Resident Evil 2: Remake

It's pretty and atmospheric.

And that's everything positive I had to say about it.

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Chapters:

0:00 - 1:02 : Intro

1:02 - 7:48 : Leon A Hardcore

7:48 -  13:20 : Claire B Hardcore to Standard

13:20 - 14:42 : HUNK and TOFU Mode

14:42 - 18:25 : Claire A Hardcore

18:25 - 24:18 : Leon A Hardcore Speedrun w/ HAL

24:18 - 26:24 : Ghost Survivors DLC to End Statement

Here's my full review on this game (as taken from the community tab): 

I have been playing Resident Evil games for over a decade. I was hooked on RE4 for the GameCube, played RE1 for the Nintendo DS, then followed every entry onward with either PC emulation or PC ports. I'm incredibly fond of this franchise and its tropes, both narratively and mechanically. So when I looked at the difficulty settings for Resident Evil 2 Remake, I scoffed at the idea of shooting my way through Raccoon Police Department without ink ribbons. “Autosaves [on Standard]?” No way. “For Hardcore Fans of the Series?” Sounds like it was made for me. I selected it and hoped for what I had felt upon playing Resident Evil 1's remake – the same, but more. 

This game is not that. 

It is different, yet less. 

Before I get into the downfalls of the gameplay itself, I want to address the elephant in the room that somehow nobody is talking about. There is no Scenario B. In the 1998 original, Scenario B was a somewhat different route for the characters you picked. An armory that was looted in the A Scenario would be empty in B. Devices activated that weakened enemies in A would strengthen them in B. Bosses would evolve in the B scenario after taking damage in the A scenario. Not only that, but paths would change as well. Side characters' fates would change depending on who you played first, leading to four different campaigns for players to experience. In the 2019 remake, it all has been scuffed to who doesn't get Marvin and who gets a sidearm that messes up ammo drops. You do not even get to run from the cop car to the RPD in the B Scenario – a first sign of many that corners were cut. Notes in the B Scenario disclosing vital character information were cutscenes in the 98 original, delivering plot in an engaging manner. Ada's exposition stroll about Umbrella in the 2019 remake [ Kendo's Gun Shop to the Sewers ] is delivered throughout the 1998 original from characters in conflict. In fact, most plot points from the 98 original are shotgunned into the game so that the game itself can commence. This method of storytelling in the remake somehow dis-includes the entirety of Resident Evil 1's story line – forgoing all information about the S.T.A.R.S. team, the mansion, Raccoon Forest, and the cover up that threatened their lives. Imagine if the film Aliens did not discuss the Nostromo, its crew, or even include the survivor Ripley. We would still have marines blast the hell out of xenomorphs on LV426, but the informed audience would wonder what the hell happened to the prior entry. Capcom couldn't even get the canonical story correct, as it is confirmed knowledge that Claire A, Leon B is the route intended for the official story line of Resident Evil. A story line not even delivered in the remake.

But a game doesn't need the best story ever to be a great game. Doom 93 is still captivating from its first level to its last thanks to amazing game design.

The same cannot be said about RE2 2019's gameplay. On Hardcore, every enemy hits as hard as the next, which makes every encounter frustrating. Zombies can now kill a player in two bites, just as much as a licker can, just as much as Birkin in his final stage can. Damage becomes a meaningless variable to gauge a monster's power when the player is reduced to tissue paper. The weapons are also equally useless. Leaks have shown that damage delivered to the body is always non-specific, which means headshots hit just as hard as arm or leg shots. The chance to crit-hit a head is pointless when leg shots make a zombie almost entirely harmless. On a base level, when a zombie in your game is best defeated by shooting its legs, you are either re-inventing the genre from the ground up, or failed to deliver the expectations of your game's franchise (and the genre as a whole.) Shotguns which have always been the powerhouse of Resident Evil 2 are now useless as zombies can shrug off blasts at random. Advanced enemies will not even notice the shotgun blasting into them as they charge through high-velocity lead obliterating their flesh. The adaptive difficulty in this game creates a sense of constant unreliability as your performance dictates the amount of damage you deliver to enemies. This is incredibly frustrating for me, but it isn't for others. Regardless, the guns in the 98 version put the remake's to shame, as a fully upgraded shotgun can destroy halls of zombies. It was incredibly satisfying – something that should have been passed on from the original to the remake.

A complaint can be made that I want the game to be easier – or that I should play on Standard. However, I like a challenge. I like to feel overwhelmed by forces beyond my ammo count. Standard suffers from being far too easy, as you stockpile more ammo than the original RE2 gave its player – not to mention the ability to save whenever. Hardcore allows zombies to take more lead in their brains in mass than the actual brains that are being destroyed. It feels moronic to be unloading shot after shot into a human skull with no affect taking place. This wouldn't be hard to fix. Add more enemies. The city is completely infected, after all. Take away some of the ammo. Give players a  greater sense of conservation. And of course, make guns feel great. The act of using your weapons in a Resident Evil game should feel like a solution. The puzzle to a hallway full of zombies is a shotgun blast that knocks them to their feet. And of course, get rid of the insane magnetism that this game has. Time after time, I have been pulled into an attack that I was nowhere close to. It was so aggravating to be on an adjacent angle from a zombie's grab, only to be sucked into an animation and bitten. Lower the detection range of grabs. It is ridiculous.

A hope that I had was that the Ghost Survivors DLC would patch up the missing story elements in a neat fashion that Resident Evil 7 had done for its DLC. Unfortunately, we got a horribly scored, remixed version of Hunk's escape mode. After going through each available mission and seeing that Capcom was steadfast in their current vision for the franchise, I quickly dropped the game. I wanted to love this game. I love the franchise and have loved it since I was a kid.

My opinion is that Resident Evil 2 Remake is a poor game, but you can observe that there is less sophistication in the 2019 version than the original game that came out over two decades ago on hardware laughable compared to modern smartphones. Graphically, it is great. Everything else was executed by either cutting corners, ignoring the source material, or forgoing an enjoyable experience for a 'scary' one.