The highly-anticipated Resident Evil 2 remake rides a thin line between old and new. It instantly pulls you in with familiar characters and locales, but finds new ways to make you feel uneasy with its new interpretation of classic events you remember from the original. Whether or not you played Resident Evil 2 back it released, the upcoming remake is shaping up to be a satisfying jaunt through a horror classic well worth looking out for. My time with the demo began in the main hall of the Raccoon City Police Department as Leon S. Kennedy--who`s just as strong willed and naive as we remember. He`s no longer the invincible superhero that latter entries transformed him into; he`s desperate and vulnerable. These qualities should come as no surprise to fans of the original version, but the remake really leans into them, making your time spent as the rookie cop all the more tense and dire. And with higher-quality voice performances, Leon`s circumstances feel grounded and believable.It helps that the Resident Evil 4-style, third-person over-the-shoulder camera provides a far more intimate view than the original`s fixed camera angles. The remake faithfully recreates the original RPD`s narrow halls and pathways; its floor layout is nearly identical. The third-person perspective plays well with the labyrinthian police department, making exploration feel unsettling and claustrophobic; gone are the door-opening loading screens.All throughout my plodding trek across the RPD, I rarely felt safe. An area would be recreated exactly as I remembered it, but then the game would completely mess with my expectations. For example, in the southwest corridor, I expected to fight the infamous Licker, but in its place was the body of an RPD officer whose mouth has been cut into a Glasgow smile. Despite having played the original countless times, new details like this ensured that I was always on my toes.The feeling of desperation intensifies when you run into your first zombie. The empo ...
|
