Thoughts On: Resident Evil 2 Remake (PS4)

 **This review contains spoilers for the Remake of Resident Evil 2. So, what are you reading this for? Go play it!**

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room once again, after yet another quite long break. I doubt anyone is out there who has been reading this on a regular basis but if you have been and were expecting an update, I thank you for standing by patiently. I've been busy being a sad, tired adult at the age of 30, but that hasn't stopped me from playing video games. Or thinking about them. Or buying them. Well, actually, it has slowed me down in terms of buying them because I have too many other expenses, but hopefully it won't stay that way forever. Anyway, I'm here today because I wanted to talk about something (for, like, the 8th time on this blog) that's quite near and dear to my heart: Resident Evil 2. No, not the one from 1998- the one from this year. And what a long 21 years it's been.

A remake of the original Resident Evil was released for the Nintendo Gamecube in North America on April 30th, 2002. This re-do of the survival horror classic was more than just a simple graphical upgrade; the game was completely rebuilt from the ground up, addressing every issue with the original and intensifying the story, the action, and the horror tenfold. I should know; it's within my top 5 favorite video games of all time. Probably #2, second only to Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Anyway, when this game came out, it blew my freakin' 13 year-old mind. I loved it so much- and still do. I'll play the hell out of this game any time at all, even to this day. But when I finished it back in 2002, an overwhelming thought came over me- "what if they do a similar remake of Resident Evil 2?"

Now, while the the original Resident Evil was badly in need of a re-do due to some extremely cheesy writing and a lot of early 3D gaming stiffness, I think most of us can agree that Resident Evil 2 did not need a remake. The original RE2 was great in so many ways the first one wasn't- the writing and voice acting were exponentially better, the story that was established in the first game was advanced, and the game was just fucking horrifying. Aside from maybe Silent Hill 2, I can't think of another game that scared me quite as much as RE2 did. It was a masterpiece of the genre and probably the most beloved entry to the series by old school fans. But while it may not have needed a remake, it was still a very welcome announcement to the RE community when it was initially confirmed. A long period of speculation followed the original announcement, but the day finally arrived on January 25th, 2019, and my body was completely and totally ready. Seriously, this was the first game I've actually pre-ordered to ensure I would get a copy in a VERY long time. Like, the last one I actually remember was Halo 3 back in 2007.

I picked it up, played it 6 times through now, and this is everything I have to say about it at this point.

The basic story of RE2 is kept intact: two strangers, a rookie police officer and a young woman searching for her older brother, arrive in the town of Raccoon City to find it's been overrun by zombies and other horrific creatures and must fight their way through to survive. They both end up in a derelict police station, where they slowly unravel the mystery behind the monsters that have appeared and slaughtered most of the town's inhabitants, all while fighting to survive and trying to escape the nightmare.

Given what the previous game in the franchise (RE7) did and the direction it was steering toward, it's nice to see Remake 2 follow that trajectory of sticking to horror and relative subtlety rather than grandiose action, as most games prior to RE7 had been doing. Granted, I think fans would probably riot if Remake 2 was anything but that, considering RE2 is one of the greatest survival horror games of all time, but I'm still happy to see that this is where we're at currently.

I won't bother rehashing the whole damn story, as you probably know it by now if you've even read this far. What I really want to talk about is my experience with the game as a huge fan of both the original and the entire Resident Evil franchise on a whole.

First, positives. The developers definitely put a lot of care into staying faithful to the spirit of the original. At the surface level, you progress through the game in pretty much the same manner: a trek through the police station, followed by a descent into the basement of the station, then a return to the station with some new key items, then on into the sewers, and finally into the laboratory at the end. Areas from the original have been redone in exquisite detail, especially many of the areas of the R.P.D. station. Weapons are just about the same for both Leon and Claire, with the addition of "defense" weapons that can be used if an enemy grabs you. There's also plenty of opportunities to upgrade your weapons with scopes, stocks, and larger ammo clips over the course of the game. You'll also find various hip pouches as well, which serve to increase your inventory space as you go along.

Just like it's predecessor, Remake 2 recreated areas of the original game beautifully.

The regular enemies are a lot deadlier this time around. Zombies are much tougher to take down than the original, and landing repeated headshots is almost a must. And even when they do go down, they can get back up 2 or 3 more times before staying down for good, making them significantly more dangerous than I remember in any previous game (with the exception of the crimson heads in Remake 1). Lickers and zombie dogs are really difficult to deal with too- both are extremely agile and are tough to hit to begin with, and you really need a heavier weapon if you want to keep Lickers from counterattacking you. And then there's Mr. X.

Hoo boy, yes, Mr. X. The hulking monstrosity that stalked you all throughout the B scenarios of the original is back with a vengeance. This time you run into him in any scenario, and he is absolutely relentless. You can put him down temporarily with a few well-placed shots to the head, but after a little bit he'll be right back up to come after you. When he's on the prowl, you have very little time to stop and take things slow. He basically forces you to scramble to get to where you need to go, no matter how many other enemies are in your way. This can mean rushing into oncoming zombies or Lickers just to get away from him, as well as solving puzzles as quickly as possible so he doesn't come up from behind and pound you into the floor. The developers definitely did an amazing job with him in this game, as he ramps up the intensity in ways no other RE game has done for me in quite a long time. The fedora was a little bit of a weird design choice, but I can live with it. The tension he brings to the game more than makes up for it.

Mr. X truly adds a level of tension to this game that I haven't experienced in a while, fedoras be damned.

The game also really resurrects (no pun intended) that classic survival horror feel of the older games. Throughout my first playthroughs of the Leon A/Claire B scenarios (which have now been re-titled "1st and 2nd runs"), I felt as though I was constantly scrambling for ammo and health as I progressed, and that was just an awesome feeling. Survival horror was such a great niche genre because a large part of the uneasiness you feel as a player comes from struggling to survive on limited supplies, and this game really hits the mark there. And I haven't even tried hardcore mode yet, which I'm sure kicks that aspect up a few notches. The game is also much darker than previous ones- like, literally, it can be really difficult at times just to see where you're going. I had to actually readjust the brightness several times while I was playing because I kept missing things in the darkness. However, it definitely adds to the creepiness while you're prowling around the police station with just a flashlight illuminating your way, especially when an enemy leaps straight out of the darkness at you. There were definitely more than one expletives that escaped my mouth when I ran into a Licker coming right at me from the darkness.

I also found that the game had some really great moments where it manages to squeeze as much tension as possible out of certain situations. For example, there's a section in the basement where you must enter the station's morgue to find a key. Now, of course any zombie movie fan knows that hospitals, graveyards, and morgues are pretty much the worst possible places to be during a zombie apocalypse. Additionally, the original game had a similar moment where you find yourself in a morgue and you're surrounded by corpses that spring up on you in an instant, so veteran players already had an idea of what was coming next. So, as soon as you see "morgue" on the basement map, you know you're in for trouble. However, when you enter the room, there's no zombies anywhere- that is, until you realize that you need to check the lockers one by one, slowly pulling them all out until you find what you're looking for (which, of course, is in the next to last one in the room). This moment definitely had me on the edge of my seat as I pulled out each gurney just waiting for a zombie to jump out in my face. A similar moment occurs when you must push four bookcases into place to create a bridge in order to reach the door to the third floor. At this point in the game, Mr. X is still furiously stalking you through the R.P.D., and you have mere moments to get the bookcases into to place before he bursts in. However, your character drags the bookcases along verrrrrrrrryyyyyy slowly, so slowly that you can practically feel Mr. X breathing down your neck as you push the damn things into place- a truly terrifying moment.

Having to slowly pull out every single one of these gurneys worked very well in upping the suspense for me.

I was initially very happy with the experience, but the feelings kind of dulled a bit as the game went on. I do think the game is great overall, but there were plenty of flaws I noted along the way. The R.P.D. station is recreated wonderfully in the game, but the sewers and lab were lacking, I felt. I did like certain areas in each, especially the long passage in the sewers where you fight off a bunch of G-mutant monsters en route to picking up the King & Queen plugs, but for the most part I felt they crossed the figurative line in straying a little too much from the original game. There are a few visual nods to the original in both areas, but the sewer really felt like a giant maze and the lab reminded me much more of the crappy Resident Evil movies than the labs from any of the originals. I just felt that both the sewers and the labs didn't do enough of what made the original remake, as well as the first half of this game, so great- faithfully recreate areas from the original while mixing in new areas and challenges to overcome in a balanced manner.

This part in the sewers in which you must run through a gauntlet filled with G-mutant monsters was great and actually was one of my favorite parts of the game, but the rest of the sewers section left a lot to be desired, I felt.

And this leads me to another point, which was probably the biggest disappointment I had from this remake- the differences between the A and B scenarios were sorely missed. One of my favorite aspects of the original game was playing through the A scenario only to find that there was a 2nd scenario with the other character that felt just enough like the same game, yet was completely different in many ways. What's more, certain things you did in the A scenario actually affected the B scenario! For example, when picking up an item as Leon in the A game, that same item will no longer be available to Claire in the B game. I was completely amazed by the idea as a kid, and I was really expecting that aspect to be back with a vengeance in the remake. The possibilities seemed endless; with the advances in technology, imagine how many things one could do in the A scenario that might have a bearing on the B scenario this time around. Playing through Leon's 1st run initially, I even wondered how many things I was doing that might impact Claire's 2nd run. One part in particular stood out in my mind- in the safety deposit room in the R.P.D., where you have to find the missing keys to the keyboard panel in order to unlock the evidence lockers. I really thought this was a prime area to manipulate the environment such that it would affect both scenarios. Like, and I'm just spitballing here, what if one character found one key for the keyboard but the other found the second one? And that's just one example- there were plenty of moments all throughout the game where I felt the same concept could have been implemented fantastically.

This section in the safety deposit room would've been a prime spot to have some interactivity between the two scenarios.

However, I was quite disappointed to find that there's virtually nothing that carries over between scenarios. In fact, there's not even much of a difference between Leon 1st/Claire 2nd and Claire 1st/Leon 2nd at all. The only real differences as far as I can tell are in the beginning and end of the game. In the original, Leon A/Claire B and Claire A/ Leon B were nearly the same, but had enough differences that they did end up feeling like different sets in the end. For example, in Claire A/Leon B, Sherry is implanted with a G-virus embryo and the player must deal with creating a vaccine for her, while in the Leon A/Claire B scenario this doesn't happen at all. However, there were really no equivalent moments in the remake. Leon 1st is pretty much exactly the same as Leon 2nd, and the same goes for Claire 1st/2nd. Again, I really thought this was the kind of thing that a remake would take and make substantially more complex, yet unfortunately the developers ended up discarding the idea altogether.

One other thing that bothered me a little bit was the music...or, really, the lack thereof. I know it's not necessarily fair to compare this game to Remake 1 (and I'll have more to say about that in a bit), but that game did such a great job in recreating everything from the original in amazing detail, music included. Remake 2 definitely did not follow suit in that regard. There were a few familiar musical cues that came up here and there; for example, the very memorable theme of the main hall softly plays in the background when you first enter the station. However, most of the other music from the fantastic original soundtrack is not present at all, replaced with mostly generic and often subdued music. Don't get me wrong, what music is there is completely fine, and really for a lot of the game there's just no music at all, which adds a lot to the ambiance. I guess I just would've liked to have seen more of the great tunes from the original redone- again, something Remake 1 pulled off expertly.

Some other minor things kind of annoyed me as well. All throughout the game, the characters will, when aiming at an enemy, randomly blurt out things like "what the?" or "you asshole!" a lot. Which is, in my opinion, kind of stupid. Like, ok, realism or whatever, but I can't say I really care too much about realism in a game in which I'm carrying 4 guns at a time and fighting the living dead while an 8-foot linebacker wearing a trench coat and fedora stalks me through a police station. And it just sounds...dumb, to me. Also, the game just straight up cut out a lot of enemies like the spiders in the sewers, black Lickers in the lab, and the giant moth mini-boss battle. Which, fine, the moth I could understand getting rid of (even though I always thought the room you fight it in was so cool because it looked like something straight out of Aliens), but the black Lickers were awesome because of how much deadlier they were, and the giant spiders were always a staple of the early RE games, so I think it's hard to justify omitting them.

There were also a few minor continuity errors that kind of bugged me, being the detail-oriented geek that I am. For one thing, there's a moment in the 1st run scenario where, upon exiting the R.P.D. building onto the 2nd floor fire escape, your character will see the other character behind a locked gate and have a brief conversation with them. This occurs after you make your way through the city streets and do about 30-45 minutes worth of running around in the police station. However, upon starting the 2nd scenario with the other character and beginning the game right in the outer courtyard area of the R.P.D., you come to that very area and the same cutscene plays about 2 minutes in. When I first saw it, I literally said out loud "wait...what?" Even in the original, scenes with both Leon and Claire between the A and B scenarios occurred at roughly the same point in the playthrough, at least making it seem like it made sense.

So Leon took like an hour to get here and Claire took about...30 seconds.

Also, there's another moment that bothered me- so in Leon's game, he's stalked all throughout by Mr. X and it isn't until the very end that you find a way to kill him once and for all. Claire is only followed by Mr. X. for about half of her campaign, because upon entering the sewers area, Mr. X is actually chopped in half and killed by William Birkin right in front of you. So...is it not the same Mr. X between scenarios? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, though I can't get too nerd-mad at this one because I think there is an explanation. It's not made explicitly clear in this game, but in the original, Mr. X is dropped into the R.P.D. by a helicopter which is also carrying five other tanks that we can only assume contain other tyrants. Also, at the very end of Resident Evil 3, a number of dead tyrants are seen scattered in a room in the factory. So, I guess it makes sense that there would be more than one, but the idea is not really explored at all.

Anyway, before I break your computer with extreme nerdiness, I have one final point that's a more of a philosophical question than anything- so, with all the changes made, is this game really a remake at all? Well, it's a little complicated. Compared directly to Remake 1...not really.

The biggest difference between Remake 1 and Remake 2 is that Remake 1 was actually a remake in a much purer sense of the word; very few details from the original game were subtracted, but many more were added and enhanced. Remake 2 is less of a remake in this regard and more of a re-imagining. Details were added and enhanced for sure, but others were subtracted, shuffled around, and mixed together to create an end product that felt familiar, yet significantly different enough that it's hard to call the game a straight up remake.

I think this is more a result of changes in the tech of video games over time than anything. Consider, for a moment, the timeline of these games being released and the gaps between each; the original Resident Evil was released in 1996, followed by Resident Evil 2 in 1998. Then, after a string of sequels and spinoffs, Remake 1 was released in 2002. That's only a 6-year span between the original and Remake 1; compare that to the 21 years that separate RE2 and Remake 2- or, hell, even the 17 years between Remake 1 and Remake 2. What I'm getting at here is that there was a far smaller gap between the original and Remake 1, meaning that technology hadn't really advanced all that much to allow for huge fundamental changes to be made from the original. It had advanced just enough so that Remake 1 most certainly changed the rules in a lot of ways (for the better, I might add), yet didn't stray too far from the tried and true formula of the original. Despite all the flaws it ironed out, the control scheme, pre-rendered backgrounds, and 3rd person fixed-camera POV of the original are all still there in Remake 1.

By 2019, however, video games have changed quite a lot from 1998. We're in the era of massive, open world games with huge amounts of interactivity and complexity in the environments they create. There's games with huge story branches, games with non-linear worlds in which you complete objectives in any manner in which you choose, and let's not even get into online multiplayer capabilities. So, remaking RE2 in the same style as Remake 1 did with RE1 just wouldn't quite work the way it did in 2002, I believe. I mean, it's hard to say whether or not Remake 1 would be more of a re-imagining as well if it were done today and not in 2002. But this is what we now have, and unlike Remake 1, Remake 2 is a true 3D, over-the-shoulder POV shooter much closer to a game like RE4 in look and style, even though it still manages to retain the general tone and feel of RE2.

Whatever the case and despite everything I've just talked about, I did really enjoy Remake 2 overall. There are plenty of liberties taken but overall it doesn't turn the game into something unrecognizable, which was my biggest worry from the start. I think it's got enough to keep fans of the original happy, and it didn't go completely overboard with trying to make something old new again. I also think it's definitely a lesser companion to the original than Remake 1 is to RE1 for sure, but as I said earlier, the original RE2 was a really tough act to follow, and this game did a damn good job trying. And, you know what, there's still plenty of things I haven't even gotten to in this game yet- Hardcore mode, the various "Ghost Survivors" mini-games, and the 4th Survivor game as well, so maybe this game will warm up to me even more.

Above all, one thing is for certain- survival horror is not dead yet. Maybe it just needed a resurrection, very much like a zombie infected with the T-Virus. Thanks for reading.