that my gun had a name. Then I found a shotgun upgrade, and I had a shotgun, so I figured it was for that. Then I thought, "that's weird that they'd give me all these upgrades for guns I don't have and then give me a shotgun upgrade for a gun I do have. Did I miss a gun?! Is the pistol I've been using really weak?! Is this why I'm always out of ammo?!" Turns out that yes, yes my pistol was weaker and I was always out of ammo because it should have been upgraded three times already. Oops!
The RE2 remake is a 100% score for sure. I have RE 8 queued up to play at some point. Super excited.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on May 5th, 2024 at 14:25:45.
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dkirschner's Resident Evil 2 (2019) (PC)
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Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Monday 29 April, 2024
GameLog closed on: Sunday 5 May, 2024 |
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