• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

LTTP: Resident Evil 2 R—Braaains, Bullets & Butt-Clenching Terror

Sand Dan Glokta

Sand Dan Glokta

Banned
EYxmbjkPr8Fr6Yf8.jpg


Hello everyone, welcome back to my (and my mate's) Resident Evil journey. You can find my LTTP thread for RE1HD here and RE0 here.

From the get-go: This is by far one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had; The graphics quality, the level design, the pacing, the horror elements and most of all the amazing amazing sound effects. Me and my mate had an absolute blast all the way through, starting with Leon and going with Claire 2nd. It took us watching a short comparison clip with the OG to truly understand how beautifully and masterfully made this remake was, with both being iconic to the original and breathing a new modern life into the game with crisp near-perfect gameplay and mechanics.

h3TWmVTd90DG1lIV.jpg


Its funny that Ori and The Will of Wisps was my favourite Metroidvania before, but this might've just dethroned now lol. Every groan, shuffle, and wet splorch of rotting flesh cranked up my paranoia and heartbeat. My buddy on the stream would be watching my edging around corridors and constantly checking and rechecking each corner and would be annoyed and I'd tell him to shut it you don't understand. I'd be tiptoeing through RPD or the Sewers or the NEST, heart pounding from those hyper-realistic footsteps echoing off the walls, fearing Mr. X's thunderous stomps and those disgusting wall crawling lickers and they'd still get the jump on me lol. Pure nightmare fuel.

Literally Every. Single. Sound effect in this game is awesome. Whether the aforementioned monsters or the gunshots meaty ka-chunks, or herbs' satisfying squish, or the ambient rain/pipes dripping, or heck even flipping through the menus or saving the game. Every single sound is so damn satisfying.

Characters and story: The story and the game length are to the point (~13hrs total) and don't overstay their welcome. If anything this being a modern Japanese game we were surprised at how relatively barebones it was with cutscenes and collectible logs. We read everything and the story was competent and sufficed as a sequel. It wasn't anything groundbreaking or had any twists but we're fine with that, with the game being a horror-first experience.

gjHHtKMZGzDsYYyU.jpg


Me and my mate both agreed that overall how the narrative went playing as Claire (and the Excellent section playing as sherry) was overall better than playing as Leone. The added two bossfights at the end were pretty awesome as well. I'm not certain what difference 2nd run makes but playing as Claire was definitely shorter.

Overall: Amazing game and instant classic. I'm adding it to my Masterpiece list of GOATs.

Next up: Resident Evil 3 Remake.

PS: A definite Would on Ada. Need to buy my wife that dress.

CQ9SKEOBxGlUAiAO.png
 
Last edited:
My favourite Resident Evil and sits amongst my favourite games of all time. It looks amazing, sounds amazing, plays amazing, and has some of the best pacing of any game ever made.

Mr. X is really the one weak point, but he's a symptom not a problem: had they kept the real A and B scenarios, he would've been perfect where he belongs. I wish they'd go back and add those in; I'd pay handsomely for it.
 
The series still isn't where I'd expect it to be graphically, considering how good the RE-Remake looks and how old it is.
 
Amazing remake, some mis-steps like the phoned in B-scenarios and the shotgun being shit against lickers when playing as Leon.
But the atmosphere, the gore, how it plays, everything else is just fantastic.

RE 3-make is shit compared, don't get your hopes up unless you like a virtually on rails shooter with a shit version of Mr X. That game utterly shits on the legacy of the original RE 3 its not even funny.

RE 4-make brings it back though big time.
 
Finished my first playthrough of it on the weekend. Great game.

I thought the ending was a bit abrupt then I found out to get the real ending I need to do the B run ... think I need a break for a bit lol
 
Valt7786 said:
Amazing remake, some mis-steps like the phoned in B-scenarios and the shotgun being shit against lickers when playing as Leon.
But the atmosphere, the gore, how it plays, everything else is just fantastic.

RE 3-make is shit compared, don't get your hopes up unless you like a virtually on rails shooter with a shit version of Mr X. That game utterly shits on the legacy of the original RE 3 its not even funny.

RE 4-make brings it back though big time.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the tip. I plan to play the OG re4 first. The reason why 2remake and 3remake are perfect for me is because I don't want to deal with tank controls. I played RE4 a little bit many years ago so I know what to expect. After that We'll play RE5 and 6 coop and maybe come back to Re4r afterwards.
 
Sand Dan Glokta said:
Thank you for the tip. I plan to play the OG re4 first. The reason why 2remake and 3remake are perfect for me is because I don't want to deal with tank controls. I played RE4 a little bit many years ago so I know what to expect. After that We'll play RE5 and 6 coop and maybe come back to Re4r afterwards.
Click to expand...
If you can play OG RE4 I'm VR you'll be blown away.

Also RE2 remake is my favorite RE. Truly a masterpiece.
 
Not sure why, but that smooth 60 fps took away all the tension in this for me.

Am playing Silent Hill 2 R currently, I can feel same here as how you describe in OP. Its at 30 fps.
 
was replaying that a few weeks ago, taking 5 head shots to kill a zombie is ridiculous to me now, not sure how I loved the game back then.
 
Mr. X made this game much worse for me. Nothing you can say will change my mind that it made me want to stop exploring and enjoying the game at my own pace.
 
I really hope they do a remake of the first game again. The remake with the visuals of this or RE9 would be the dream game for me.
 
I never played the original but this game was a lot of fun. I could tell they really put a lot of effort in making this game great. I played as Claire Redfield and I prefer her with Leon S Kennedy
 
One of my favorite games from the last decade, it's also the game that single handily saved survival horror, like a bolt of lightning it brought it back after ages of near dormancy (with only The Evil Within and RE7 coming close), everything since, like the Silent Hill 2 remake, is downstream from this one proving that type of game could still make money.

I think Capcom has put out some great RE games since, but RE2R is still that high water mark they've yet to clear, though here's hoping 9 finally will.
 
Last edited:
I wouldn't classify this game as Metroidvania.

Also, they didn't remake the spiders, which was my biggest gripe. Also some assets, like the blood splats, looked like generic pngs from google images.

Other than that, it's solid 8/10 for me.
 
NeverYouMind said:
Just for fun, I replayed the Seamless HD Mod of Resident Evil 2 using GOG release and the modern remake by Capcom back to back. I was taken back by how poorly the remake had aged despite much higher fidelity.

My main point of contention was shooting mechanics. In the original shooting was effortless with auto-aim and enemy health being set in stone. In the remake it was cumbersome (though I did not test aim-assist feature exclusive to easy difficulty) with how erratically enemies moved and how slow lining up a shot was. On top of it the enemies had adaptive difficulty designed to waste your bullets. There were times when enemy faces would be deformed to ribeye steak after a dozen shots but they would continue stalking unabated if ammunition was abundant. Granted, expanded limb destruction system in the remake was a cool feature but the randomness of things like a foot coming off (causing quick stumbling enemy) instead of a leg (causing slow crawling enemy) also added frustration. I will add that I really enjoyed the defensive sub-weapon system in the remake. Knifing an enemy playing dead or crawling on the ground was not something I used in the original but was really useful in the remake. Having a flash bang or grenade on hand was also great for dealing with or escaping crowds and bosses.

Another detail that was immediately noticeable was the prominence of Mr. X in the remake (especially in the second campaign). In the original he would pop up in narrow hallways to give the protagonist a good smack (in the second campaign), but in the remake he would relentlessly stalk the player across the game. It caused a lot of unnecessary environmental detours to be taken. I reckon I spent about 1 hour of the playthrough running circles instead of blindly going from one point of interest to another. I also did not appreciate the telegraphed one-hit kill move the remake gave him for the first campaign final battle but tossing a flash bang or grenade in time worked well enough despite built-in weapon draw delay.

There were a few other nitpicks I had with the remake as well. The biggest offender was Claire's arsenal. In the original she had a 13 bullet handgun, 18 bolt crossbow, and a grenade gun which could hold an absurd amount of ammunition. In the remake she had three handguns with different bullets and a single shot grenade gun. I cannot stress how disappointing that was (especially with the longest imaginable reload speed for the six shooter and grenade gun). Not only did those handguns hold pathetic amounts of ammunition, but the game constantly dropped different ammunition that was incompatible with other handguns. Normally it would not matter, but with the active inventory being so limited it required constant swapping of obligatory guns on hand and trips to the inventory box. Lesser offenses were Claire's charged electric stunner and Leon's flame thrower both failing to show damaging effects on enemies outside of slowing them down a notch and triggering a texture swap. On top of it all, the flamethrower could not be refueled without using up the attached gas cylinder. Despite these design decisions the weapons were still fun to use.

It is a shame that the remake has all these functional deficiencies because the story and characters were greatly improved over the original. Even the companion events were beautifully differentiated and realized compared the generic segments in the original. As it stands I much preferred replaying the original. I am grateful for this GOG release giving me both the motivation and opportunity to experience it again.
Click to expand...
I think RE2 Remake is greatly overrated. There is not really an ideal playthrough because Scenario A has a slow start (as everything is locked up tighter than a nun's ass), Claire's arsenal underwhelms (though she has much better unique sections), Ada's subsection really drags for Leon (though he has a dope arsenal), sewers are a waste of time, enemies become bullet sponges as you pick up more ammo, and Mr. X is a nuisance instead of a localized threat. That is on top of the controls being sluggish and animations being overly telegraphed. It does have a good presentation though and that goes a long way with a lot of people.

Valt7786 said:
RE 3-make is shit compared, don't get your hopes up unless you like a virtually on rails shooter with a shit version of Mr X. That game utterly shits on the legacy of the original RE 3 its not even funny.
Click to expand...
Original RE3 is shit because it lacks focus and has you running across the city for nearly every key item while an unkillable jackass tries to jump you at every opportunity. It barely curated content since it just used the crap that wasn't good enough for RE2 and it showed. Everything it tried to do different it failed at. In contrast, the R3make is a fun blockbuster thriller with great pacing and reactive arcadey gameplay.
 
Last edited:
V2Tommy said:
Mr. X made this game much worse for me. Nothing you can say will change my mind that it made me want to stop exploring and enjoying the game at my own pace.
Click to expand...
By the time Mr X is introduced, you've pretty much explored the majority of the police department save for a few rooms. Plus, he's only in it for a short portion of the game. The Mr X criticism always baffles me. People act likes he's on your ass 100% throughout the entire game.
 
Last edited:
NuclearDiarrhea said:
By the time Mr X is introduced, you've pretty much explored the majority of the police department save for a few rooms. Plus, he's only in it for a short portion of the game. The Mr X criticism always baffles me. People act likes he's on your ass 100% throughout the entire game.
Click to expand...

This. Sure he can be a pain and add stress on a first playthrough, but thats the point of him. If you play the game a couple times and pay attention you can figure out exactly when he's gonna spawn and show up and plan accordingly. I.e when you pick up the Jack for the shelving, when you get the 2nd electrical box etc. He also hears you running and shooting and will beeline for you if you do.
 
NeverYouMind said:
I think RE2 Remake is greatly overrated. There is not really an ideal playthrough because Scenario A has a slow start (as everything is locked up tighter than a nun's ass), Claire's arsenal underwhelms (though she has much better unique sections), Ada's subsection really drags for Leon (though he has a dope arsenal), sewers are a waste of time, enemies become bullet sponges as you pick up more ammo, and Mr. X is a nuisance instead of a localized threat. That is on top of the controls being sluggish and animations being overly telegraphed. It does have a good presentation though and that goes a long way with a lot of people.


Original RE3 is shit because it lacks focus and has you running across the city for nearly every key item while an unkillable jackass tries to jump you at every opportunity. It barely curated content since it just used the crap that wasn't good enough for RE2 and it showed. Everything it tried to do different it failed at. In contrast, the R3make is a fun blockbuster thriller with great pacing and reactive arcadey gameplay.
Click to expand...


It would seem that "classic style RE" is not for you then.
 
Crazy how the time flies. This felt like a moment that would never come when it was announced and it was fairly unbelievable how great it was while playing it. Kind of a dream come true, RE4 like over the shoulder remake of the game that introduced Leon.
 
Sand Dan Glokta said:
Claire (and the Excellent section playing as sherry)
Click to expand...

How anyone can enjoy this is beyond me. Trial & error section where you have to do everything in a specific way. It may be a bit scary on a first playthrough, but its just slow and annoying overall. Worst section of the whole game.


I loved the boss fights, but not how Zombies would behave in this game. They are absolute bullet sponges in this one. I didn't realize on my first playthrough that you had to let your crosshair focus in order to have a higher chance of crits (why does the game never tell this), so I got really frustrated when Zombies would drop after 4-5 bullets to the head, then get up after a while, then drop after another 3-4 bullets to the head, then get up another time. It would often take 10-13 headshots until a zombie would finally stay dead. So my strategy would become pretty much all game through: make the zombie drop to the ground, position behind him and then knife him to death. And since zombies are by far the most common enemies, this would get super exhausting. Sure you could also just run past them after knocking them down, but this was by far the most logical way when you are on your first playthrough and want to explore.
Another thing thats super annoying about zombies are the animations when they manage to grab you. Especially when they are on ground, it feels so long and its always the same animation. I heavily prefer it when you could just smash or kick their heads off in the OG when they are grabbing you.
 
V2Tommy said:
Mr. X made this game much worse for me. Nothing you can say will change my mind that it made me want to stop exploring and enjoying the game at my own pace.
Click to expand...
I had this with Metroid DREAD. (No idea if it settles down/gets easier after a few hours. I gave up. Had actual fun games to play in my backlog.)
 
tylrdiablos said:
I had this with Metroid DREAD. (No idea if it settles down/gets easier after a few hours. I gave up. Had actual fun games to play in my backlog.)
Click to expand...

Man, I must have restarted Metroid Dread 3 times, not once I had fun with it and like you, I actually went back to games I did enjoy playing...

I don't know what the general consensus about it is but, I found it to be very boring and unsatisfying between the mediocre map, twitchy movement and controls and the whole stalker robot thing, I've played indie Metroidvanias that were/are much better that this actual Metroid game.

Anyway, RE2Re was indeed very good but the B scenarios were indeed almost phoned in, still a solid 8/10 though.
 
Its my number one RE game. But the problem is that Capcom streamlined it because people barely replay games these days. So they put pretty much all in the 1st scenario already.
 
RE2R is amazing and so is RE3R. I still don't understand the hate towards RE3R. It's a continuation of RE2R, same engine, same mechanics, same setting, same amazing graphics and moments, better pacing imo, and maybe a bit shorter. I understand when people say Capcom was lazy, didn't adapt all the content from the original RE3 and it's frustrating for those that played the original, but you can't love RE2R and hate RE3R at the same time because it's virtually the same game.
 
Valt7786 said:
It would seem that "classic style RE" is not for you then.
Click to expand...
No Way Wtf GIF by Harlem

In the very same post I praise the original RE2 but make note of its remake's shortcomings.

Black_Mamba said:
RE2R is amazing and so is RE3R. I still don't understand the hate towards RE3R. It's a continuation of RE2R, same engine, same mechanics, same setting, same amazing graphics and moments, better pacing imo, and maybe a bit shorter. I understand when people say Capcom was lazy, didn't adapt all the content from the original RE3 and it's frustrating for those that played the original, but you can't love RE2R and hate RE3R at the same time because it's virtually the same game.
Click to expand...
It is not the same. It has unlimited knife play, exclusively throwable grenades, Carlos' counter punch, Jill's dodge with critical homing attack, more responsive aiming/gun draw, and enemy HP does not scale to your ammo amount.
 
Last edited:
NeverYouMind said:
No Way Wtf GIF by Harlem

In the very same post I praise the original RE2 but make note of its remake's shortcomings.


It is not the same. It has unlimited knife play, throwable grenades, Carlos' counter punch, Jill's dodge with critical homing attack, and more responsive aiming/gun draw.
Click to expand...

Er, you'll have to quote me where you throw any praise (especially for OG RE2) in that post 'cause I'm not seeing it. You claim REmake 2 is overrated, slow to start, dont like enemies being bullet sponges, sluggish controls etc. and then claim RE3-make is a blockbuster action thriller with arcade gameplay.
Look, everyones entitled to their own opinions on things, you do you brother, but you clearly prefer the action side of the games as opposed to the slowed down parts encouraging exploration or figuring out how to deal with stalker enemies.
 
It's fantastic. It got me absolutely hooked in 2019, and I was really pissed when Sekiro stole its thunder and its GOTY (even if I finally accepted Sekiro's greatness five years later).
The game's sound design is a masterpiece, all right.

I think the only gripes I had with it were 1) no true B-scenarios like in the original, 2) enemies take way too much punishment, and the battles with Birkin especially were more tedious than tense because of this, 3) Claire going commando on Birkin in the lab instead of running away is a bit too much even for her.

Did you take 13 hours for just one campaign, or both? 13 seems way more than necessary for one campaign, unless you're playing on Hard. I remember needing between 6 and 7 hours for my first run with each character.
I played it once on Hard, but that was a bit too much. The game is pretty well balanced on Normal with enemies that can take some obscene amounts of bullets to go down for good. Hard basically requires planning most things in advance, or just resigning yourself to having to redo large portions of the game because most enemies must be kept alive if you want to have enough ammo for the mandatory fights.
 
Resident Evil 2 Remake could have been the best Resident Evil game if they just did the whole scenario much better without repeat bosses and have more unique sections for each other.
 
NuclearDiarrhea said:
By the time Mr X is introduced, you've pretty much explored the majority of the police department save for a few rooms. Plus, he's only in it for a short portion of the game. The Mr X criticism always baffles me. People act likes he's on your ass 100% throughout the entire game.
Click to expand...
largely spoils the atmosphere for me
turns the game from "careful, anything could be around the corner" to "speedrun time bro lol" or some lame form of hide and seek.

having to burn zombies in remake1 was annoying but mr x was more annoying
 
Last edited:
NeverYouMind said:
No Way Wtf GIF by Harlem

In the very same post I praise the original RE2 but make note of its remake's shortcomings.


It is not the same. It has unlimited knife play, exclusively throwable grenades, Carlos' counter punch, Jill's dodge with critical homing attack, more responsive aiming/gun draw, and enemy HP does not scale to your ammo amount.
Click to expand...
Sounds like improvements to me. I didn't know about the hp scaling to ammo. Interesting. Capcom did a great job with the remakes and how the challenge and survival element is well balanced.
 
Black_Mamba said:
Sounds like improvements to me. I didn't know about the hp scaling to ammo. Interesting. Capcom did a great job with the remakes and how the challenge and survival element is well balanced.
Click to expand...

Yeah. RE2 remake has adaptive difficulty. The less hits you take, the more ammo you have, the more healing supplies you have the higher up the scale it goes and you deal less damage while taking more damage.

It started being applied in the original RE4. Just that also changed how much ammo and that dropped from enemies when you killed them on top of the rest.

Been in every RE game since.

wa600 said:
Snip
Click to expand...

If you ever replay it again. Just shoot the zombies in the leg to stagger them. Plenty of zombies can just be ran past or staggered to let you by.
 
Last edited:
FUBARx89 said:
Yeah. RE2 remake has adaptive difficulty. The less hits you take, the more ammo you have, the more healing supplies you have the higher up the scale it goes and you deal less damage while taking more damage.

It started being applied in the original RE4. Just that also changed how much ammo and that dropped from enemies when you killed them on top of the rest.

Been in every RE game since.
Click to expand...
I know about ammo, herbs and gold dropping more or less depending on how much you need them, but you mentioned enemy HP being dynamic as well. That I didn't know.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

LTTP: Resident Evil 2 Remake
LTTP  2
85
2K
NeverYouMind replied
LTTP: Resident Evil 5 (XSX) 2009
24
444
WoJ replied
LTTP: Resident Evil Revelations 2
36
1K
Froggo replied
  • Locked
Resident Evil Requiem vs Residen Evil 2 & Resident Evil 4 Remakes | Direct Comparison
8
711
FoxMcChief replied
Resident Evil Requiem vs Residen Evil 2 & Resident Evil 4 Remakes | Direct Comparison
Analysis Trailer 
35
1K
Memati187 replied
Top Bottom