Completion Time: 20h:18m:00s
Rating: 9/10

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Back to Raccoon City

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Back to the ol’ Resident Evil well with this one, but we’re starting to get into familiar territory for me once again. I was a late joiner to the Resident Evil franchise, but the benefit of the RE2 and RE3 remakes from recent years has allowed me to experience the general beats and mechanics of this title. Of course, those were remakes, not remasters, so there were many additions and modifications that I’m not gonna experience jumping headfirst into this game here. And these games are always a pain in the ass to complete, with different ranks and unlockables depending on criteria for finishing the game multiple times, I have no doubt that this is gonna get frustrating for me, even if I end up enjoying it in the long run.

Get ready for more mindless running into walls and clicking wildly!

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X Gonna Give It To Ya

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If we’re strictly looking at the games that I’ve played for this blog series so far, this is quite a departure from the previous two entries story wise. We have a split narrative with two different characters experiencing events simultaneously and every now and then affecting the environment with their choices. This is more like Resident Evil 0 in a way, though that game had you PLAYING those characters simultaneously in what should have been a more stressful gameplay decision than it ended up being. Here the stories and campaigns are effectively separated despite everything. You can play as rookie cop Leon Kennedy, arriving for his first day on the job in Racoon City amidst a devastating outbreak, or Claire Redfield on the search for her brother Chris (from the first game and many more to come). Leon will eventually team up with agent Ada Wong, Claire with child Sherry Birkin, and you have small sections where you briefly play as those two companions as well.

It's terrifying playing as a little girl that can barely climb

The game is structured similarly to the first, with you starting in an unassuming building after fleeing danger and eventually making your way down, down, down into a secret facility run by Umbrella. Or, in this case, down and to the side as you board cable cars that zip you from the sewers to a factory and finally to the lab zone. The puzzles are a bit more restrained here, with added focus on grabbing an item and placing it in a particular spot. There are what I would consider “traditional” puzzles here and there, though those always feel better encompassed by the Silent Hill series, at least the early entries. Here you always go around and check the environment to get ahold of pieces and parts that need to be placed in other locations to unlock or operate other pieces or parts without the added puzzling element of a riddle to solve or something. That isn’t always the case, of course. The painting with the gear lodged into it comes to mind, and that took me longer than I’d like to admit to parse through. But everything else regarding navigation is a breeze. Combat is where things can get tricky.

Even pushing a box can be considered a puzzle!

The zombies have a bit more variety this time around, with lickers and these weird grabbers populating the area early on. We have dogs, which are a hallmark of the series in these earlier games, and even crows that turn hostile at moment’s notice. And that’s for whoever you play as in the A campaign. The B campaign character will have to deal with the dreaded Mr. X stalking you throughout the building! I have to say, this is one of those instances where the remake kind of spoiled X for me, in a way. They had the technology to make him an ever-present threat in the remake, always walking around the building and popping in on you when you least suspect it. As I continued playthrough after playthrough, I realized that the original was scripted, with a couple of encounters to make you feel like he could be anywhere, without holding to it. The aforementioned gear puzzle room was the one caveat to that, as that’s where he busts through the wall as you attempt to make your way out of the hall, and that really caught me off-guard. I feel like William Birkin, who posits himself as the final boss due to his injection of the G-virus, is a much larger threat throughout, as he keeps coming back for more and never seeming to stay dead. It’s only after you take care of an A and B scenario back to back that you get an extended, playable ending where you can take him out once and for all.

Quick, someone change the channel!

I like the way the simultaneous campaigns were set up to work in this one, as it allows you to see two sides of a story as it unfolds, without relying too drastically on lingering effects. There is an earlier portion of the game where you can unlock a door and take one of two items, leaving the other for the B scenario character, and that’s nice. Additionally, there’s a room in the final lab that you can partially unlock with your fingerprint, but only the B character can reap the rewards of the room that it eventually unlocks. These are manageable without being overwhelming, and the ability to change which character experiences which scenario lends a lot to the replayability. Getting to use the grenade launcher against enemies you weren’t able to previously is fun, you know!

To the Claire goes the spoils

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Completing the Game

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You can play through Leon A and Claire B OR Claire A and Leon B to your heart’s content, but you need to worry about perfecting your runs and getting higher ranks to end up with those unlockables. The better you get, the more special “unlimited ammo” weapons will appear in the chest for your runs, such as the rocket launcher. As I mentioned as well, you can fight the final boss by doing this as well! Of course, using these items will keep you from getting A rank on campaigns (at least that’s what I read, so I full on avoided using them). Perfect your speed, reduce your number of saves, and frankly refrain from using first aid sprays as much as humanly possible and you’ll end up working your way into an A rank in no time. Doing this for a Leon A, Claire B (or Claire A, Leon B) run will unlock the HUNK mode, and this is your first step. This shorter scenario sees other surviving agent “Hunk” doing a mad dash from the sewers under the station up to the helicopter landing pad on the roof as fast as you can while being assaulted by enemies from across the game. All you need to do is beat it, I wouldn’t worry too much about your rank here. Seriously, his inventory is limited and so are pickups, and the timeframe is so incredibly tight. Despite my absolute best efforts, I couldn’t get higher than a C. I’m bad at Hunk mode, clearly, but as far as I can tell better ranks don’t get you anything, which is good for me.

Hope you still have some decent grenades to fire out!

OK, you’ve gone through and beaten the game at least once, and presumably a second time for the “B” scenario that accompanies it. Now go through that same process twice more on the same file. Yes, at least 6 of these runs back to back to back so that you can get… HUNK mode again! Only this time, it’s TOFU mode. You do the same thing, only the enemies are way tougher, the timeframe for ranks appears to be even tighter, and you play as a sentient block of tofu that only has a combat knife at his disposal. The worst part of this mode is just trying to get around enemies so that you can keep with the pace of the clock as it continues to tick upwards. Dying isn’t too much of a concern if you can be aware of what’s coming in the next room, because tofu is a giant sponge for damage basically, it’s hard to take him down. Which is fitting, since it’s also hard for him to take other guys down. But once more, make it from the bottom of the sewers to the roof of the police station and you’ll make it out.

Glad we could make it-- TOFU, NO!!!!

The last big thing of note is probably the Extreme Battle Mode. You unlock this simply by beating an A and B mode (either one) on Normal difficulty, which must be the simplest unlockable in this game by far. You start with the ability to play as either Leon or Claire, both with a specific set of weapons, and its up to you to start from the end of the game, make your way AAAAAALLLLLLL the way back to the police station, and then hunt down to find and plant 4 anti-virus bombs. Beat it once and you unlock Level 2 and the ability to play as Ada Wong, beat Level 2 and you get the final Level 3 and the boss himself: Chris Redfield! Finally! In each increasing level you get an uptick in difficulty, because the random assortment of enemies changes as you go. By the time you get to Level 3, the demented form of William Birkin is constantly appearing in rooms and charging at you, and boy it’s a pain. There is nothing further to unlock here regardless of your rank, so just play it and have a good time.

Chris and a Rocket Launcher is a combination straight from heaven

Lastly, I wanted to touch briefly on former S.T.A.R.S. agent-turned-zombie Brad Vickers who, once you’ve finished the game, can be found wandering around outside the police station on normal mode. If you can make it all the way to the police station without picking up any items, and then kill Brad (who is a true bullet/knife sponge), you’ll get a key that opens a previously sealed locker in the save area adjacent to the west wing stairs leading to the second floor. You can get costumes for Leon and Claire in this locker, and I had a fun time playing as bad boy biker Leon for my remaining time in that run. Not an unlockable that persists or carries, necessarily, but a fun bonus that I wanted to touch on. That’s not even touching on the infamous photo you can find by checking a desk drawer 50 times, but is that an unlockable? Nah, more of an easter egg, really. Maybe the costumes count as easter eggs too then since they don’t stay unlocked. Hell, I don’t know.

Sorry Brad, I need that biker's jacket

Resident Evil 2 might be what I would consider the high point of the franchise by far. There are plenty of titles before and after this that I like quite a bit, and I think Resident Evil 4 is a close runner to this one in terms of quality, but that game certainly puts more emphasis on the action elements of the series while this is closer to the purest form of the survival horror experience. Having played Resident Evil 3: Nemesis in its remake form, I still feel confident in saying that, but we’ll see how I respond to the original when I no doubt get around to completing it next October. Hell, I’ll run out of Resident Evil games on the GameCube at this rate!

This is another entry in a series where I go through and complete every GameCube game, as it is the largest part of my video game collection. GameCube Games: 47/652