Resident Evil 2 Remake

Review of Resident Evil 2 Remake.

On January 25, 2019, on the 20th anniversary of the release of Resident Evil 2, the Japanese company Capcom released its remake - a redesigned game where they left the main plot, main and secondary characters, but changed the course of the story, expanded the role of some characters and transferred this matter to the Resident engine Evil 7. The developers clearly tried to please the fans, but did not forget about the new audience, which was born after the release of the original.

Police rookie Leon Kennedy and student Claire Redfield meet under insane circumstances - they flee from the crowd of zombies that filled the roadside gas station. Both need to be in Raccoon City: he takes up service at the local police station, she is looking for the brother of Chris Redfield (one of the heroes of Resident Evil).

Having reached the city, Leon and Claire fall into the captured zombie Raccoon City, and then separate to solve their problems. Further, the stories of the main characters occur in parallel and periodically intersect, occasionally complementing each other.

In 1998 Resident Evil 2, the camera changed depending on the room and where the character was. In RE2 Remake, she was “hanged” by the hero’s shoulder, and the game mechanics became similar to Resident Evil 4. Add here a modern picture and pitch darkness, which the weak beam of the flashlight barely scatters and get an approximate idea of the first impressions of a fresh remake.

The new concept and gameplay resembles Dead Space: dark, scary, few rounds, unknown something behind and something terrible around the next bend. And although the original game scared me more (at the age of 12 you startled and not from that), and in Dead Space I had to periodically sweep bricks that fell to the floor, RE2 Remake became noticeably worse, and most importantly - more intense. Get ready for the fact that almost all the time passing will be under the most severe pressure of the gameplay. The developers very accurately calculated the level of stress and skillfully smeared it according to the plot, only occasionally giving a break, and sometimes arousing the desire to drop everything to hell and start playing something else.

Limited ammunition, nervous shooting (there is auto-guidance at a low level of difficulty), meager bag capacity, a lot of elementary but time-consuming puzzles, hordes of hard-to-kill zombies, the famous "lizuns" and a cherry on the cake, Mr. X work for this feeling of despair. aka Tyran) - the immortal amball that Umbrella Corporation sent to remove the traces of its terrible experiments with the T-virus. If you played in RE7, then the role of the Tyrant was played by the immortal grandfather. He followed the gamer around the house and did not die until he got out of it according to the plot. A similar scenario in RE2 Remake - in a certain place in the story, Mr. X appears and periodically - constantly pursues the gamer all over the map. Exceptions are dead-end rooms and storage areas.

In the passage itself there are some features. If the original game was allowed to pass for any of the heroes, and it was a full passage, then with a remake they made it more cunning.

They also let us choose Leon or Claire, but the campaigns for them will run parallel to each other, and sometimes intersect. The short time of one plot (6-8 hours), as well as a one-sided and incomplete ending hints at a second run. Moreover, after the end of each story, their alternative options are opened, which means that, ideally, you need to complete the game four times - two for each of the characters. And if this is not enough, then there are a couple of additional mini-stories for Tofu and Hank.

On the one hand, the creators made the fans themselves want to complete the game for two favorite characters. On the other hand, with the exception of some points and differences in the arsenal, each of them will visit the same locations (police station, parking, sewer, underground laboratory) and guess the same riddles. True, if Leon found some hiding place, then Claire supposedly following him would not find him anymore.

In general, this moment confused me. I started the second passage for Claire with enthusiasm, but, despite some differences, I did the same things, collected three of these damned medallions, crumbled zombie heads, fled from Tyrant and so on. In fairness, I note that the plot is also slightly different. Leon will meet Ada Wong and will be in an incomprehensible relationship, and Claire will find the girl Sherry and will deal with her complicated story.

As for the technical side of the project, the one at RE2 Remake is doing well. If you have top-end hardware, then the game is able to produce an impressive picture and will offer to twist dozens of sliders. If you are the owner of an average PC or a budget build, then the remake will also please here - the game is not demanding on hardware and runs without problems on medium - high settings, even on relatively weak machines. Over the entire duration of RE2, Remake never crashed, crashed, or burned nerve cells (I mean the technical side).

But the musical component leaves much to be desired - the melody against the background is not corny, and when it plays, it is lost and does not take on part of the work to create the right atmosphere. Although the sound of the environment does an excellent job of this. RE2 Remake got some kind of new-fangled surround sound technology and it kind of takes the player directly to the scene. When you walk along the corridors, you can clearly hear from which side the dead man is wheezing, although he has not yet appeared in sight. And these unhurried steps of the Tyrant - a floor above, in the next room or behind. This is not forgotten.

RE2 Remake just seems like a modern zombie action game. In fact, this is the classic Capcom horror that skillfully uses the achievements of current technologies, mixes them with the fashionable achievements of the genre and adds a frightening atmosphere to the gone gaming childhood.

Young gamers who grew up on the same RE7, Alien: Isolation, SOMA and Outlast can also enjoy RE2 Remake, but their novelty is also able to scare them away - going through the same places with almost the same puzzles, dialogs and the main plot, not everyone will want . Perhaps this project will not appeal to fans of RE5 and RE6 - there is little action and a lot of running around, puzzles and helplessness. Otherwise, RE2 Remake is a delightful rebirth of Japanese classics, which I highly recommend trying, even if you have never played in the projects of this series and were not interested in zombie themes in principle. RE2 2019 is a reinterpretation of the genre and the unambiguous success of Capcom, and the sold 3 million copies have already provided fans with a similar resurgence of Resident Evil 3.