Resident Evil 2

Note: This review assumes you have some knowledge of the Resident Evil series, so I won't spend time and space explaining all basic mechanics and features.

I was excited to finally play Resident Evil 2 Remake - I never got a chance to play the original (but saw it streamed) and the Remake came out when I couldn't quite afford it.

I played RE2R to completion, and I agree that it is a solid successor to the original RE2

The survival horror elements are maintained near perfectly while converting to a modern 3rd person person shooter perspective versus the static camera styles of it's predecessors. The Police Station set within an aged museum with locked portions, barricaded hallways, sewer access, and paths to a secret lab feel very familiar while offering a new setting to explore. Combat is always a challenge until you master it while puzzles and exploration offers just enough deviations to the formula to keep game world fresh an interesting. If you have any reverence for the series or the genre, you will be satisfied with your purchase.

Given the choice to play Leon or Claire, your player makes a stop at a local gas station and comes across the grisly scene of undead humans cannibalizing living ones

After escaping this threat, you meet the other player character, each with their reason for being there. You make your way to the police station before being forcibly split up. The police station was supposed to be the bastion of safety in this zombie outbreak, but it too has been overrun. Your goal now, is to find out what happened to the police as both characters have ties to them and to make it out alive. Anybody who has played the RE games knows that something sinister is afoot.

From this point, the way out is via secret pathway to leads underground back out into the streets with less activity. This is easier said than done, as the pathway requires a convoluted process of finding three medallions locked inside stations only obtainable after completing a relatively simple puzzle with an unknown solutions

You need to explore the building, finding ammo, healing items, keys for special doors, alternate pathways, wooden boards to block zombies from breaking in, pouches to increase your inventory space, and items to open closed pathways such as door fuses, crankshafts, and a jack. The entire experience is a management of resources - making progress requires various "key" items, but doing so requires dealing with undead citizens and cops spread around the facility, that will certainly drain and eliminate your ammo reserves. In most cases until the end game, there is simply not enough ammo to deal with every zombie which can take anywhere from two to a dozen headshots, depending if you're lucky to get a critical hit. Basically, you can't rely on crits, but you can rely on your ability slow the down or move around rooms and hallways to avoid their deadly magnetic grabs alltogether. Yeah, it is very irritating how zombies command grab you from a distance as bullets barely have an effect on them while your character doesn't seems to understand the concept of dodging, but at least the game is built around that and expects you mitigate these situations.

It isn't long before the near immortal Tyrant rears it's literal ugly head to chase and kill you

A tall, grey, lumbering muscular man-like experiment gone wrong (or possibly right) with the inexplicable ability to always find you and attempt to punch and grab you to death. Also known as Mr. X, this monster is strange - a tall beast with heavy footsteps, that isn't fast enough to run, but walks fast enough to catch up to you only by walking while Leon and Claire runs at full speed (though, for some reason, they don't understand the concept of sprinting either). He can't be killed, and can only be slowed down by wasting plenty of precious ammo to stun him for what seems like one or two minutes at best. Mr X is the ever looming threat as you make gradual progress through the station, forcing you to think on the fly as you back track, shoot him down, or take an new unfamiliar pathway. RE2R would be quite easy for many seasoned gamers if it wasn't for this semi-random threat.

The best part of the mainline games is properly maintaining your ammo and inventory, learning when to shoot and when to evade, and when to pick up an item or leave it for later.

Maybe you don't need that healing item if you could survive better. Maybe you can skip that room with ammo, gunpowder, or grenade to avoid enemies so you can more quickly make it to the next progress point. It feels good when you get to the midway point and near end point of a run and have more than enough ammo and gear to deal with the remaining threats or just straight up heal yourself through it. Because the zombie gameplay in RE2R feels a bit cheap sometimes, killing zombies doesn't feel quite as satisfying as it did in Resident Evil 1 or 4, unless you use explosives or get a random critical headshot. Even with the cheat weapons that have unlimited ammo, shooting a zombie in the face with 10+ minigun bullets will still not be enough to kill them sometimes.

Resident Evil 2 Remake is a solid return to survival horror form, and looks good doing so.

It challenged my gaming PC and made me upgrade it to get playable framerates. Mods make it look too, with professional looking weapon and player skins. I'm not very fast at these games, so it took me about 8-10 hours per run (a first and second run for both characters). The extra modes were terrible in my opinion, taking a game about managing your ammo and dodging enemies and instead forcing you into tight corridors with nowhere to move, little ammo, and annoying gimmicks. I didn't finish a single one of them and I don't want to go back.

Despite my misgivings, RE2R, makes a high spot in my RE Tier list, though still don't exceed RE4 and 1 for me. If you want more survival horror, Resident Evil 2 Remake gives it to you