Resident Evil 2 Remake

I beat the Leon portion of the game last night. Some thoughts on the end game:

Although I've really enjoyed this game a lot, if I'm going to be a bit critical, once you leave the police station the quality of the level design does go down quite a bit. It's far more linear, and far less scary overall. The plant monsters were so frikin lame (not scary/challenging), and the levels overall don't add any new interesting mechanics. Not sure why this would be, except maybe they spent a ton of time polishing that first chunk up and the rest didn't get as much attention. Whatever the case may be, pretty much from the moment I got into the sewers the game felt like it was already in its denouement phase, it would have been nice to return to the police station one more time for closure. The sewers weren't terrible, but then the Umbrella corps got even a bit worse, so the overall emotion was downhill. The Umbrella corp headquarters certainly attempted to give a sense of "scale", but I don't think it was successful at all in doing that, it felt tiny and cramped and rushed.

The last half of the game, for me, gets a 4-5/10 compared to the first half 10/10. It just felt really rushed.

The highlight of this game for me was definitely the end portion of the police station level, where Mr. X is chasing you around. That was some of the best horror gameplay I've ever experienced.

Quote from [HP]

1 hour ago, [HP] said: You actually do return to the police station from the sewers tho, but it's completely optional. You take a elevator up and come out in the main lobby of the station. You have to do this if you want to reveal the last Photographic Film, which if my memory serves me right it shows you photos of 2 hidden places inside the station where you can find some cool upgrades for your pistol.

I'm fairly torn by the sewers myself, it used to be my favourit part of the original RE2, they used to have this big ass tarantulas which were scary af and I think you had to use acid to kill them. Overall, I wanna say the original had more enemy variety too.

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In the remake they added those weird big monsters that crap out little floating enemies, and like you said the level design doesn't feel as tight as the first third of the game.

Your Umbrela Labs scale comment is a interesting one, now that I think of it, I remenber it feeling way grander in the original, it could be that since the cameras are static, you sort of like fill in the gaps in your mind and just assume you're inside these colossally big underground lab.

I also preferred the grungier and industrial look of the original RE2's underground lab, I don't know if the clean white ipad aesthetic was entired successfully in the remake, specially when their screenspace reflections solution is pretty bad.

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Now that I think of it, I also wish you got to play outside a little bit more in this remake too, there's something awesome about dodging zombies in dirty back alleys.

The white zombies also didn't make an apearence in the remake, although they are in the 3 mini story DLCs they released:

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The more RE2 remake lingers in my mind, the more I realize that it's full potential wasn't met, even tho it's most likely my GOTY.

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Yes, I agree with you. Even a game this good, there was still quite a lot of unmet potential.

That look does seem a lot more fitting for the underground labs. I didn't mind the ipad aesthetic in and of itself, but like a lot of the art in this game, it didn't "pop" with an extra sense of purpose and definition, it just kind of was "there". This worked so much better for the police station, because the rigid, lifelessness of the realistic surfaces felt appropriate. As the game dragged on, the lifelessness of the sewers and the lifelessness of the labs really defeat any sense of purpose behind that aesthetic, it's no longer tongue in cheek or intentionally drab, it's just drab even though it's aiming to be something dramatic (moody laboratory).

My favorite part of the labs was easily the overgrown area, but that was very brief. The game didn't do a good job of selling environments that were in the middle of realistic or stylish, the most stylish areas looked great, and the most realistic areas looked great, the inbetween ones (the lab, the sewers, the empty streets where you walk to the sewers, and now that I think of it, the store in the very beginning) were just downright boring.

Totally agreed on the city parts. Non-optionally, I think that was my big take-away: this game violated the basic level design trope of bringing you full circle, back from where you came. Considering how strong the original area was, it was extra disappointing that they screwed that basic idea up. Instead of ending with a random ass train ride, it should have taken you up top into the police station for a bit, through the city a bit, and then a train station, above ground where it actually makes sense. I wanted that extra 30mins to 1hour 30 of high quality urban gameplay, after being underground for so damn long.

I was able to play it those 2 last weeks. Pretty good game, made Leon and Claire (bis). I was expecting more differences between the 2 but was still ok to replay it. I usually like difficult games so I tried in hardcore and didn't enjoyed it at all. I know the original resident games were very difficult but I prefer my games to be challenging, not sadistic. So I started back on Normal, I would have love a balance between both because it was a bit easy (finished Claire scenario with 40 grenades)

I was glad about Leon story but claire feels a bit like a rambo bimbo out from nowhere and the end scene and dialogues were pretty terrible.

Tried the ghost survivors, I know it was a free DLC but it's not worth playing imo.