Resident Evil 2 – look out behind you Claire!

GameCentral gets to play three hours of an almost finished version of the Resident Evil 2 remake… and it is glorious.

How Nintendo could improve Zelda: Skyward Sword with a Switch remaster - Reader’s Feature

When we met the makers of the Resident Evil 2 remake at Gamescom we admitted we felt strangely guilty about not having anything negative to say about their game. Previously we’d only played it for short 20-minute bursts, but last week we got around an hour on Leon’s campaign and two hours on Claire’s. And we still can’t find anything wrong with it!

The original Resident Evil 2 was first released, after several delays, in 1998 but despite being a fan favourite it’s been relatively poorly served since, in terms of remasters and references in other games. All that is forgiven now as the entire game has been remade with state-of-the-art visuals and the same love and care as the first Resident Evil remake.

But unlike the first remake this abandons the fixed camera angles of the original and instead uses an over-the-shoulder camera view similar to Resident Evil 4. Married with an enhanced version of the graphics engine from Resident Evil 7 the results are spectacular, with superb facial animation, amazing lighting, and fantastic attention to detail. It oozes atmosphere from every pixel and manages to be both instantly recognisable and completely new. We did, in short, enjoy our three hours.

Both campaign demos picked up from the end of the Gamescom one, and Claire’s first encounter with the mutated William Birkin. By this point Leon has hooked up with Ada, who now has a snazzy overcoat atop her little red evening dress, and the pair try to make it through Racoon City to stop the spread of the G-Virus (well, exactly what Ada wants we’ve never been sure of, but at this point she’s helping).

A visit to the Kendo gun shop reveals… something that we’re not allow to tell you about. Which is a shame because it involves a surprisingly serious and heartfelt little scene, that wouldn’t feel out of place in something like The Last Of Us.

It’s the best proof yet that the remake is trying to elevate its dialogue above the amateurish mess of the original. And yet as the pair leave Leon starts going on about ‘indestructible monsters’ and other sillier aspects of the plot, and you realise that the game is not giving up on the shlock entirely and is instead going to try to play things both ways.

It was clear from talking to the developers that they somewhat resent Westerners’ amusement at Resident Evil dialogue, but for us the remake, by accident or design, gets the tone exactly right. There are more serious moments, and the dialogue, which now includes swearing, is a little more sophisticated but it’s still very cheesy. Only instead of a slice of Dairylea it’s now reassuringly expensive stilton.

Resident Evil 2 – Ada has not come prepared

Resident Evil is, and always should be, shlock horror and that’s certainly how it’s presented in terms of gameplay. From the gun shop Leon makes his way to the sewers and an encounter with both a giant alligator and a new creature that looks like a mini-William Birkin with the same sort of grotesque mutated eye.

Capcom have already said that the majority of the game will follow the same design, including enemies, as the original, but there’s a clear attempt to try and make things slightly more… if not realistic, then at least plausible. At this point you switch control to Ada, who we’re appalled to find out, after emptying half a dozen bullets into a zombie’s face, is armed with a useless little peashooter that’s only good for staggering them for a second.

What she does have though is an ‘EMF visualiser’ which is a little handheld device that allows her to see electric cables and switches in walls and turn them on and off. This is used for a number of puzzles involving exploding fans and opening doors, and while it’s all very simplistic it looks like a useful palette cleanser from the rest of the game.

The best bit though is running around an industrial area trying to trace the powerlines so you can switch on a lift. The place is crawling with zombies, but with just enough leeway that you can run between them or get to a stash of flash grenades and create a distraction. It’s all orchestrated perfectly, with zombies lurching out of the darkness, or falling from overhead, when you least expect it. But alas, the demo ends with Ada unconscious and control switching back to Leon…

While Leon’s section was relatively linear the part of Claire’s campaign we were able to play was much more open-ended. It starts in the car park of the police station, with Claire locked in and William Birkin’s young daughter Sherry kidnapped. If you’re not familiar with Resident Evil 2 it may be a bit of shock to discover the police station is decked out like a Victorian mansion, but that’s just the way Racoon City architecture rolls.

Getting around the station is not easy, as not only are there zombies everywhere but most doors are locked. In some cases that means finding the necessary key and in others taking a more circuitous route. Claire’s main goal is the keycard that will open the garage but that requires electrical components for a door that are, naturally, squirreled away in the most inaccessible areas of the station.

There’s nothing for it but to search room to room, which immediately reveals that there’s lickers in amongst the zombies – the horrible four-legged monsters that can also crawl on walls. By this point in the game Claire has found herself a grenade launcher though, and while ammo is limited more can be crafted by finding component parts.

Firing a flame grenade at a licker, only to see it fall screaming to the floor and still come at you is wonderfully terrifying, but even worse/better is discovering that normal zombies can follow you through doors. We discover this while trying to figure out a puzzle, only to hear unexpected banging and a zombie we thought we’d left behind coming after us.

Zombies can also fall through windows, but those at least you can barricade up, if you find a bit of wood, and by taking things nice and slowly we were able to work our way through the station and get an idea of where the parts we need might be. And then Mr. X arrived.

Resident Evil 2 – probably best to just run!

Or at least we always used to think he was called Mr. X, nobody else at the press event seemed to recognise the name but he’s a huge tyrant in a trenchcoat and hat and an obvious precursor to Nemesis, both in terms of the game’s lore and his actions in-game.

Mr. X is incredibly slow but the best you can hope to do is make him pause for a few seconds, and even that takes so much ammo it’s not really worth it. Instead you’re left to deal with the fact that he’s constantly following you, his heavy footsteps always audible, and if you get yourself stuck in a dead end you’re in serious trouble.

He’s introduced at exactly the right point in the game, just as you’re starting to get a little overconfident in your explorations, and we’re forced to realise we haven’t got enough ammo for all the lickers and zombies, let alone Mr. X. With time ticking away in the real world we resolve to make a mad dash for the last unexplored room (the remake has a super helpful map that even indicates the position of individual items you come across).

Previously we’d been tiptoeing up to doors and peeking through before entering, but this time we just burst through one after the other, recoiling at each hideous monster as it’s revealed and popping a flame grenade in its face if it’s a licker. Rushing through the station like this, with Mr. X at our heels and god knows what in front of us, has already become one of our favourite moments in a Resident Evil game: thrilling, terrifying, and slightly absurd. Just as Resident Evil should be.

Our demo ends when we find all the electronic parts and the game switches to a cut scene showing Sherry’s captor (we’re trying not to spoil things if you don’t know who it is). This is apparently a brand new playable section, not in the original game, where you get to play as Sherry in an area called the Orphanage. But we’re only allowed a second’s glimpse before the controls are wrestled away from us.

We were already completely sold on the Resident Evil 2 remake but the more we see of it the more we admire how perfectly it’s balanced all its many different priorities. There’s the obvious problem of pleasing old school fans but keeping itself accessible to new ones, but there’s also the balance to be struck between horror, action, serious drama, and cheesy silliness. And yet it’s all managed to absolute perfection. January cannot come soon enough.

Formats: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC

Publisher: Capcom

Developer: Capcom R&D Division 1

Release Date: 25th January 2019

Resident Evil 2 – this is literally all we saw of the Orphanage

Email gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk, leave a comment below, and follow us on Twitter