Late last night, at 2 a.m., I was turning in for bed. I had a pretty good co-op session going in TERA, but my buddy and I are old fogies and we were getting sleepy, so we said our goodbyes and I backed out to my dashboard to call it a night.
Then I remembered that the Resident Evil 2 1-Shot Demo was available starting today. Suddenly I was awake again. There was no way I was going to wait until morning to give it my “one shot.” Thankfully, my fiber internet was actually worth its cost in blood and sweat, and the demo downloaded in minutes.
After the sitting through the requisite Capcom slideshow of various logo screens and disclaimers, I was finally into the game. I played it through the entirety of the 30-minute duration. There’s not much to say about the gameplay, the controls are tight, not holding B to run feels a little weird, but everything’s fine on that end. Aiming doesn’t seem to be a problem, and I was able to get headshots pretty easily. In general, it felt pretty good. I didn’t encounter anything faster than a lumbering zombie though, so whether it holds up remains to be seen. Aside from that, here are some general thoughts and impressions.
The game looks fantastic, when Capcom isn’t Capcoming. The game retains that eerie, floaty, almost underwater-y movement that it used in RE7, and to great effect. The zombies shuffle and lurch around in a clumsy manner, which in the current generation, means that they have all these small individual pieces and parts that sway, bend, squash, and stretch. Blasting a zombie in the head and watching it lurch back, hair swishing, clothes swaying, is creeping as shit. That said, the HDR is still pretty broken, and the developers carried over something else from RE7, that wasn’t so hot; that blurry, slightly out-of-focus effect on practically everything. I’m not talking about blurry textures on sharp objects, either. It looks as though they had the camera on manual focus, and didn’t quite get it there. I’m sure someone with more technical knowledge than I will point out that it’s some anti-aliasing technique that they’ve jacked up to 11, but it doesn’t change the fact that it always felt like I was struggling to see things clearer with my own eyes, when it’s just how the game looks.
And it’s dark as shit too.
It looks like they’ve really stayed faithful to the original (so far). I know there will be deviations, they have to keep it fresh after all, but seeing 3D re-creations of iconic RE2 “scenes” was delightful. Translating 2D, pre-rendered backgrounds into functional 3D spaces couldn’t have been easy, and walking into an office in the police department and seeing a zombie laying exactly where I remembered it brought back the feels. Seriously, nostalgia is going to be strong with this one.
But where’s the music? Man, I have to admit, I really was kinda bummed when the game opened up, and Leon was standing in the main lobby of the police department, and I didn’t hear that classic RE music. C’mon Capcom! I at least need to hear some loud, echoing footsteps.
Seeing Club and Spade symbols on the doors made me giddy. I was a bigger fan of the old, ridiculous puzzle phase of the original Resident Evils more than I was of the action-heavy likes of RE4 through RE6. They returned to form in some extent in Resident Evil 7, but this looks like it’s going back to basics in the best possible way. I can’t wait to put medallions in statues to get batteries for an elevator to get up to a ledge that holds a crank for a drain that reveals a ladder to get to a box that holds a key to the first door I passed when I started the game. That shit was my jam.
I’m worried about inventory management. I’ll admit, I’ve become a bit of a gaming wuss in my older age. I like unlimited ammo. I like regenerating health. I like blazing through a game with little regard to challenge. I’m at the point in my life where I have too much to play and not enough time to play it. That said, Resident Evil has always (usually) been pretty fair with the inventory available to you. If you painted yourself into a corner later in the game, it’s because you were too careless at the start. One of the staples of a classic RE was the realization that “man, I really fucked myself.” Starting over usually resulted in a much more efficient play-through. RE has become more generous with the available ammo and health items in recent years, and if they decide to go old-school here it could mean problems for me.
I’ll probably once again never play as Hunk. In the original RE2, if you fulfilled a set of requirements (I believe it consisted of completing all of the Leon/Claire scenario combinations) you were allowed to play a mini-game called The Fourth Survivor (or something like that). I never played through all of that. Thus I never got to play as Hunk. If they keep him locked away behind some achievement or challenge, I’ll probably never see him on my screen.
It looks to be longer than the original. Let’s be fair, the original RE2 was a crazy long game, but that was because there were like, four different scenarios to play through. You started out as Leon in his ‘A’ scenario, being that he went left after the car crash and Claire went right. Then you switch to Claire’s scenario ‘A’. But then there were the alternate scenarios, where Claire ended up on the left of the car and Leon on the right, and in a sense you played through their ‘B’ scenarios. It was all just a re-hash of the same environments and monsters, but from the others’ perspective. Capcom has already stated they aren’t doing that this time around, and that it will be one story-line. That’s awesome, because it means every playable minute should be something fresh. With an extended role for Ada this time around, it should make for a pretty good length, especially if they throw in something new, like they did when they re-made Resident Evil.
In all, I’ve been maintaining my media blackout on this game, knowing only what I’ve learned by accident. It made for a great 30-minutes (which I didn’t get even close to completing) and I can’t wait for the 25th, when I get to dig in with both feet and play until my eyes bleed. Few series get me excited like a new Resident Evil, and even though that excitement had dulled over the years, RE7’s excellent return to form has re-ignited the passion, and it’s looking as though this new re-visioning of RE2 will carry the torch.
