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Resident Evil 2 (Remake) Discussion
 
I'm sure a lot of you, like myself, have been secretly wishing for a truly great follow-up to the amazing Resident Evil 4. Nothing since then has quite hit that level.

Resident Evil 5 - Actually I liked it, but it was definitely not on the level of 4. Especially late in the game when it devolves to a weirdly controlled shooter. When I think of it as a multiplayer side game it feels like a neat experiment. But it's no 4.

Resident Evil 6 - Never played but I heard it sucked.

Resident Evil Revelations - Pretty fun, but kind of inconsistent. Some brilliance at times (especially during Jill parts), some mediocreness at times (especially during non-Jill parts.)

Resident Evil 7 - I'm playing it right now, it's really awesome, but it's not really much like 4 at all. More like old style Resident Evil reenvisioned in 1st person.

Other Resident Evil games - ???

So now we have the Resident Evil 2 remake. Realistically... it probably won't be the truly great follow-up to the amazing Resident Evil 4 I keep hoping will exist someday, but it does look like it is drawing inspiration from 4, especially in the camera and controls. Even if they go all out with the remake it will probably still feel more like a new take on the old style Resident Evil, being that it is based on old style Resident Evil, maybe something that feels a bit like 7 but with the controls of 4? But hey, anything even close to 4 is a good thing in my book.

Anyway here is the gameplay trailer:


And a walkthrough of the entire demo (spoilers I guess?!)


Looks sickkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.
URL to share (right click and copy)
10/22/19, 05:53   Edit:  10/22/19, 05:52
 
   
 
@carlosrox It's kind of hard NOT to like it if you at all like the old school style Resident Evil games. I think parts of Revelations (Jill stuff) and a lot of 7 (until it devolves a bit into an action game near the end) hit that feel, but this is an entire game built directly in that style but super modernized as well. This is essentially what Resident Evil would probably have been like in 2019 if it just kept following the path that the originals set instead of going in a bunch of different directions. Which is why I think it would be interesting to see what a brand new Resident Evil game done in this style would look like now, because as great as this game is, it still feels a bit familiar with the known story and location and such.

After 7 which was great but also uneven in some ways I had high hopes that the series was back on track and now that feels confirmed to me. I just wonder what lessons Capcom will take. Hard to imagine what direction the next completely brand new Resident Evil game will go. Will it be more like 7, or like the 2 remake? Will more of the action stuff of 4 get worked in? WHO KNOWS?! It's an exciting time to be a Resident Evil fan again though.

The interesting thing about 7 to me is I really liked it, but I felt like a lot of the "gimmicks" didn't really add to it. For instance, the VHS tapes didn't really do it for me, it felt like... go through this area in a VHS tape, then go through the exact same area (obviously in a bit different way, but still) again? A bit repetitive. This 2 remake feels a bit more "pure", so to speak, so far anyway. With that said, I feel like the intro hour or two of 7 is still one of the more unique experiences I have had in gaming lately. They managed to make a super tense game without any standard enemies for a huge part of the intro, just kind of sneaking around trying not to run into the family members.

Anyway, the lickers.

I survived the first hallway encounter so I didn't get to try that one again but I feel like I had slowwwwwwwly nudged the joystick forward there, since it was clearly the place the licker would be introduced. In the second case with lickers I died right away, so the next time I got there I knew exactly when it was coming and definitely slowwwwwwwwwwwwly nudged the joystick forward at the slowest walk possible until it triggered the event, and it still just INSTANTLY ran right at me. And since they were both triggered events I wonder if they were just kind of automatically already aggroed. I'm sure stealth will work later but these were both specific events (the first introduction to them in that hallway, and the part where you explode the jail cell, which definitely notified it of your presence, since it instantly screams right after the explosion...)

Actually the way the game kept hinting at stealth for them I kind of expected my introduction to them to be like... seeing / hearing one off in the distance and the game making it very clear that you should try to sneak around it or whatever, but that's not the way it seemed to happen to me. They were just instantly on my ass my both times.
02/26/19, 14:35   Edit:  02/26/19, 19:45
@Zero
Oh that part. Yeah the explosion part you already alerted it but the first part I know you can sneak right past it. You can sneak right into the STARS room. Enemies can wander off once you enter a new room, sometimes they'll hang around. Once a Licker makes a sound it doesn't necessarily mean it's on you. Sometimes it means it just heard something and will slowly start creeping around. It can be hard to tell and cause you to panic, thus alerting it even more.

There's one other part that's pretty obviously scripted but otherwise the rest need to be alerted.

Honestly they're pretty rare. They're not in the game a whole lot.

It is totally a sequel to the old style of games. I thought you may not like it cuz I thought I remember you saying you didn't play the originals or didn't like them that much or something?
02/26/19, 19:30   Edit:  02/26/19, 19:33
What?! Who? Huh? I've played all of the old school style games and liked them all! I mean 0 was kind of mediocre but still worth playing.

I may have said 2 was not super memorable to me, but I didn't dislike it, it just kind of came and went at the time so it is near the bottom of the RE games for my own personal experiences.

You can see all the scores I have given them!
02/26/19, 19:46   Edit:  02/26/19, 22:19
Zero said:
I think parts of Revelations (Jill stuff) and a lot of 7 (until it devolves a bit into an action game near the end) hit that feel, but this is an entire game built directly in that style but super modernized as well. This is essentially what Resident Evil would probably have been like in 2019 if it just kept following the path that the originals set instead of going in a bunch of different directions.
Yup. It's a big reason why I've fallen in love with this game as I have. It's the first RE game since 2002 that top-to-bottom, beginning-to-end, captures all of the things that were great about the series' original run.

carlosrox said:
@Zero
Once a Licker makes a sound it doesn't necessarily mean it's on you. Sometimes it means it just heard something and will slowly start creeping around. It can be hard to tell and cause you to panic, thus alerting it even more.
THIS THIS THIS so much. Trying to sneak past them is always very stressful for this exact reason. You have to almost pretend it isn't there, but IT'S HARD!!!
02/27/19, 02:15   Edit:  02/27/19, 15:30
BTW, with how unforgiving this game is in some ways, there are forgiving decisions made that I'm not sure how I feel about. I'm playing on the normal difficulty so I don't know if "hardcore" mode is different.

Most notably to me, you can basically bring up the map whenever you want, because it pauses the action. This seems to move in contrast to how a lot of games manage this nowadays, where you can't really take a breather in the middle of the intense action, you just have to scramble and act and check your map when you think you're safe. I don't think it is bad per se but I end up relying on it too much, especially when I'm in deep shit, to just stop and breath and plot my next move. But it also takes away from the intensity a lot. Instead of "oh shit something just bust through the window and is coming right at me WHAT DO I DO?" I often instinctively bring up the map right away to chart my escape. Sometimes I'm in the middle of a chase and bringing up the map every 5 seconds or so just to make sure I don't make a wrong turn. But that kills the feeling of panic I'd really have in a situation like this!

Yeah I know, I could just NOT do that, but it's hard not to! I almost wish the game took that ability away from me so I just had to deal with everything as it came and only check my map when I'm in a relatively safe spot. (And yeah I know eventually SOMEONE shows up and you're almost never really safe anymore, but that would just make checking the map even more of an intense risk / reward showdown!)

The interesting thing is it DOESN'T pause when you're trying to use an item or solve a puzzle, which has that more intense "oh shit I better not fumble this!" feel when you're trying to get something done with enemies lurking around.

What do you guys think about this?
02/28/19, 16:10   Edit:  02/28/19, 16:14
I prefer it pausing the action when opening the inventory. In a game that's so much about resource management and scarcity, the last thing I'd want is to waste an item by fumbling through a menu in a panic.

And since the game pauses in the inventory, I don't really mind it doing the same when bringing up the map, though I do see where you are coming from. Although I never really opened the map during combat, if I ever paused during combat it was almost always to heal. The other thing I'll say is that the game is designed to be replayed several times, probably more so than any other RE game. Once you know the level layouts like the back of your hand, the map isn't really necessary and you'll just know where you need to run to.

In some ways it balances out some of the "tricks" you could use in the originals that you can't anymore. For instance, if you walked into a room and there was a monster you didn't want to face right then, you could just go back out through the door (wait for the door loading screen, naturally) and you were safe. You can't do that anymore, so I think it's good to still have a way to take a breather and gather your thoughts.
03/01/19, 02:24
@TheBigG753 Zombies didn't follow you between rooms in the original? I swear they did in some of the older games. When did that start?

You shouldn't get many breathers! It's survival!!!

BTW, if zombies follow you from say... a hallway into a room, and then you leave the room in another direction and they don't follow you again, will they all be essentially stuck in that room now? Or will some of them wander back out into the hallway? Because I left that one hell hallway full of freaking zombies but I probably could have lured a bunch of them into the room, exited it on the other side, and then the hallway would be cleared out for awhile for next time I needed to go that way? Maybe?

Too late now though. A few did follow me in. But I could have probably lured a few more in.
03/01/19, 02:32   Edit:  03/01/19, 02:45
@Zero

Only on a couple scripted occasions would zombies follow in the old games. Like, you'd get the door loading animation like usual and then zombies would show up and you'd have to deal with them. It was sort of a fake-out/jump scare kinda thing because 99% of the time the door loading animations don't get interrupted. But almost always, no. In REmake sometimes a hunter or crimson head would break through a doorway, but this was also a scripted thing.

Yeah, in RE2make zombies will stay in a room they followed you into if they don't follow you back out. I've had this happen at the East Office, zombies that came in from the hallway window followed me into the office, I grabbed the fuse and went straight back to the main lobby after using it. When I went back those zombies were still in the east office, they didn't go back out into the hallway. Of course if you are loud you can alert them and they'll break back out.
03/01/19, 04:21   Edit:  03/01/19, 04:24
Maybe I was thinking of those.

But yeah, one thing I really like about the design of these old Resident Evil games is a lot of the decisions you make about which enemies to fight and which to leave alive kind of change the rest of the game. You could have two different people at the same point in the game but with different challenges ahead of them based on what they have and haven't done yet and which enemies are still alive. And in the case of this remake, what rooms they are in.

I like too how the zombies wander around a bit so. But sometimes it can screw you. There is that room right off of the main hall that has Leon's desk and such, I left a single zombie in there. Ran through the room a few different times, every time he was in a different spot so I never quite knew what to expect. So one I edged the door open slowly and glanced around... didn't see him. Room is dark though so I figure... well here, let's let the images do the talking.










THAT WAS FUN.
03/01/19, 05:21   Edit:  03/01/19, 05:24
You are pretty much encouraged to kill most zombies, I find. Once you know the game better, you realize they give you more than enough ammo to beat the game with.

Hard mode is probably another story. Haven't started that yet but I'm close. I'll get on that tonight actually probably. I look forward to getting my ass kicked and feeling the tension again.
03/01/19, 19:43
@carlosrox Maybe? But I usually run low on ammo at one point or another in Resident Evil games, maybe I'm just a bad shot. Besides, if I ever want to take on hard mode, which I may someday, might as well get used to playing as conservatively as possible with ammo. In Resident Evil games I usually only kill slow moving creatures like zombies if:

A. they're about to grab me and I either shoot or get grabbed
B. there is no way past them without killing them or possibly getting grabbed (skinny hallways, etc.)
C. there is some puzzle or something that I won't be able to do without them grabbing me
D. there are a group of them and they will probably overwhelm me if I don't thin them out a bit

Otherwise I just run past.

For D I tend to do what I call "thinning the herd" where I only kill as many as I feel necessary to make the room manageable, and then leave the rest. Of course this can backfire when reinforcements come crashing through windows and such but whatever, it usually works fine.

And it worked fine for that room! I went through it successfully like 5 times with that single zombie left alive in there! It's easy to dodge a single zombie, especially in that specific room that has that big thing of desks in the middle. Whatever side the zombie is on, you just lure it to you and then run down the other side! The only tough part is right when you come in, since it's a bit of a bottleneck getting down those stairs, but if I inched in and noticed he was blocking the bottleneck it I'd just inch back out again and go a different way or let him wander a bit and try again.

So it worked!

Until he hid in the one spot I wouldn't see him and grabbed me! I'd almost think it was planned except there was no specific event and I had been through that room multiple times before, so it must have just been a bad coincidence. Maybe he tried to follow me the last time I came out of there but since they won't go into the main hall he just stuck around the door instead and didn't wander much from that point? But I thought of that, which is why I slowlyyyyyy opened the door. But all that did is block my view of where he was hiding! And there was no noise or reaction at all... until I slowlyyyyyy walked in the room and was grabbed.

He didn't ACTUALLY kill me but I decided to let him kill me because it felt like a cheap loss of health that I could easily avoid and I had literally just saved so I could restart right there. So next time I just ran full speed into the room in case he was hiding there again but... he wasn't! He was down near the desks again! So I let him be and he is still wandering around in there...

Now I know that leaving these guys around might screw me over once I'm running from Mr. X but whatever. I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
03/01/19, 19:59   Edit:  03/01/19, 20:04
lol


03/12/19, 05:40   Edit:  03/12/19, 05:41
It's been a few weeks but I dove deeper into the game last night, exploring the underground area. Those dogs man! They're too fast! If it is far off running at me I can usually take it down but if it gets close it's like... not even worth trying to shoot. I wasted too much ammo on those dogs.

Not a ton though, mostly I just run if they get too close. CARLOS, you said you basically kill everything in this game, but how?! I've been avoiding killing certain things and I still, at the moment, only have like 4 shotgun bullets and 4 regular bullets. I'd definitely have run out of ammo if I tried killing everything. I've been exploring everything fully too, can't have missed much!

But yeah this game is so good. It does such a good job of creating a lot of unique moments, the same way 4 did. A part of me is like "nothing will ever top 4" and I don't think this will top 4 but it sure is awesome. Easily the second best Resident Evil game (so far.) I liked 7 a lot (probably number 3 Resident Evil for me) but ultimately it felt like it had some stuff that fell short, this feels more consistent. SO FAR. It probably doesn't help to compare these games to 4 anyway, they're really different kinds of games. A part of me wishes Capcom would just split the franchise into two... keep moving forward with these "old school" style games but also try to make a 4 type game that gets back to the roots of 4's more action / mob based horror and isn't a big bloated mess like 6 apparently was.

Hmm. This isn't a complaint but somehow meeting Ada took away a bit of the tension for me. I mean you're not TOTALLY isolated early on, there is Marvin and Claire, but Marvin is dying and there is always some separation with Claire, Ada is the first one who has been around and helped out and such. Feels less lonely. But that's not bad per se.

And I know Mr. X will bring the tension right back. That was some introduction (even if it was TOTALLY OBVIOUS EXACTLY WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN.)
03/14/19, 15:55   Edit:  03/14/19, 22:41
@Zero
Obviously it won't be so easy on the first game. But trust me the game gives you enough ammo to basically kill everything.

The dogs only take a few pistol shots. I think it's 3 to 4. 1 or 2 shotgun shots.

Yeah don't shoot them up close. They're much harder to hit that way. There is no invulnerability state for them or anything, once you've got a clear shot and you land your first, quickly fire the rest off. They should get hit stunned too.

Is your aim good?
03/14/19, 22:21   Edit:  03/14/19, 22:23
I thought my aim was ok until these dogs, lol. With zombies I try to go for headshots and unless I'm panicking or they swerve at the last second I'm somewhat consistent.

But yeah I noticed they take less ammo than the zombies they're just FAST. I think the old PS1 games had the auto lock-on stuff so as long as you were loosely facing in the right direction as an enemy you mostly hit them, dogs were never much trouble for me in the old games.

Did you execute the ones in the cages?! I felt kind of bad doing it but I was like no way do I want them all hopping out at me at once...

I left all of the zombies in the jail cells though, this decision will probably screw me in the future but there were way too many for me to try to take out with my limited ammo and I'm actually kind of curious to see how bad that section will be when shit goes down...
03/14/19, 22:42   Edit:  03/14/19, 22:54
So, I haven't played in awhile, but put in a lot of time last night. Got to the introduction of Mr. X which I think they handled pretty perfectly by NOT doing a whole big cutscene etc., but just have him in normal gameplay walking straight towards you and it's like OH FUCK. At first I was sort of annoyed by him seemingly being EVERYWHERE, and I still don't know the "rules" for how he operates other than some basic stuff like "he will come to where you are if you shoot a weapon" and such. But once I got a handle on how he moves a bit (for instance, he is slow enough that as long as you don't get boxed in he isn't too hard to avoid) and how to manage him if you do get boxed in (I actually used flash bombs a few times in a Resident Evil game for once!) he wasn't too bad. And adds a pretty interesting new dynamic.

Then I finally got outside of the police station and the game starts to feel a bit different at this point, to be honest. It's not bad but it gets a lot more linear for quite awhile. Almost feels a bit more Resident Evil 4-ish, though... not really. And I didn't really like the Ada gameplay too much. Having to use that thingy to search wires to their destinations and scan stuff etc. while way more zombies than you have ammo to deal with are all around you... not super fun! I started dying a lot, quickly, because if you don't figure out exactly where you are scanning right away in those spots you're basically screwed. Especially when Mr. X shows up again.

Then I got back to Leon's gameplay and quit for the night.

So yeah, still awesome, but a bit worried that it might fall into the Resident Evil 7 trap of moving away from its most compelling gameplay into less compelling gameplay for the last half of the game. (I think a lot of Resident Evil games suffer from this, actually.) Of course, I still have the whole Claire / B stuff to do so even if that is the case, I'll get back to the more compelling stuff EVENTUALLY. But the whole non-linear police station stuff is definitely better to me than the sewers / Umbrella hideout is so far. I feel like if they're going to go more linear "new school" Resident Evil than they need to really blow it out more like 4 did or something?! I dunno. This stuff feels sort of in-between and not really as compelling as going all out one way or the other.

There are still a lot of rooms I never hit in the police station, but I'm not totally sure if I have to go back there during Leon's gameplay or if some of those are rooms that only Claire goes to.
04/08/19, 01:12   Edit:  04/08/19, 15:52
@Zero Don't worry, there's a pretty obviously-communicated "point of no return" in-game, whether you're playing as Leon or Claire, so you don't have to worry about accidentally moving too far ahead and losing access to stuff you'd overlooked.



Anyways, over the past few days, I played through Claire A/Leon B, and I absolutely love this game. It could very well be my favorite Resident Evil game. I mean, RE4 gives it some competition in terms of actiony shooty gameplay goodness (I've beaten RE4 20-25 times, and still enjoy revisiting it), so only time will tell if I enjoy revisiting REmake 2 as much. But besides that, I think REmake 2 is definitely my favorite game I've played in the series thus far. I'm especially impressed, as for the longest time I personally had the stance that "Resident Evil 2 is already a good game, so it doesn't need a remake"... which I still stand by. The original RE2 is still really freaking good (I replayed it just last year in fact, and I still love it to pieces)... so it's really saying something that Capcom managed to make REmake 2 arguably even better in many ways. I'm glad Capcom made this. This also shows that RE7 being good wasn't just a fluke; it's nice that Resident Evil is good again, haha.

Aside from everything else that's amazing about this... I've gotta say that I'm actually really impressed with the writing in this game. Granted, the fact that there's an original Resident Evil 2 to base this off of certainly helps (in terms of having a basic framework/setting/characters already in place, and having the freedom to tighten up the pace and polish off loose ends in the storytelling, etc.), but I still think they did a great job with the story. I'm not used to Resident Evil having actually good dialogue and characterization, haha. The voice acting performances were also on point; both Leon and Claire, as well as the supporting cast, really sell things well. In particular, I like the quips and exclamations that both Leon and Claire make as you play the game; often they'd be like "What the fuck?!" at the exact same time I was thinking to myself "What the fuck?!" while fighting a zombie or other kind of monster. haha.

That said... like pretty much every game in existence, this game isn't flawless. There's certainly some room for improvement (in particular (A and B-scenario spoilers!!), at least based off of Claire A/Leon B, this game doesn't seem to put as much effort into making the A and B scenarios really feel unique, unlike the original. In the original RE2, you'd actually encounter several different boss fights, and had more points in the story where the characters connected with one another in unique ways. Here however, outside of a few moments, the B scenario feels largely the same as the A-scenario... and canonically-speaking, it's pretty much impossible for both to exist in the same time and place (It's impossible for Annette to die in two different ways in two different scenarios, both after encountering the same form of William over and over, lolol), yet they somehow do. I remember hearing a rumor that there originally wasn't going to be an A or B scenario in REmake 2, which would explain why this functionality feels half-baked here compared to the original.), but overall, I still consider this easily one of the best games I've ever played, and a definite contender for my favorite game of 2019. uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh it's soooooooooooo gooooooooooooood
04/10/19, 02:37
@X-pert74 I didn't necessarily mean overlooked though, more just wondering if you HAVE to go back for any reason, or if it is more "go back if you left stuff behind you want to get". But I'll find out!

One place I'm curious about but definitely will not go back to unless I have a decent amount of ammo is the jail cells. I just ran the F out of there as fast as I could once they all opened and a shit ton of zombies came out but like, there had to be some good stuff in the cells themselves, right?!
04/10/19, 05:11
40 bucks at GameStop right now. Hmm. Should I buy it even though I'm only going to have access to a PS4 for another year or so?
04/10/19, 05:21
@Zero Oh yeah; well, there are a few places only Leon can go, and a few places where only Claire can go; only Claire gets the Heart Key, and only Leon get the Club Key, so that does end up preventing you from exploring every room in the station.

@TriforceBun It's not quite the same as RE4 from a design perspective, so don't go into it expecting that (basically, REmake 2 is less linear; is more focused on exploration (kinda sorta like a Metroidvania, in a sense? I personally don't care for Metroidvanias though while I love classic RE gameplay) & puzzle solving than on pure combat (among other things, there are no QTE melee attacks here); still has a great deal of ammo/resource management; does have RE4-style camera, with the additional ability to move while aiming; is not nearly as cheesy as RE4 can be, but on the other hand is actually pretty good from a story perspective). I do think it's a very good game though, and offers some of the most exciting, memorable sequences I've experienced in gaming. Also, getting to see how Leon and Ada met may be worth it for you, since you've played RE4 before
04/10/19, 05:31   Edit:  04/10/19, 05:32
 
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