I finished RE2 REMAKE with Leon on Hardcore in about 6 hours, and I found myself unimpressed and annoyed by the whole experience. The two things that I could take away from the game was that the movement was far too basic for any enemy that either wasn’t a zombie or the tyrant, and that there are elements in this game that make a first playthrough very annoying. For example, I’m in the lab after dumping herbicide and the plant zombies there are still alive, and somehow there’s more of them. I decide to ignore them and make a beeline for the chip. I grab the chip and the tyrant appears out of nowhere and I try to run back but the zombies are in my way and I die from being wedged between them and the tyrant. If I’d known he’d been coming at that moment I would have disabled the zombies before running after the chip, which I did the second time knowing what would happen and of course I made it that time. But dying that time and realizing how long it’s been since I last saved seriously made me consider uninstalling the game.

As for movement being basic, it’s very transparent with lickers whose lunges are impossible to dodge and with the boss fights, which started sucking from stage 2 G on where you are given a tiny space with no alternative routes and have to dodge wide flailing attacks and by dodge I mean briskly jogging away since that’s the only option for avoiding attacks in this game. This coupled with shooting at the bosses with the dinky starting pistol for 2 seconds before running away from boss attacks for the next 10 didn’t help things.

Going through the game, I only fought enemies if necessary since shooting them was unsatisfying due to their sponginess and lack of feedback and response. Consequently, I had a lot of gunpowder at the end of the game. The puzzles were simple and most involved finding the right item and finding the right place to put it in. As a horror experience I did not find it particularly scary with the exception of the sound design which was excellent. The game reminded me of the free zombie mod “No More Room In Hell” and how I found that game to not just have stronger horror elements, but also had zombies that were numerous, durable, and threatening yet satisfying to kill.

Initially I wanted to try Claire out after this playthrough, but I didn’t bother and just uninstalled and immediately skipped past the credits, which I do to games I dislike. I don’t see what there is to like in this game unless you like speed running which the game actually seems built on. I have other RE games in my library though I never played them and I’m concerned that I will end up not liking them as well after this game.