Resident Evil 2 (Remake)
Playing again in almost four years. Granted I’ve put over 100 hundred hours into the game it still feels fresh to me. Something so pleasing about the combat and nailing a headshot crit. Like as opposed to the older games where it was just random chance. It still is random but feels more like a reward for doing repeat head shots. The aesthetic is so sick too. I played the original RE2 again last year and coming back to the remake just feels so awesome. I love how they updated the police station. It feels so much more like a real building but also lends to being a much more fun game experience in its exploration. This time I’ve taken more time to notice the decor on the walls, especially the paintings and wall art.
The part with the Tyrant or Mr X or as when I was a kid my brother and I heard everyone at school call him the “Neo Tyrant” meaning new, is so hype. Going into it I thought okay let’s play the funnest and most stressful part of this game and while playing it I just can’t help but feel sheer enjoyment with how it plays out. They took the best part of the original games and modernized it and made it better. Of the nemesis characters in the series I feel this is the most well executed. His pounding footsteps keep you on alert, the adrenaline pumping music, the way it’s done to keep going through the police station another time feeling fresh. This is why any fan of horror games needs to play this game. This is why for me this remake outshines the original. The original has its nostalgia and there are other parts it does better than the remake that I’m not looking forward to with doing the second run because thinking of those do hurt my head but the experience of playing this in the moment is so much more fun and peak gaming and I feel more confident saying this now since I played the original again less than a year ago. Also I love the suspense in the silence of the game while fleeing the tyrant as it feels like it also reminds you how quiet it is there so any noise will alert him to your location.
Now speaking of the parts in the second run that hurt to play, it is basically the bosses and story beats. Honestly, it's not bad, especially from the perspective of just playing this game as a standalone with no knowledge of the original but playing the original again always reminds me how much better this could have been executed. I think they could have made the changes like they did at the end but had it where each character focuses their boss fights with Claire and Leon with William Birkin and the Tyrant respectively.
But instead in this one they both do the same Birkin fights and just at the end Leon fights the Tyrant transformed whereas Claire fights Birkin in his dog form. It's not the worst thing ever but just takes away from the mysticism of the original by playing these complimenting stories and seeing it like saying "oh this is what this character was doing at this time." But this is the main thing that keeps this from being a perfect remake for me because it is an aspect clearly done better in the original that the remake lacks. But I would still recommend the remake more to people than the original unless they want a history lesson but the remake is just more fun to play in general.