I've finished my first complete run through the Resident Evil 2 remake (Leon A, Claire B), and I have mixed feelings on it. It's hard to set aside my attachment to the original game here, because not only was RE2 on the N64 the first M-rated game I ever played, but it's one of my favorite games of all time. I played the hell out of it back then.
There's a lot to like about this remake. The game just looks amazing, and zombies are finally a legitimate threat again in a Resident Evil game, especially after the absurdity of RE6 where your best option was almost always to run INTO a pack of zombies & karate/suplex them to death. I thought the addition of the gunpowder system from RE3 was an inspired choice, as it leads to players having to make hard decisions on where they allocate their ammo. The police station also opens up in some surprising ways that didn't exist in the original game. They also replaced the stupid Little Shop of Horror monsters in the final area of the game with something...a lot more unsettling.
Defensive weapons are back from the 1st remake, although you can also use them like normal weapons now, so that's great. Sherry's section of the game is also a VAST improvement over the original, where you just ran past some zombies & pushed some boxes to get a key.
However, they made a lot of changes I just plain don't care for. In the original version of the game, Leon & Claire's stories were meant to be running concurrently, with actions one did affecting the other in small ways. There was a loose, but relatively cohesive narrative. In the remake, though, Leon & Claire have almost nothing to do with each other for pretty much the entirety of the game. You solve the same puzzles with both characters the same way at pretty much the same point of the game, which makes no sense from a narrative standpoint.
The original game also had unique bosses for both characters. Nope, not now! You're fighting the same bosses with both characters, and you're fighting them in the same rooms in both campaigns with the same end result. Characters who clearly die in one story will just show up in the other's story to die in the same room they did the 1st playthrough after the same boss fight. It's lazy writing and design, especially when they already had the template of the original game to go by.
They also SEVERELY increased the section of the game that takes place in the sewers, everyone's favorite gaming environment. What was previously just a quick jaunt to the laboratory is now 30 minutes to an hour of slogging your way through bullet-spongy mini-bosses out of John Carpenter's The Thing.
I also don't want to spoil too much, but suffice it to say that there's a LOT of Resident Evil 3 in this game, which lends a certain unwanted tension towards the latter half of the police station that I don't care for, tension that would remind you of certain other recent horror games. Lickers are also damn near impossible to kill now without taking severe damage, as they're heavily armored like the ones from RE5.
The music is also practically nonexistent. I highly recommend buying the original soundtrack DLC if your version of the game doesn't have it, as the new soundtrack is so subtle I never heard it outside the boss battles & a few minor moments.
Finally, the game is super stingy with the unlocks. Outside of earning the Unbreakable knife (which IS a good unlock, btw, as it's an unlimited defensive weapon), if you don't beat this game in under 5 hours, you're not unlocking anything of value. Granted, I was taking my time but it still took me 6.5 hours to beat the game on Leon's A side, & 5.5 to beat it on Claire's B side. And on both, I was out of ammo by the end of the game so I don't know how I could have done better.
Obviously, there's still a lot to play here, and there's definitely a lot to love here. The game's also going to be getting more story content via free DLC updates later this year. I just don't think this is the instant slam dunk over the original game that the 1st REmake was to its original.
Topic: What are you playing? (Read 810140 times)
