It's finally here everyone! The REmake everyone (at least fans) have been waiting for. Resident Evil 2 has released on current gen consoles, and it's more than we could've ever hoped for. That being said, I am especially looking forward to playing this one, as Resident Evil 2 is one of the few games that hold a special place in my heart. I already brought this up a couple of years ago, but looking back I feel like I didn't do my nostalgia for this game justice. Nor did I actually tell about how much trouble I went through to even get RE2 to begin with. So today I'm going to do just that.
To recap my previous post, the Resident Evil series was something I got into on a whim. I was sitting at college playing on my laptop before class, and I felt the urge to look into a "new" game series I could start. At that point I had already checked out quite a few major ones, so the list of ones I was willing to try was quite limited. Then out of nowhere I remembered that Resident Evil was a thing, and shortly after I was at the wikia page doing research. I also had quite a few friends who were already into the series as well, so it wasn't hard for me to find out everything I needed to know before I decided to buy it. So needless to say, I liked what I heard, and I started coming up with a plan on how to buy these games.
The thing is, getting the RE games back then wasn't that easy for me. Although I was in college (so I was an "adult"), I still lived at home and that limited me somewhat on what I could do. We didn't have the best internet (a few hundred MB took me hours), my job didn't pay a whole lot so I was limited on how much I could spend, and I kept most of my money as cash rather than depositing it. So if I wanted to buy anything online at the time, I had to take an extra trip to the bank, and my parents would see whatever it is I deposited/spent because our accounts were connected. Now why was this a problem you might ask? Because Resident Evil wasn't exactly the type of thing they would've liked. Now sure, at the time I was an adult and could make my own decisions, but at the same time I didn't like to do things that made things awkward at home. Even so I still really wanted to play Resident Evil, and I felt it was worth the risk.
Now I don't completely remember how it went down, but when I had the money required in my bank, I told my parents about some really good gaming deals on Amazon, and let them know before hand that I was thinking about buying some things. They gave me a "why are you telling us? Just buy it!" type of answer (as I was hoping for), so that's what I did. Bought Resident Evil Zero, REmake, and 4 for the Wii. After I told them a similar story for Resident Evil 2 on the PSN store, and once again I go ta similar reply. This made it so they knew I was in fact getting some things, but they had no idea what. Now I know, it sounds like a stupid kid plan and all, but that is pretty much what I was. A dumb kid. Sure you might think you're all grown up around the age of 18 or 19, but trust me... You have a long way to go. Anyway, with all of that settled I then went off to download my copy of RE2 to my PSP, as well as to my PS3. It took quite a bit of time (again, my download speed was BAAAAAD), but eventually the download finished on one and I was able to transfer it over to the other. Although I would've liked to play it more on my big screen TV, I used my PSP simply because it hid the game from everyone around me. Although in general I did prefer handhelds, PSP games were often hard to see on such a small screen, and that made it a bit of a challenge to play. I pushed on though, and eventually completed the entire game before my Amazon orders even arrived.
The thing for me about Resident Evil 2 though, is that it made me realize horror games weren't what I had initially thought they were. I was scared of anything called a "horror" when I was younger, and even looking at Resident Evil scared me. Blood and guts got to me, and I wouldn't even LOOK at the screen when I saw my friend playing similar games at his house. Of course by this point I had grown out of that (in fact the crime drama Bones was one of my favorite shows that I actually watched with my family), but still. When I went into RE2 I was expecting non stop horror that would give me nightmares, and make it hard for me to progress through the game. That wasn't the case though. Instead the zombies/monsters were nothing more than a threat of me losing progress if I died, and the game itself focused more on the puzzle solving and the mystery of what had happened. It kept me invested from start to finish, and only a handful of jump scares actually made me jump. Even then it never did freak me out though, and that's what brought me to give the horror genre a try. Although I did have issues with the tank controls at first (as I knew I would considering the few minutes of RE3 I played at my friend's house was hard enough), eventually I got used to them and they stopped being an issue. Once I passed that point though, RE2 became one of my favorite games of all time.
I really can't say more than enough about Resident Evil 2. It was the game that introduced me to Resident Evil, and one I could always go back to and still have fun. I loved the characters, the story, the setting, and pretty much everything about the game. It made me even more excited to play the later entries in the series, but even then they never fully replaced 2 for me. Sure, I did prefer the 3D camera and controls from later entries (I'd also consider Revelations 1 one of my favorites), but 2 was a special game. Now with RE2 finally being remade in 3D as well, it has become everything I could only dream it'd be. It's a game I can't wait to play non stop once again, and I can't wait to experience all the new content that awaits me. Thanks Capcom, you made one of my dreams come true.
