Resident Evil Redux

This isn't a review of the game. Its just me enjoying one of my favourite games of all time. Taa.

When thrash metal emerged melodiously rabid from the metal scene in the early 1980s, this young (as I was then) metalhead was there to greet it, moshing right down to my denim studs. Ditto the action movies, that saw the likes of Rambo and The Terminator come stomping out of Hollywood. And just in case I was still bored, the videogame thing happened. Oh yeah that. An industry that from the silicon bowels of Atari, Nintendo, et al, rose to become the multi million behemoth that it is today. And that behemoth owes a lot to PlayStation and what many would call the birth of a new genre: survival horror.
When the original Resident Evil dropped onto Sony's grey box of tricks in 1996, gamers' collective jaw dropped. After rolling a dice for either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine and heading to the mansion on the outskirts of Raccoon City, it felt like we were in our own personal horror movie (complete with hammy acting that served as the games intro). Cut a long story short, Resident Evil was utterly brilliant. Guns, gore and zombies. Videogame fans had been given our first taste of a future dipped in bloody entrails. Delicious.
Fast forward two years to 1998 and the inevitable sequel shuffled into being. Resident Evil 2 ticked all boxes (and ticked a few more we didn't know existed). It was a game dripping in suspense. Players knew the moment they entered the Raccoon Police Dept. and the camera panned across the marble floor, that bigger and better nightmares awaited in the shadows.
I bought Resi 2 on launch day, and remember going to the local Blockbuster, grabbing a copy and loaded it up with a bottle of Southern Comfort (no coke). I'll be honest, I wasn't mad keen on the box cover art at first, the black "squashed" zombie face looked cheap and homemade but it did have a touch of menace about it (which is probably why I have grown to like it more as time goes by). The game was an instant love for me; it had an atmosphere that I had never experienced in games before (even topping the first game) and together with that beautiful, eerie music which played as you picked through the mutated horrors of Raccoon City pulled me in and never let go. And as someone who has played and completed Resident Evil 2 well over fifty times (true story), I can say it with authority.


Hellooooo Mr Babycakes


A Return to Nightmares

When Capcom announced a remake of my beloved game, my heart said, "yay! Lets do this!" but my mind said, "wait a sec buddy, this could be bad." Call it lazy or greedy, we live in a world where every man and his (zombie) dog is getting a reboot, and we know from bitter disappointment that they have a high risk of going wrong. A sloppy reboot of a much loved classic is sacrilege. When I heard Resi 2 was getting a fresh lick(er) of paint, I tried hard to dial down the excitement, avoiding the previews and first look videos on Youtube lest they ruined my fanboy buzz. I needn't have worried, and the brilliant Resident Evil 7 ought to have been a sign Capcom was hitting the high times again.
By the time I had sunk my teeth into the one shot demo, all fears for a clumsy reboot disappeared. Capcom it would seem, are on a roll and this is good times indeed for zombie fans. Resident Evil 2 looks and plays ace. And the atmosphere of the original? That constant feeling of dread and overwhelming odds? Back in spades, thanks mainly to the hulking Mr X, a stony faced brute who stalks both Leon and Claire throughout most of the game and cannot be stopped (for long) with puny bullets and grenades. He is a genuinely terrifying presence and the "stomp, stomp," you hear as he searches for you in the police station multiply the panic ten fold, especially if you play on higher difficulty. True, you can use methods to try and keep him at a distance but for me personally, its the not seeing him that is more frightening, when I can see Mr X at least I can use evasion tactics.

Game of the year?

I am going all in here. Yeppers, Resident Evil 2 is already my game of the year. There is nothing I can see currently that is going to have even a sniff of knocking it off top spot and that's including titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 (good game but outstayed its welcome for me). The Resi games never do this, you can finish RE2 in around 4 hours easily if you know where you going and plan the inventory accordingly.
There are two scenarios per character so its still a sizable slab of survival horror gaming.