Playdate: Resident Evil 2 (02/20/2019)

In two months it will be 4/20 <3

This series the bessssst

Being a Canuck, I was immediately confused why anyone would enjoy a softdrink (or: "pop", as we call it) that tastes like Smarties... I then remembered that in the USA, what you refer to as "Smarties" are just what we call "Rockets". :)

That being said, Smarties (CAN) > Smarties (USA)

Ya'll missin' out on the best candy there is!

@subpopix: We have your version of Smarties here in Ireland too, the american version can't even be bought in shops on it's own. It's such low tier candy that the wrappers don't have names on them and it sits in the selection box of chalky sweets for months after it's opened, like a bounty bar

This has been the highlight of my weeks this past couple of weeks.

My favorite Friday Stream

TGIW

fun fact- rivella is made from milk.

fun fact #2- rivella is great!

"I bumbled into it and everything worked out." - The Dan Ryckert Story

@finstern: Smarties here in the States usually sit on a bottom shelf collecting dust until Halloween. So, I guess they're kinda ignored around the World.

I don't get it.

Mary Kish and Mike Mahardy are playing this game and every other RE over at Gamestop, putting it up for free.

Mary is way more competent in playing any videogame, I've watched her play so far. Mike's a pro.

Don't get me wrong, I love to watch the duders' reactions.

But, sheesh!

Is Abby ever going to improve in playing a videogame?!

There are plenty of competent videogame hosts, both male and female. Why won't Abby just commit?

Am I making another stupid comment I will regret? Is it just me?

@s5n8k3: if you think out loud that last part then i think you have your answer

Please everyone, ignore the comment above mine and just let it shrivel and die before it can grow into anything.

Abby is great and I'm happy she's here and willing to be constantly worried about Mr. X showing up for our enjoyment.

Also, Abby if you're here, with the SMG you can very very easily shoot a leg out from under a zombie and then they really can't go after you very well. (Just don't forget about them and get your ankles bitten later.)

The Sherry Birkin section of this makes the stealth in "Spider-Man" look like "Mark of the Ninja." But somehow it skated under the radar.

Also "Ghost Survivors" is an alternate take on in-game events, so the lady on the slab at the start of this stream doesn't necessarily wind up there, but rather starts there. All 3 star people who die in the main game, hence why they're "ghosts."

@s5n8k3: your comment is stupid, yeah.

Pitch: Replace Mr. X's theme with the Super Mario World Athletic theme

Love the series, but damn shes wastes so much ammo for no reason. It hurts

I got through the Sherry stealth segment in one shot my first try. I felt the game communicated what I needed to do quite naturally, and the vision cone for BRIAN IRONS (funny to say it out loud) is quite forgiving. It takes only a couple of minutes and has way less moving parts than any of the Spider-Man forced stealth sections, which also happen multiple times and get longer and more involved deeper into the game.

The whole tactic of shooting legs requires you to actually fire on them more than once! But also it's not at all necessary in Standard difficulty, so just keep going for those headshots Abby!

Hardcore, yes, I found taking out legs absolutely critical to get past a lot of narrow hallways without wasting a ton of ammo. Zombies with one leg can't get back up, Dan! And they are significantly easier to avoid when they're just slowly crawling on the ground.

But yes, most "advanced tactics" aren't necessary to get through the game. They make it easier, but Abby can keep playing the way she's playing and still beat RE2.

@s5n8k3: To be fair, Mary's been playing games professionally a much longer time. And let's take into account that Mary and Mike have pretty much played the entire RE series together prior to doing Resident Kinevil REmake 2. I mean, doing RE4, 5, 6, & 7 in rapid succession will pretty much train anyone to be good at REmake 2.

And lastly yeah, you sound like a jerk. Probably shouldn't take games so seriously.

@wonkersjdvn: Thanks for the response.

I am a jerk; I won't deny it.

And, I don't know how to say the message I'm trying to convey nicely. But, that doesn't make it untrue, necessarily.

I take video games seriously, as a sports fan would sports games.

I imagined a person hired to host a series on a videogames website would take it more seriously than I.

I know I take my career a lot more seriously than I take my hobby.

Is this Abby's hobby? Career? Or, just some other job?

But, hey, what do I know.

Jeff Gertsman, Dan Ryckert, Alex Navarro, Brad Shoemaker, Vinny Caravella, Jason Oestreicher, Ben Pack and others are the best on the job.

They say she's a part of the team, she's a part of the team.

Abby,

Protip:

The reason why people tell you to shoot the leg is because it works! put more than 2 bullets into the leg (usually 3 on one leg) and the leg will split/separate forcing the zombie to have to crawl. That way you don't waste 4-5 bullets shooting the head, only to come back to the same area later and discover that the zombie you downed has risen again. Resident Evil 2 Remake is the biggest offender in tricking you into making you waste bullets in the head, don't do that! you aren't always going to get a critical brain shot (when the head explodes). Shoot the leg there by guaranteeing you are no longer in threat of any zombie you come across, because they will be forced to crawl to you and you can easily run around them. They are harmless unless you run directly over them in this game.

Anyways keep up the great work, easily one of my favorite series thus far next to Alex's Mass Effect playthrough. Giant Bomb East killing it lately!

I really gotta get back to this game but anthem is all I wanna play right now the shooting and flying is just so damn satisfying. My problem is I watched way to many people play this before it came out and after and also get real stressed with low ammo conservation in games. And Mr x ...

@s5n8k3: Are you talking about how she is actively producing the show live WHILE playing a game she's not familiar with?

@josephknows: Yep, true. It's the same situation as the x-com playthrough. People giving advice based on harder difficulty required strategy. Not needed for normal.

KNOCK KNOCK OPEN UP THE DOOR IT'S REAL

NON-STOP POP POP OF STAINLESS STEEL

@pockles: I thought Vinny was producing it.

Didn't say I could do it better. I'm suggesting there are many candidates that can, excluding me.

Abby definitely did a couple things this episode that triggered my backseat gamer OCD (the door puzzle was slightly frustrating) but the adaptive difficulty is generous enough, even on standard, that I think she's going to get through just fine. If Kizuna_AI can do it, Abby sure as hell can.

Basically, I'm still enjoying the heck out of this even if I will occasionally yell in the chat about wasted ammo.

@s5n8k3: They don't pay her to be a master at video games. She's not a pro esports player. Fuck out of here with your misogynistic bullshit

@s5n8k3: Are you implying that Brad, Jeff, Ben and Vinny are consistently good at video games, because that's a HOT take. I remember the GB era where Brad videos had 700 "get gud kid" comments apiece. They are all good at some games bad at others. Go watch damn near any of them play through a puzzle game. You are being mean just kinda to be mean. None of this even mentions the fact that Abby was brought on as a producer - which she has been wonderful as - her career is not playing games it's producing content. This feels like the kind of hate new GB members get only like a year plus late.

Also you sound like the kind of guy that makes fun of women's sports because they aren't as good as the men, and that guy is THE WORST. Entertainment is not about some normative definition of good and bad but about what you enjoy watching.

don't care if i get moderated for this, but @s5n8k3 is an asshole and a moron for judging abby's capacity to do her job (which is being a producer btw) based on her playing a fucking video game

as far as i'm concerned, she's done great work producing shows, coming up with exciting features, injecting new energy into the crew while fitting right in with her sense of humor, providing totally fresh perspectives, and just being an excellent entertainer. this playdate series alone proves she's knocking it out of the park with how many of us are super into it.

she's right up there with the rest of the staff!

(also none of the giant bomb staff, past or present, are particularly great at playing video games anyway, save for alex drumming in rock band because he's an actual drummer, so player skill is an awful metric to go by for judging any of the crew's fucking competency at their job)

I've been loving the shit out of this series, it is actually seriously awesome to get to see someone's first experience with the RE franchise and how pure their reactions are before they get all big brain about it being a video game, it takes me back to when I finally rented RE1 for the PS1 because it was the last game at the Blockbuster I hadn't played because the cover art for that box was disgusting to a 11 year old kid, and had an absolute blast with it.

Also the story about Gus doesn't shock me at all, I have a German and my best friend has a huskey, and they're the most terrifyingly smart yet dumb dogs I've ever seen, and if you combined them I could absolutely see that happening.

keep up the great work, would love to see better color and lighting balance between your cameras

I've been enjoying this series soo much every week! Only complaint I have is it seems like the black levels are messed up on GB videos. Much too bright and washed out. It's on the cams and game. Not just the RE2 videos either.

I'm sure she'll be fine because Abby is unstoppable, and I'm always glad to watch cool people playing games I love, but I'm kind of waiting for her to get to a boss fight with no ammo and the one save slot. Hope that doesn't happen though, it wouldn't feel good, and I'd hate for Abby's feelings about the game turn sour because of it.

@ybbaaabby that's a cool shirt!

I'm so glad GB especially GB East covering this. This has been pretty fun and entertaining to watch.I know Abby will stumble through this like a blind bat, but it has been great seeing her put her spirit up in dire situation and kept on pushing.And she's actually doing well despite not being able to master any advance mechanic and kept on trudging through.The sewer is a nasty place that may or may not break Abby.But she did well to get through that Monster pit. Go Abby!

@s5n8k3: You can't give a critical opinion of anyone working on this site without being criticized in return, just FYI for future reference. Try to be more constructive I guess. I imagine you wouldn't feel great if someone insulted your abilities, but I understand how you feel as a backseat gamer myself. It's hard for me to watch people stumble through games as well.

Love the series, but I will say that it would help Abby to look at every single corner of a room before leaving said room just to get turned in the opposite direction and have to come back later. It was frustrating to see her just abandon the workroom lift (she was RIGHT THERE) but at least she got the chess piece puzzle which also took me foreeeever to solve. Puzzles like that are very frustrating for a stream audience who has solved it already, but like I said, I get it. Playing on stream is tough.

@ybbaaabby: The main reason you never have ammo is likely because you didn't read the document about creating ammo types, and you keep combining gunpowder with high grade gunpowder and making acid rounds... instead of combining like types to create handgun and SMG ammo respectively. You also skipped through the health items document... if you're reading, it would be best to combine one red, one green and one blue herb into a super herb, instead of just combining any herb you pick up. I was elated to see you FINALLY make one of these for the first time in this whole series. All in all, frustrating to watch at times, but thanks for the content.

Also... Dan please stop making random asides about alternate events in Leon's story just because they are different than in Claire's playthrough. Or at least give a spoiler warning, man. I would like to see for myself what's different. That's my only issue here.

As someone who had to stop playing RE3 because I got boned by not having enough ammo, it made me overly cautious with ammo.

I wonder if they got better at that. I know they scale the difficulty for the zombies, but are the ammo drops fixed in this game?

The colors look really washed out in both gameplay and camera feeds, have there been any changes to recording / encoding settings lately?

@theshrubber: The secret about these games is that you can avoid a LOT of enemies, you don't have to kill everything you see. This game is probably harder than the older games due to zombies having such a huge grab radius. On Leon 1st Run I was ammo starved the whole game because I would kill pretty much anything threatening, On Clair 2nd Run I had like 30 types of gunpowder in my storage box before the last boss and tons of regular ammo because I avoided pretty much any encounter I could. In fights where you need ammo to proceed, ammo will generate in random corners. Defensive items help in avoiding a lot of fights.

Abby represents me playing a horror game; we are exactly alike in that genre. That's why I like watching this stream so much.

Mr. X is so much worse in the B playthrough. I legit lost my patience with trying to clear the rooms with him stalking me for 60% of the game.

@s5n8k3: Giant Bomb has never been about anything other than having fun playing games together, and delivering entertainment to members of the site. They're not trying to max out proficiency. If they were running through everything without issue it wouldn't be as entertaining. You're being an elitist.

My favorite thing about the dude that commented that bullcrap above is that he implied that the rest of the staff is good at videogames. They're legit all terrible at games. Watch any play through of any game on this site. Watch Mass Alex and tell me Alex is good. Watch the entire staff play PUBG and tell me any of them are good. That's not what this site is. Also its hard to play video games on the internet.

Man, Abby crushed that chess puzzle. I also like it when she runs out of ammo because the game then goes from survival horror into just straight up horror and it's comical. Run Abby, run!!

I would totally watch a Dirty Harry vs Zombies movie.

@metalface: well, I wouldn't go that far, but in general yeah they're not the best. I'd say I've seen some impressive stuff from Jeff and Vinny in a few games. Alex is better than me at Mega Man. Brad has gotten solid at the games he's butted his head against. Most of all watching Patrick slowly but steadily improve at Spelunky was really cool.

Are any of them anywhere near the level of a good speedrunner or "pro" player in a competitive fighter, shooter, or strategy game? Certainly not but they definitely can have an aptitude for some games.

P.S. if anyone has this on PC, I recommend trying out Cheat Engine with it. It can totally break the game so make sure to save before using it, but man the results are wild. It can literally spawn any item or weapon into your inventory and totally fuck with the game. Obviously you can have infinite ammo and speed the game and a few other broken things too.