Ah, Resident Evil 2, the 1998 survival-horror classic adored by millions! And now the 2019 survival-horror classic-in-the-making adored by ever growing multitudes. Two games, both excellent, but how does this new RE2 compare? Thankfully, it retains the original survival-horror charm while also delivering a modern experience. Unfortunately, a bit too much outdated design causes it to occasionally stumble and fall like a clumsy zombie. Read on to discover the joys and bugbears of 2019’s RE2.
Atmospheric Horror-Delight
By far the most brilliant thing about RE2 is the stunningly immersive world built for you to slowly explore and unravel. There’s a palpable feeling of despair mixed with hyper-focus on graphical detail making every room, passageway, and crevice a wonder to discover.
The moody vibes of the abandoned city and desperate plights of the few survivors meshes perfectly with a spectacular visual presentation. Get ready for one visual and aural treat after another.
Setting Up the Story
You begin on the dark, rainy city streets outside Raccoon City, a fictional US city with a disturbing history. By way of one ill-fated event after another, you go from surreal police station, to the sewers, and beyond. Thanks to the cutting-edge graphics engine and superb game direction, delving deeper and deeper into this twisted underworld is gruesome, gorgeous, and mesmerizing.
Never before has such an iconic and impressive survival horror world been crafted, and RE2 exudes character and personality from the very floors, halls, and walls of its macabre locations.
The story is presented through excellent cutscenes with extremely detailed characters and facial animation combined with smooth motion capture and top-notch voice acting. There’s some standout performances here, but just know there’s only handful of story cutscenes. RE2 gives you just enough plot to make sense but not enough to sink your teeth into, similar to the original 1998 game. That’s not a fault per-se; it’s just its style.
As far as the actual story goes, it’s best you discover it for yourself. There’s zombies, an evil corporation, corrupt authorities, and experiments gone wrong. All the usual stuff.
Update: a commenter pointed out just how many plot-connecting scenes this 2019 version removes compared to the original. Numerous key story scenes are totally removed or illogically modified in this modern RE2. This is worth noting for super-fans of the original game.
Bloody Zombie Survival-Horror
Besides the immaculate RE2 world, the enemy design is absolutely incredible. The attention to detail in each shambling zombie, ferocious dog, and other creature is best in class. Particularly impressive is the zombie dismemberment system that keeps you finding creative ways to eliminate, outmaneuver, and overcome the undead underlings found all across the environments.
These ghastly and imposing enemies sometimes seem too much to contend with. At first, you often don’t have enough ammo and perhaps question how you can survive. After a while, you learn how to think quickly and overcome RE2. This empowering feeling of increasing mastery is just like how I felt when I played the original back in the day. Speaking of which, let me address this topic.
Disclaimer: RE2 is Special to Me
I should disclose that 1998’s RE2 was my first Resident Evil game. This was back when 3D graphics were young, and I adored this “realistic” PlayStation CD-ROM work of art.
I remember going over to a friend’s house and playing late at night, slowly inching forward through scary hallways on the edge of our seats. It was creepy, scary, and fascinating. I have wonderful memories of playing and replaying the game, finally unlocking the extra weapons and modes, feeling like such a pro.
Even to this day I consider RE2 one of my defining video game experiences. Just keep in mind that a new player to this remake might have that same “revelatory” experience I had in 1998, while I may be more critical of this remake than someone who doesn’t know the brilliance and joy of the original game. Back to the review!
Third-Person Puzzling Exploration
The heart of RE2 is a puzzle-like level design that sees you exploring, discovering, unlocking, backtracking, and going around in circles as you attempt to piece together the mysterious reason for all this horror. The game is quite cerebral in how you must pay very close attention to what items you need, where to use them, and how to make the most of your limited resources.
Fortunately the game provides a very helpful map, without which you’d probably go insane. The map does an excellent job of indicating which rooms are unexplored or still have items left in them.
At this point, a large warning should be issued: this is not a typical third-person shooter where you are pushed forward from one set piece to another. No, RE2 retains the sometimes obtuse 1998-style item and level design that seems to revel in hindering the player.
Each item has a specific and often unclear purpose much like an old point-and-click adventure game. For example, you might find yourself going to the lounge room to find a metal tin you must examine to find a film roll to develop in the dark room to reveal a puzzle about a lion statue that unlocks a key to a door to a secret room. Because obviously that’s what the metal tin is for! Duh!
Some players will love this esoteric puzzling retained from the original game, but there will surely be times you’ll leave an essential item back in storage and find yourself out of ammo, isolated, and possibly very dead. Speaking of items and storage space…it’s time to discuss one of RE2’s more tiresome aspects.
Inventory Woes Like It’s 1998
For all the graphical and controls modernization in RE2, what’s confusingly archaic is the inventory and item design. For those of us who played the original PlayStation era Resident Evil games, we all remember the massive headache of organizing a far-too-small inventory with far-too-many items. Sadly, this headache is back in a lesser but still frustrating way.
Most bizarrely unforgivable is how RE2 does NOT bring forward all the excellent quality-of-life changes included in the last 14 years of RE games (over six titles). Faithfully recreating what people loved about RE2 makes sense, but purposefully taking us back to the bad-old-days of Resident Evil inventory design is not cool.
Irksome Item Issues: A Story
So what are these serious inventory issues? Let’s start with an easy one: you can’t use items directly from the pick-up screen. Think this is no big deal? Let me take you on a very scary true RE2 story that’ll have you weeping and gnashing your teeth by the end (or not).
Picture this: you’re one hit from death as you finally limp to a First Aid Spray (fully heals you). So glad to have finally found healing, you attempt to use the item immediately. Sorry, you can’t! Your inventory is full! You confusingly exclaim, “Um, I don’t need to put it in my inventory…just pick it up and use it!”
The game smiles and patronizingly says, “Nope, sorry, we didn’t build ‘Use’ into our interface…you’ll need an empty inventory slot, you pathetic player.” As the game mocks you, you attempt to find a solution. Every second gone by you can feel the dehumanizing horror of 1998 item management coming back to haunt you.
Suddenly a brilliant idea sparks your mind. You guardedly ask, “Ok…well, can I quickly drop another item to make room and then pick that item back up from the ground?” RE2 begins boisterous, unnerving laughter… “No, silly player! Feel free to drop an item but it’ll be PERMANENTLY deleted as punishment for your full-inventory sins!”
Now you’re livid. You shout furiously, “What about RE4, RE5, RE6, and Revelations 1 & 2?” [Deep breath…] You begin to speak in a low, quivering tone: “This idiotic conundrum was solved years ago in 2005 with a simple ‘Use’ prompt upon item-pickup! How do you not know that?! How, RE2?!”
You continue and defeatedly plead, “Heck, Resident Evil 0 Remaster from 2016 even let us drop items and would display them on our map to be picked up again later! It was the best feature ever introduced to Resident Evil!”
But RE2 doesn’t respond. It merely smirks, knowing that you’re going to have to PERMANENTLY sacrifice one of your items just to immediately heal yourself…and then you’ll have to stare at that newly created EMPTY inventory slot because “this is old-skool survival-horror.” More like “this is real bad design.”
Item Woes Continued
Ok, maybe I went a little off the rails in the last few paragraphs. But seriously folks. RE2’s inventory system is obnoxious, and I’m not done yet describing the issues!
Did I mention you also can’t use items directly from the storage transfer screen? Then there’s times the game isn’t smart enough to automatically combine the same ammo types when using gunpowder. Just weird.
Another bizarre design choice is how the game forces you to manually discard items with no further use. Past games like the RE0 and RE1 remasters would do this for you because why waste the player’s time? It’s strange that RE2 is so polished overall but has these dumb, rough inventory edges.
Some players will defend these design choices saying all this is “part of the experience” and it “builds tension” and challenges you. Yeah, it builds artificial and nonsensical tension. Maybe you’ll disagree, but I feel all these issues do nothing but frustrate and slow-down the actual playing of the outstanding game.
Basically, all this dubious design needlessly complicates what should be simple player-to-game-world interactions. It damages immersion and angers players. RE2 would be a VASTLY better game if it included all the excellent inventory improvements the series has seen in the 20 years since 1998’s RE2! Enough said on that.
The Stylishness of RE2’s Story: Multiple Playthoughs
Exactly like the original RE2, this modern incarnation keeps the same story-framing style: multiple playthroughs. Most modern games try to fit everything in to one playthrough, perhaps having a New Game Plus mode just for fun. RE2 defies this approach and asks, nay, dares you to play over and over to unlock the full experience.
Let’s explain RE2’s campaigns real quickly. RE2 is broken into four main campaigns, each telling the story from a slightly different angle with modified items, enemies, locations, and puzzles. Upon first playing, you have the choice of two main campaigns: Leon or Claire. Leon’s campaign is what 80% of players have chosen to begin with, according to Capcom.
Upon completing Leon’s campaign, the game abruptly ends and you unlock a “2nd Run” mode, which is a slightly shorter remixed version of Leon’s original campaign that must be completed to reveal the true ending.
However, most players will want to play Claire’s campaign after finishing Leon’s first campaign, in order to break up the Leon-monotony. Claire’s campaign features a large amount of unique content, including important characters and entire environments not found in either of Leon’s runs.
Getting confused yet? RE2 doesn’t do a great job of explaining these four campaigns, and the menu system isn’t so helpful either. It makes sense that some players will get confused as to the “proper” order to play everything. Basically, the most common pattern will be Leon, Claire, Leon 2nd Run, and then you can choose between Claire 2nd Run or Extra Mode 1.
Speaking of Extra Modes, if you complete the campaigns fast enough, you unlock two semi-silly modes that each take about 10 to 15 minutes and are pure run-and-gun/survival modes. There’s no saving, and you either die or reach the end. Honestly, most players will attempt these modes a few times and quit in frustration because they’re not particularly well-balanced and rely on memorizing enemy locations and behaviors.
All told, it’ll take you somewhere between 13 to 20 hours to unlock the true ending, at which point what’s left is completing optional objectives, speedruns to get that coveted “S” rank, and Achievements if that’s your thing. So RE2 is definitely a premium title, giving you short but memorable gameplay as opposed to the larger, more expansive action/adventure/RPG/sim games.
Audio: Crisp Creaking and Much Moaning
On the aural front, RE2 deserves special praise for the atmospheric audio touches placed all over the locations. From creaking floorboards, flickering and shorting electrical panels, pouring water, shattered windows, and other horrific matters, this game builds a wondrous world for your ears. It all works extremely well, although the combat sound effects aren’t quite as good as the world sounds.
And the music is very forgettable…you can buy DLC (yuck) to unlock the original PlayStation soundtrack and effects, which some may enjoy for nostalgia reasons. Regardless, RE2’s music isn’t a highlight.
Technically Near-Perfect
On the technical side, RE2 is a dream. The load times are often just one or two seconds even on a non-solid-state drive install. Seriously, how does this game load so fast?! Overachieve much? Please also note I never once had a crash or glitch, and the game alt-tab’s like a champ. Basically RE2 is too legit to quit (working).
There’s only a few slightly odd graphical shimmering effects with the lighting engine, but that’s very minor. Occasionally the game will freeze for a split-second upon entering new areas or finding collectibles, but it’s not a huge deal.
The game also features a very robust graphical customization menu. It’s wonderful to see the robust configurability that the PC platform deserves. Being able to adjust the FOV, motion blur, depth of field, lens flares, and chromatic aberration is much appreciated. So kudos to Capcom for creating such a native PC experience!
Zombie Bullet Sponges & Damage Issues
Another contentious point is how unexpectedly tough zombies are. It’s clear RE2 is trying to be a “hardcore” survival game rather than an action game, but there’s something profoundly unsatisfying when you put six to nine bullets directly into the head of a zombie and it still gets up again.
As detailed as the zombies are, they’re heads don’t realistically deform when shot with bullets. They simply have blood textures applied instead of starting to cave in and lose parts. This is an unfortunate lack of detail. Also missing are blood pools around some dead zombies. Fans of the original game will lament this omission.
Especially galling is how occasionally you can pull out your shotgun and directly blast a zombie in the head an arm’s length away and sometimes still not kill it! In this shotgun case, you only can truly count on a one-hit-kill with a fully upgraded shotgun. This makes sense in “video game progression land” but it’s contrived and unsatisfying. Watch the GIF below in abject horror.
When a shotgun at point blank can’t explode a zombie’s head on Normal difficulty it brings to mind the meme: you had one job, shotgun, one job! Zombie’s head should go boom.
What’s also missing is the satisfying (but unrealistic) blood spurting when you decapitate a zombie with a powerful weapon. The original RE2 was so enjoyable in this way, and RE2’s “head split” animation is just not nearly as enjoyable as the original. Oh well…
Dinky Combat & No CQC
What makes the zombie bullet sponges even more unfortunate is the little sense of power and lethality of most combat engagements, which is perhaps intended to once again “heighten tension” but doesn’t feel very good to play. Your aim is inaccurate. Bullets hitting zombies can feel more like foam darts. Your knife slashes are imprecise and feel like you’re attempting to slather butter on the zombies rather than expertly slash and murder them.
Sometimes scripted sequences override player actions, which is a big sin. At one point several zombies were around me, and one grabbed me. I used my equipped flashbang to stun it, but another zombie grabbed me a split-second before the flash detonated. Despite a flashbang going off right next to it, the zombie played its scripted grab animation and badly damaged me. These conflicts between player input and scripted results happen too often.
Another huge issue is the player has zero close-quarters-combat (CQC) skills. You would think you could at least have basic self-defense moves when your ammo is gone. Nope. You can’t kick, punch, push, or otherwise repel zombie attacks. You just stand like a fool as zombies lunge at you.
Yes, true, the game gives you some defense items like knives and grenades, but those are basically simple button prompt usages once you’ve already been grabbed. There’s no inherent CQC attacks because the developers have artificially limited your ability to respond to threats. This makes the game a lot less fun to play.
It’s just too jarring to have Leon and Claire, both fit and athletic young people, be unable to duck, weave, roll, dodge, and quickly outmaneuver zombies…unless it’s in a cutscene when suddenly they stop being movement morons. I personally hate when games have characters do things in cutscenes that are taken away from you when you actually play. Not cool.
So once again some of the combat improvements in the more modern games have been stripped out…an unfortunate design decision perhaps done because Capcom was too afraid to deliver “an action feel” after the utter disaster that was RE6.
Some Kind of Tyrant
I’m not going to say much, but during the game you’ll encounter this one guy who follows you around and tries to kill you. You might enjoy these segments. More likely, you’ll find them a bit annoying by the end. I personally found these segments to be fairly brief, so I’m not knocking or praising the game in this regard.
Keyboard and Mouse Issues
If you’re using a controller, you can move very slowly by barely pushing the analog stick (like nearly every third-person game). Sadly Capcom forgot to include a keyboard binding for this “slow walk” style, so if you’re playing with keyboard and mouse you’ll be unable to avoid detection in certain important areas. All it would take is a menu option to press down “Ctrl” or whatnot to get your creep on and safely avoid serious consequences. Needed more PC testing.
DLC Costumes, Unlockables, & Promised Content
On the very negative side, one thing they haven’t kept from the old days is quality unlockable costumes. Rather, they’ve opted to modernize things with unacceptable DLC outfits. You only unlock the original 1998 outfits by playing. The interesting outfits…you need to pay for them. I will never condone this practice in a full-price release.
Also sad is how much more annoying it is to unlock the good infinite ammo weapons in this modern RE2. It’s just silly to lock the best stuff behind modes about maybe 2% of your players will finish.
On a brighter side, Capcom has promised three mini-stories to be released for free in the future. They’ll probably be very short, but free post-release content is nice.
Other Minor Annoyances
There’s a 20 save-game slot limit for some silly reason. This means you won’t be able to keep all your save games from the four different campaigns (eight counting the Hardcore modes), which makes hunting down missed Achievements or unlockables a bit more tedious. I don’t see why the game couldn’t keep separate save “folders” for each playthrough…this isn’t 1998.
While you can skip all the major cutscenes (thankfully), for some bizarre reason you cannot skip other short cutscenes such as certain item placements and death scenes. When you’re playing the game for the fourth time you really don’t need to sit through a 10 second sequence seeing yourself torn to shreds…just let me load my game already.
It’s also too bad that RE2 lacks a photo mode since this would be a perfect fit for a game as visually attractive as this one! Oh well.
Overlooking Faults: Yes or No?
In reading the overwhelmingly positive Steam reviews and mostly glowing critic reviews, I think it’s fair to say most players are choosing to overlook the larger issues of RE2: less-than-stellar combat, lack of CQC, muddy maneuverability, and tedious item management.
Accepting these issues perhaps out of nostalgia or relief that Capcom mostly delivered makes sense since RE2 is a really great game overall.
As a critic I can’t overlook any issues, even if I also love RE2. Therefore, what we have here is a faithful and gorgeous remake that retains the original’s mood but lacks the fluid and intelligent modern gameplay it truly deserves.
If you can overlook the faults, RE2 is as perfect a recreation of the 1998 survival-horror experience as you’ll ever get. I still love the original RE2 and the remake brings back all that I love, even if it also drags in a bit too much less-lovely archaic design.
- Perfect atmosphere & mood
- Optimized & efficient engine
- Gorgeously detailed world
- Balanced survival-horror
- Super-fast loading times
- Immersive locational audio
- Extremely faithful remake
- Free content updates
- Inventory annoyances!
- Lack of CQC defense skills
- Some flimsy/quirky combat
- Bullet-sponge zombies
- Some obtuse item puzzles
- Semi-short campaigns
- Pointless 20-save slot limit
- Good costumes are all DLC
Playtime: 26 hours total. Nick completed Leon’s “scenic” playthrough in 7 hours. Next was Claire’s in 4 hours. Leon’s 2nd Run took 3 hours, and Claire’s 2nd Run came in at a quick 2.5 hours. Nick proceeded to unlock Achievements and collectibles for a good while more. He’s looking forward to maybe attempting Hardcore mode someday…maybe.
Computer Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using an Intel i7-3930k CPU, 32GB of memory, and a nVidia GTX 980 Ti graphics card.
Also read the Resident Evil 2 PC Performance Analysis.
Nick’s been a PC gamer for over 20 years, having grown up on first-person shooter games (he’s very proud of his Quake 2 tournament trophy). Nick also loves deep, engrossing role-playing games, and he’s also more famously known as Brumbek, the creator of Static Mesh Improvement Mod for Skyrim. Nick believes the essence of enjoyment is to play and ponder video games.
Contact: Email
Bullet sponge zombies with strong head syndrome took the game from 10 to 8 for me, was planning to finish the game again, but after a zombie took 15 bullets to the head, I uninstalled the game.
if killing zombies in your zombie killing game is more annoying than fun, there is something wrong.
Yeah, the “right” way to play the game is shoot the knee and run, so for someone like me who likes to clean house in these types of games, it’s a big turn off.
I’ve never seen a game – survival horror or not – where the weakest enemy in the game can require 10+ shots to the head to die, it’s ridiculous.
You haven’t played original RE2 then either.
I’m playing right now in first person mode and the amount of headshots they eat is STUPID. Like 3-5 shots to the head max should kill them. Anything beyond that is tedious and makes no sense.
There are critical hits buddy, try not to move and aim between the eyes, boom zombie head explosion. Of course you can always play on easy where enemies have lower health. 😉
The system uses randomization, standing still with small reticle does not guarantee an instant headshot kill, i’ve put upwards of 8 shots in such a way and it would not pop.
Yes I know there is no guarantee but it helps a lot especially if you aim right between the eyebrows 😉
It’s random. Criticals don’t always happen. Out of the four times I’ve played through the game, easily less than 12 zombies heads actually exploded unless using the shotgun.
The game would be way too easy with instakill headshots, they would have to make the zombies faster to balance it, and fast zombies are really annoying, I much prefer slow, tanky zombies with a detailed damage model and hit reactions, which is exactly what this game did.
Besides, the original RE2 took as many bullets to down a zombie, the only difference is that you couldn’t aim your shots.
On normal mode you have to spend about as many bullets as you did in classic RE2, headshots don’t actually make any difference in damage, they give you about a 20% chance of an instant head pop, other than that they do the same damage to the overall zombie health as any other shot. Also the game scales depending on how well you’re doing, if you’re killing lots of zombies without getting hit, the game will increase their health to compensate.
It’s a product of them switching to 3rd person. In the original zombies took 5-10 handgun shots but killing them was quick and you could tell right away when they were dead.
They couldn’t make headshots a 1 shot kill without breaking the ammo economy, but having zombies’ head bob and not being able to tell when they are dead can get frustrating. Killing them is just more of a chore than in the original, and while it doesn’t ruin the game for me, I can see where people are coming from.
It’s survival-horror after all. No one said it’s supposed to be easy or particularly convenient. You’re not meant to kill them. You’re meant to stay alive the best way you can
I’m actually with you regarding this issue.
Pack as much beautiful ambiance/ sound/ graphics into a game as you like, but following your sentiments, throw in the annoying forced gameplay with the tyrant, stupid inventory and the ridiculously short playtime for each character? Its is a complete turn off.
Might pick it up on a 80% steam sale, it sure inst worth $80 to me, maybe $20.
Sigh, another Capcom game with poor m+k implementation. And they had the same problem back in dmc…
for me the game is 10/10 and all the resident evil series should be like this one.
Despite all the obnoxious QTE abuse in RE6, I still think that game had by far the best controls and movement in any RE game, hell, in any shooter I’ve played, so part of me wishes there was a way to marry the RE6 movement with the RE2 design and atmosphere. But other than that, yeah, this game is the overall best mix of RE design conventions so far.
Maybe if you played on the gamepad, m+k controls were abysmal
RE6s control scheme was for an action game. Resident Evil is not and was never supposed to be an action game.
If you could back prone, roll, crouch, or take cover it would be completely stupid in this game, which is the second closest thing the world has seen to a real Resident Evil game since 2002.
I feel things like inventory management and tough zombies are more deliberate design decisions. It’s not an action game per se, it’s more like an old school adventure game with action elements. The new free viewpoint and fully 3D environment mask this compared to the original’s fixed cameras. By modern standards the puzzles are often pretty dated too as a lot of them involve finding the right item but hunting it down is actually pretty fun thanks to the mansion’s layout.
If it didn’t have these aspects fans of the original would say it’s not doing justice to it. I feel they have done a great job capturing the atmosphere of the original while modernizing it enough so that it’s more enjoyable to play. The original soundtrack DLC is highly recommended, but I can say I don’t enjoy having to pay more for things like these, .
I’ve completed Claire’s campaign and almost immediately started Leon’s because the game is a lot of fun. I felt Claire’s was actually easier because she has better weapons. Leon’s shotgun should be more powerful.
Even so I still love the shotgun, cutting a zombie in half and watch it crawl is just precious 😀
Funny you should say that because literally RE1, 2, and 3 were adventure games with action elements. That’s what RE was always supposed to be, not the action trash it became after CV.
Good review, few gripes tough.
First the only reason a headshot from a shotgoun at a close range out of my 4 playtroughs so far did not killed the zombie is if he already started the bite atack cutscene which is the case in the gif above or i misaligned the shot at the last second.
The game has CQC defense and its fine, since is suplied by items and it’s not like the game is stingy with the knifes and granades so to have an CQC option on top of that would totally overkill.
Inventory manegemant is a problem only at first, Hip pouches are perfectly layed out in my opinion, seeing as in the later stages of the game you can carry 4 guns ammo to spare and like 3 healing items plus key items.
That’s fair. Too each their own. Although when doing a speedrun on Hardcore trying to beat it in 2:30 hours…you don’t have time to pick up the extra hip pouches…and inventory management is a serious downer when doing S-rank speedruns, in my opinion.
My larger point is inventory management doesn’t add to the fun. There’s no need for it. But again, if other players enjoy it, then that’s fair and I respect that opinion.
GR8 review !
Great review Nick! I’m personally loving the game but your criticisms are valid and the review was very fair overall.
This is a perfect remake for me
Yeah, you’d be hard-pressed to name another remake that is so faithful and spot-on. So Capcom does deserve credit!
definitely, they got the best company this year for many reasons too
How come that Claire’s runs always took less time? Isn’t the campaign the same? Also “near-perfect” doesn’t fit anywhere in this game, but it probably fits “very good”. But at least this time the PROs and CONs make sense.
Claire literally starts in the RPD. Leon has about 20 seconds of gameplay before he gets there. The tyrant also dies in Claire’s game before you get to the sewer and you don’t have to waste time messing with him. You also don’t have to actually do anything in the RPD in Claire’s game – it took me 20 minutes from the moment I started to get to the first Birkin fight and I didn’t even get the heart or club keys.
I see.
Moreover, inventory management is really at the heart of classic RE. I used to joke that Resident Evil is a series about managing inventory, navigating nonsensical architecture and solving puzzles, with the zombies just being things you mostly run past to save bullets.
Everyone used to joke about that. I used to and still do call RE2 “Subspace Inventory Management Simulator”.
Have you tried getting S-Ranks yet? Especially on Hardcore when trying for a 2:30 hours S-Rank…you don’t have time to pick up all the extra pouches…and the inventory management becomes a major reason I quit playing those modes. Just not fun for me.
But fair enough if it didn’t bother you. Everybody has different tolerances for stuff like this.
Same it’s very annoying. I was on track to finish Claire’s game on hardcore in time but I gave up because I just didn’t have the time to sit there for one stretch and I kept trying to find additional stuff in the RPD.
Except for the completely incompetent narrative failure that is the entire game.
They cut out multiple plot cutscenes while still trying to continue the plot delivered by those scenes in the original, as if they happened. Capcom tried to please two completely different groups of people with this game and only succeeded with one of them. They omitted key details to the story because they know actual RE2 fans know the story and know whats happening, but there’s no way half of the game makes sense to those who didn’t play it before.
For newcomers this game might be good, but for OGs, this is nothing but a museum to RE2.
Considering it can’t be a spoiler after 21 years, here’s an example.
Claire’s entire lab section obviously revolves around curing Sherry. Except, the game literally never shows the cutscene where her dad implants her with a G embryo. It simply never happens in REmake 2. She just magically is implanted at one point while laying in the compactor area in the sewers.
If that weren’t bad enough, she then gets magically cured too – we’re expected to assume it was her mom. Making Claire’s entire lab sequence completely pointless.
The story is so bad in this game. Irons seems to know for a fact that Sherry’s pendant is important – the whole ridiculous subplot of kidnapping her and holding her hostage to get the pendant back from Claire is contingent upon that. I assumed this meant that, like in the original game, Sherry’s pendant had a G virus sample in it the entire time.
It doesn’t. Her pendant is literally just a key to unlock the storage container where the G samples and anti-virus are stored. There’s no possible way Irons could have known that. Birkin, even with his personality changes in this game, would not have told him that. You could presume maybe that in Birkin’s emails he told him this info as an insurance policy but the fact is, Irons was on Umbrella’s payroll too. For all we know Irons could be the one that tipped USS off and that’s how you get to the point in the lab where it reveals they are coming for him. I may need to play again and read more carefully. But as it seems, it’s probably the worst use of Chekhov’s Gun I think I’ve ever seen.
Why? Because even assuming Irons was able to take advantage of the ludicrous 4-level wristband security system that includes a “visitor” level to a SUPER SECRET ILLEGAL HIDDEN RESEARCH FACILITY and enter the lab, that section is Level 3 Security access and he shouldn’t have access to it, but even if he did it’s a massive stretch.
That’s just two specific examples. The remake is rife with these pure storytelling faceplants.It’s like no one on the team was assigned the task of playing the original and testing the remake for continuity.
Another thing that bothered me is that you don’t actually see Mr X being dropped via helicopter in that Umbrella canister, so I imagine someone who hasn’t played the original will have no idea just where the hell Mr X came from.
Also the hat is incredibly lame, I’m glad you can shoot it off and it never shows up again for the rest of the playthrough.
^ Exactly. Thank you sir. I mentioned this explicitly in my review. He just appears. Same with the helicopter that crashes – it just crashes out of nowhere with no context, because they didn’t include the cop getting chomped and shooting it down on accident.
Another excellent point. I’ve updated the review to include a short paragraph on this issue:
Update: a reader pointed out in the comments just how many plot-connecting scenes this 2019 version removes compared to the original. Numerous key story scenes are totally removed or illogically modified in this modern RE2, which is quite lamentable for serious fans of the original version.
Thanks for your input, Ugh!
Totally agree. Yet another unfortunate omission. I personally forgot about this and was wondering why they didn’t explain Mr. X more.
You’re not wrong. This RE2 absolutely wrecks the original story in quite a few places. It was sad to not meet Irons in his office as Claire. That scene is powerful, showing he wasn’t just a villain…and not having his “And to think that taxidermy used to be my hobby” line was unfortunate. That line was gold.
The reason I didn’t write up all the ways the story failed compared to the original is because I feel Capcom purposefully removed a lot of the story in order to focus on “survival horror.” So players new to RE2 probably wouldn’t care about all that was removed.
However, I agree with you that 1998’s RE2 is now more like the “Director’s Cut” featuring the WHOLE story. 2019’s RE2 is the hacked up “made for TV” version (but with a way higher budget and better acting overall).
Someone should definitely do a “what’s missing” article to show how badly mangled this modern version’s story is…
At first I thought maybe I had stood up to do something and missed it but I realized that no, I didn’t, three completed playthroughs in and not once are any of these plot points explained even in writing.
Another great ommission is that through the videotapes, you see them kill birkin and take the T and G viruses, but, both versions of the cutscenes directly contradict the entire game. I haven’t played the game in the “right” order, though, although I did get the “true” ending so I’m pretty sure they switched it around and it’s Leon A Claire B now instead of Claire A Leon B.
Excellent review, @Nick McCaskey. Very well put, it was a nice read.
I like jokes. They’re fun. Sometimes. 🙂
Some of those cons seem nonsensical. Resident Evil 2 was a 3 hour game each time through if you weren’t trying really hard for an S – 2 hours if you were. It’s supposed to be short.
The protracted, absurdly boring campaigns of 4, 5, and 6 are not the norm for the series. Even so, You have a minimum of 6 playthroughs of the main game that are reasonable, Claire A, Claire B, Leon A, Leon B, and then Leon and Claire Hardcore.Plus Tofu and Hunk, with 3 more storys on the way.
As for the inventory, I have to blame you if you are having to sacrifice items because you don’t know better than to not keep a full inventory. This is an amateur RE mistake you should have known 20 years ago when you allegedly first played RE2. Just saying.
The game does have CQC. There are 2 different knives in the game, as well as flashbangs and grenades you can use as self defense items just like in REmake. It’s not supposed to have any other kind of CQC – that kung fu trash can stay in 4/5/6.
It’s all good. Everybody has different opinions. Some like a larger 20-hour story in one playthrough. Some won’t mind RE2 being very short slices of 3-5 hour playthroughs.
The main reason this is a con for RE2 is because I don’t feel the campaigns and A/B scenarios are unique enough. You’re replaying 80% or more of the same stuff.
So it’s cool if you love the shorter content of RE2. For me, in the year 2019 when we have games like AC: Odyssey or even the modern Tomb Raiders…I’d like to have more content…like all those extra scenes you’ve noted are missing from RE2…
Hence, aren’t you basically agreeing the game should have had more content (all the missing story stuff)?
First of all, open world games are aimless. They provide open-ended gameplay so you can just do whatever you want and waste your time.
Resident Evil isn’t that type of game. Every game does not and should not have to be an open-ended time-sink with daily quests, merchants, endless quest chains, optional end-game challenges, 100000 collectibles, etc.
Curated, carefully directed games with a point and an intentionally designed beginning, middle and end are always going to be better than open worlds. Especially when it comes to horror games.
Odyssey bored me to tears before I even got to the first land battle. I loved Origins, but it too had too much content. I never even went to at least 5 of the biomes. It’s the same combat over and over with the same quest types and basically the same landscape, and the naval combat in Odyssey pales in comparison to Black Flag as well.
To say “in a time when we have games like x y z” is ridiculous and defeats the purpose of even having more than one video game if you insist that all games should be the same.
As for the undeniable fact that REmake 2 is missing content compared to the original, yes, the game should have had more but those are just things missing from the story or game world that would have added maybe 30 more minutes at best, most of them just being cutscenes and about 3 rooms that were left out.
HOWEVER I agree – the scenarios aren’t unique enough.
You right about OW games they endless repetitive trash but so is replaying the same game with another character.
Nothing beats good linear SP game with set up highs and lows, bombastic action scenes and all that, thats why Uncharted games are so good and so is classical RE games.
I think 11 hours is enough for SP game
I dont enjoy BS in my games and pointing to some “mythical” replaybility as plus is just thats, BS.
This is 11 hour game, you finish iwth one character then move to another, thats it.
Another minor complaint as far as using advanced technology:
I turned on cheats just for funsies to see what you can do to the tyrant. After hitting it a good 300 times with flame grenades, his trenchcoat stays unburned, as well as flesh.
Yet a minor fire at the end of the scenario destroys the inhibitor chip and turns it into a superish tyrant. Not a real super tyrant like the original, though, which was way cooler.
I like this site, but I can’t understand the constant outrage culture in the comments section. Its like all the Internet’s complaining misfits, independent in their view points, who couldn’t stand sites like PCGamer and Kotaku congregate in one place and unleash hell on each other.
Complain about benign discrepancies from your own expectations + Describe personal anguish from experiencing such issue = Top comment every time. This is what happens when people who are conditioned to complaining about real issues in declining gaming sites run out of things to attack.
I’m starting to think in searching for a safe haven from the far left Polygon types, I have just stumbled upon the product of their destruction.
Bunch of whining teenagers
So basically the main game is 11 hours?
Sounds OK
For me it took 8 hours to fully explore Leon’s campaign. Then Claire’s campaign has about an hour of new story stuff. So I’d say there’s about 10 hours of unique story stuff here.
Then you replay the game over and over, which I totally enjoy doing…but 10 hours of unique content is pretty weak compared to other modern games, IMO. It’s clear Capcom cut some stuff (probably because of budget) compared to what was in the original RE2.
Can you clear something out for me, its Confusing and im sure im not the only one.
So basically this game has two options:
1) Finish playing with CH1 and Continue the story with CH2, but it wont be replaying the same puzzles, in same areas, like if first character got a key from some place you wont be doing it again just with second character?
2) And option two is starting a New Game with Second character and in this case you basically replay almost everything you did with the first, same puzzles, same bosses, same story.
As fasr as I understand this thing was a topic of IGN RE2 “Fake” review controversy, they said that after you finish the game with CH1, you start playing the same game just with CH2, doing same puzzles, visiting same areas [minus minor chnages]
And people riled up and IGN had to write an apology and then edit the review.
If you haven’t heard about this, google IGN Fake Resident Evil 2 review.
Although I Dont understand what fake about, lots of people made this mistake, instead of continuing the game with second character they started New Game with second character and thats why it looks identical.
I’m very aware of the IGN issue. That reviewer didn’t understand he could freely choose between Leon’s and Claire’s “1st Run” anytime.
There’s four playthroughs in the game total. Leon 1st Run, Leon 2nd Run, Claire 1st Run, Claire 2nd Run.
The 2nd Run option are only available after you beat the 1st Runs.
It’s very hard to explain how each playthrough is different. All four overlap probably 60% of the same content (locations, items, puzzles).
Then there’s maybe 20% that’s totally unique between Leon and Claire (locations, story elements). Then there’s maybe 20% unique (remixed items, puzzles) between each character’s 2nd Run.
That probably was confusing. The conclusion is there are four playthroughs…each is very similar to each other…and there’s not that much content between all four playthroughs…maybe 10 hours worth. Hope that helps!
So after you done Leon first you do Claire second right?
You dont need to replay what you just played with Leon again just with Claire?
Thats whats important, i dont want to play twice I just want to play one time and see new stuff, ill start with Leon and then continue with Claire but i dont want to replay the same game from the beginning, i want to continue the story from another perspective and then finish it and move to Days Gone or God of war i still have it, got it pre-ordered never touched to this day, but Metro comes first now.
RE2:Remake screams for proper RTS implementation. Its a game that lives on its shadows as much you depend on your trustworthy flashlight.
RTS Patch naw!
Bulletsponge zombies are no issue, people need to learn how to avoid them.
Shooting their legs takes less bullets and you can avoid them even if yoi have to be careful, it makee the game tense throughout without being unfair.