#oneaday Day 911: Suffer like G did

Finished the Resident Evil 2 remake this evening, and I really enjoyed it. (I also appreciate the fact that finishing one character's second playthrough story opens up the other one without you having to play through the "A" scenario again.)

I'm really impressed with what a good job they did on this. It's a game with triple-A production values that doesn't forget what makes games interesting — art style, personality and, more than anything, never forgetting that it's a video game.

Resident Evil 2 isn't a "cinematic experience". It has some nice cutscenes along the way and the mocap and facial animation is some of the best I've seen, but as with the classic PlayStation and GameCube versions, narrative is kept to a relative minimum, and you spend the majority of your time exploring, manipulating items, avoiding or fighting enemies and just generally playing the game.

On top of that, at various points you unlock some interesting vaguely "arcadey" scenarios to play — these include a take on "The 4th Survivor" from the original release of Resident Evil 2, plus three special "The Ghost Survivors" scenarios that appear to be sort of "what if?" tales that explain who a few otherwise unexplained characters you stumble across in the main story actually are.

Structurally, then, it feels like a PS1 game. This is a good thing. Play, finish, unlock more stuff, play more, unlock more stuff, play more. Plenty of value. Plenty of reason to replay. I can see speedrunning attempts at this being quite fun — even if my first playthroughs for both Leon A and Claire B were ridiculously slow. (They always were on the PS1 version if I hadn't played for a while, too.)

The fact it plays like a modern game (in a good way) makes it much more desirable to go back and try for better ranks or unlocks, though. The clunky controls of the original Resident Evil games always made it feel like a bit of an effort to go through it all again, but Resident Evil 2 remake plays so well I'd be quite happy to zip through it again — if I wasn't also trying to get through the series as a whole. Maybe I'll return to it in the future though!

Anyway, it's a good thing. Time permitting, I'll write something on the subject tomorrow on Rice Digital, because E3 sure as hell isn't throwing up anything interesting at all to talk about.