Resident Evil 2 Remake: A New Nostalgia.

As a kid playing Resident Evil 2 was an endurance of heightened sensations. I suffered increased anxiety, joy, fear, nausea, even legitimate physical afflictions such as sudden, debilitating stomach cramps, which invariably forced me to use the toilet. I get that same replicated stimulation from playing this remake that I experienced playing the original sequel. The fact that I’m writing this specific segment on my phone whilst on the toilet should give you some sordid indication of just how harrowing this remake is!

I hadn’t anticipated this reception: to be both humbled by nostalgia and aghast at the subtle innovation that retains the core tenants of the series that made Resident Evil such a cultural spectacle. This is a truly pivotal moment in my life, to experience Resident Evil 2 for the first time…..again! This remake, that functions more as a commemorative reinvention, supplants all of the geriatric controls and fixed camera angles that made the original such an arduous slog to play, while extracting the sheer bowel irritating fear that made your measured exploration around the RCPD such a ponderous and frightening experience. An element absent from the action orientated, boulder heaving sequels of Resident Evil 5 and 6. Seriously though, whoever designed the elaborate architecture for this police facility/museum was more sadistic than the current biologically challenged occupants!

You can’t settle, feel comfort or safety. Your only reprieve from the ravages of the infected are the designated save rooms scattered sparingly across the Raccoon City police department and the subterranean labyrinths that lurk below. It’s strange too trying to familiarise yourself to environment I once knew intimately, making knowing self-satisfied commentary as I make my way around, only to have the game completely dupe my nostalgic expectations, as it succeeds in unnerving my every footstep. Employing a rigorous assault to my faculties so hostile and personal that it’s like I’ve slighted the game in some way. That I’m being punished for even considering picking up the controller! It’s exhausting navigating the claustrophobic halls, blood speckled corridors and faint yet distinctive sound of the dead shuffling through the dimly lite alcoves. Participated by the quadriplegic scuttling and piercing, elongated tongue of the Lickers. Creatures I haven’t missed! All while you avoid the propagating advances of the towering monolith that is the Tyrant!

You can’t just kill everything that moves, shuffles or lurches as the limited ammo at your disposal will quickly deplete. Instead you have to be pragmatic, choosing when to shoot carefully and more importantly, precisely. Inventory management ensures you’re well prepared for any potential cartilage chompers, as well as amply spacious enough to pick up any crucial items you may need. Storing surplus components or supplies is crucial, otherwise you may find yourself having to navigate down perilous hallways you’d otherwise avoid just to make room in your inventory. Or worse discarding an item completely! The games inert adaptive difficulty also ensures that you are always being challenged. If you haven’t died the game ramps up the difficulty. Contrary, if you find yourself struggling the games eases up a little.

There are some obvious continuity lapses between the A and B scenario’s that were handled much better in the originals, with Claire and Leon able to communicate via a walkie-talkie at least. And it’s a shame really. With a few minor narrative amendments the two concurrent perspectives could have been separate stories told from different perceptions, instead of competing ones. But really these kind of discrepancies are negligible when compared to the rest of this well handled remakes of one of my favourite Resident Evil titles. In another game the jumps might seem cheap, like a ghost train at a travelling carnival. But because the jumps scares have been tempered by the twisted, uneasy ambience and the precarious nature of your safety, the sudden shocks feel genuinely frightening. You may think your safe fully laden with ammo and abundance of healing herbs, but it only takes one tiny, misplaced bullet to put you right back in danger.

This is survival horror, the way the genre was intended to be. And Resident Evil 2 has reminded me just how much I’ve missed it. Now you’ll have to excuse me, I have to find some more toilet tissue!

My Top 10 Most Influential Games: #5 “Resident Evil 2”.

So here we are at my number 5, a game that I recall with more clarity than many on this list. Primarily because of just how harrowing this game was for me growing up. Choosing Resident Evil 2 over so many of its prestigious and indeed less revered kindred was a fairly routine decision for me. With the exception of a few misguided entries, the majority of the series has elicited some of the most anxious, bowel shuddering moments of my gaming adolescents. The festering hounds shattering the mansions windows with poop inducing precision. The regenerator’s of Resident Evil 4 that ambled through tight corridors with muffled, gnarled breathing and unsettling palsied twitching. The Nemesis breaking through walls and the conformities of the games infrastructure with literal ferocity, by taking away the safety of entering another room to thwart an enemies pursuit. Not to mention boulder boxing in a volcano, leaches, absurd live action intros, an alphabet worth of viruses and Jill filled sandwiches. But nothing quite resonates with the same enduring terror that this habitually outlandish entry does!

Resident Evil 2 was originally a compromised purchase. Having traded my faulty copy of Crash Bandicoot 2 for Resident Evil 2 from a dubious market proprietor I really had no idea what I had let myself in for. Praise must be paid to the blissful ignorance of my mother though, who if she had any inkling concerning the games sadistic extravagance probably would have forbade me from playing it, not that I would have listened.

Up to this point in my gaming tenure I had mostly been acquainted with more child friendly platformer’s that was much more congenial to my preadolescent sensibilities. So a game of such distinct morbidity, that riled you with its ambient trepidation was so exhaustively disconcerting. My first foray into the decrepit Raccoon City wasn’t particularly successful either, as I wrestled with the controls attempting to manoeuver myself away from the advancing hordes of zombies that had emerged from the incendiary wreckage behind, only to moonwalk directly into their grasp. Wounded I staggered forward trying to negotiate my way past the abandoned cars smouldering beside me as I progressed, only to be embraced by another Zombie just off-screen. The infamous “You Are Dead!” text illuminated the blank screen and I immediately switched it off. I don’t like losing, least of all after a couple of minutes against the games first antagonist. This to me was the equivalent of losing to a goomba in Super Mario!

After considerable time had passed, my juvenile ego renewed by the games absence I persevered, slowly progressing through the ravaged streets, watching in horror as a delightfully gruff gun store owner became a happy meal for the shuffling masses and proceeded to shriek, scream and squeal my way to the cities most elaborately designed police station. This merry little jaunt through the barren streets and musky alleys allowed me to familiarise myself with the revolutionary ability to run, an ability that up to that point I didn’t realise Claire and Leon possessed?! As well as instilling the inherent obsession with conserving ammo to a pathological level, that meant every bullet I squandered just made me more anxious.

Because of the explicit fear this game provoked I could only play it in gradual, interspersed sessions. Every time I stumbled upon a save room I would exhale with exasperated fatigue, requiring a good couple of minutes to compose myself, organise my inventory, combine herbs and use yet another ink ribbon to save my meandering progress before mustering the courage to continue. The only time I’d ever play for more than half an hour is if my step brother was there. And even then we’d hurl the controller at each other as if it were a bomb ready to detonate, signifying that it was their turn to endure the company of giant poisonous tarantulas and feral alligators.

This was also back at a time when a guide or walk-through was reserved for a friend from school who’d completed the game. A friend who was so well versed in the ways of this survival horror that I’d consult with him on an almost daily basis. The stream of convoluted locks, statues, keys with specific insignia’s that had to be found to progress was baffling. Couple that with the constant threat of cannibalism and you got yourself a game that frustrates and terrifies in equal measure.

Despite its absurdity, the clunky movement and graphics that were somewhat dated even when I played it back in early 2000’s, this is still the most memorable entry in the series. I’ll never forget those sudden encounters with the zombies, the faint shuffling and bellowing moans echoing down the corridors. Coming face to face with the sharp-tongued monstrosities that were the lickers, snarling and oozing cascades of saliva as they clung to the ceilings with their serrated claws. William Birkin’s grotesque transformations, Ada Wong’s duplicitous incursion into the Umbrella facility, being hunted by a 7ft Tyrant that would just appear without warning and the dying cop who I had convinced myself was Will Smith, who always had this peculiar inflection every time he said “Umbrella”. And it’s difficult to work out whether it was intentionally sinister, poorly voiced or a composite of both, but I never forgot that scene, nor panicked as much when his slumped, lifeless body lurched up to devour my pixellated face!

Resident Evil 2 gave me more nightmares than I care to remember. Provided some of the most exquisite, genuinely poop you pants moments I’ve ever had. No game since has ever roused the same sustained chills that Resident Evil 2 dished out, nor have my gaming experiences or indeed gaming choices been the same since then. And that’s why Resident Evil 2 is my #5.

Resident Evil VII Play-through Part 2: “I Have No Idea What I’m Doing….”

“I have no idea what I’m doing?…..” Is a phrase I’ve often uttered when under intense public scrutiny. When I’m chastised for my lack of motivation and direction in life. When I walk all the way down stairs, open the fridge door, gaze wistfully at the illuminated contents and wonder what the hell I was doing there, when I actually needed to pee? And also when I’m trying to negotiate my way through decrepit house, in an undisclosed location which is as brightly lite as a hippos ass! Yes this is part 2 of my disastrous play-through of the “Resident Evil VII ” demo. I spend the majority of it lost, despite having already been shown where to go. I can only apologise for the neglectful dereliction of my duties when it comes to providing thought provoking content and communication. Both will hopefully be amended soon. Until then check out the conclusion of Resident Evil VII and just remember “I have no idea what I’m doing!”

Resident Evil VII: Back To Being Scary?

“Stop the presses!” That’s still a term, right? Well regardless of arcane idioms Resident Evil has got my attention. Now I know the series past couple of canonical entries have been more “Residential fracas” rather than Resident Evil and have been about as scary as a slightly inflated phone bill, but despite it’s deficiencies, it’s convoluted resources, dramatic contrivances and *sigh* dinosaurs I’ve remained an optimistic fan. The reveal of Resident Evil VII at E3–the VII rather cleverly assimilated into the title–seems to have recovered from its amnesia and remembered that it is in fact a horror franchise. The trailer featured all the dramatic clichés you’d could hope for; spooky house, dank illumination, random mannequins, a video tape that reveals the fate of a previous occupant, unwashed dishes and first person perspectives? Yeah, that? Resi 7 will be a first person shooter/survival. Though brief coverage is a predominantly gimmicky affair, certainly a pandering endorsement for the PlayStation’s rather dubious VR auxiliary (I’m sorry but I’m still not sold on that), the short clip does a good job of convincing us that it could be scary, presumably extolling the virtues of its predecessors. It even features the traditional and iconic animations of yore such as when objects are recovered. Hopefully doors too.

“Spooky room featured in Resident Evil 7 or a typical students room?” 

Now there’s little to go on at this point but I’m hopeful that it will still feature genetic mutations and bacterial experimentations. Perhaps expand on existing laws and ideologies rather than utilising frankly overused characters such as Chris Redfield, whose intense volatility and overtly flamboyant masculinity were irritations rather than empathetic characteristics. Resident Evil 6 was such a poorly conceived miscellany of ideas anyway, one that just couldn’t quite settle into a coherent rhythm. It’s a horror, it’s an action game. It just kind shrugs at you like a drunken uncle as if to say “I have no idea what I’m doing!”. Resident Evil 5 may have lacked inspiration as well as a degree of creative restraint, I mean that final act was all a bit….huh? But it never felt boring. It’s biggest fault was relying on the utilities created in Resident Evil 4, varying the narrative and locations but not expanding on the game-play. Not that Capcom are the kind of studio to put craft above commerce! Hopefully Resident Evil VII has realised the futility of generous ammunition and applied a much more proportional means of distribution. With any luck Capcom can create a narrative totally separate from what we’ve seen before, with the same ambient tone of its heyday, considering its sequels and spin-off lacked the equanimity or tact to pull off scary effectively.

Even though you do detect the pungent stench of plagiarism with Resident Evil VII, with the atmospheric isolation of Outlast and Silent Hill a comparative influence on the tonality of the trailer. And it will probably rely on environmental anomalies such as creaking floorboards or flickering lights as much as mutated corpses to incite jump scares, which is still a cheap mechanism for initiating tension, this reveal if nothing else captures the essence of Resident Evil, even if it doesn’t quite emulate it.

---

Can Resident Evil regain its mojo? What has been you’re highlight of E3? Let me know in the comments below. Cheers.