Stream: https://youtube.com/live/9NKJpj7Z5wM?feature=share
My intention was, as part of RE:make Month I was going to finish this and then squeeze in RE3 remake, however, I had forgotten exactly how massive RE2 was (considering it has 4 playthroughs) but I had a great time with it and I over-ran into the next month, however, I kept up to make certain to get all of these stories done and out of the way!
The paths diverge quite a lot, with different weapons in the same locations:
Leon:
Starter - 9mm Pistol
Police Armoury - Shotgun
STARS Armoury - Lightning Hawk (This game's Magnum)
Sewers - Chemical Sprayer (Flame Thrower)
Claire:
Starter: .35 Pistol (Multiple ammo types with upgrade, high-power rounds can't be crafted)
Police Armoury - Grenade Launcher (Multiple ammo types. Fire and Craftable Acid rounds)
STARS Armoury - Submachinegun (Uzi essentially)
Sewers - Sparkshot (a weird weapon that fires taser-prongs and can roast an enemy with enough charge, but you need to take the time to charge)
Also, depending on if you're doing the 2nd run on Leon or the 1st on Claire, you get access to a six-shooter repeater that gets no upgrades, but fires quickly and takes it's own .44 ammo, which isn't craftable on either character. I didn't like this very much, but used it as a way to extend my resources and keep going.
Like the first remake, they managed to be fairly faithful to the main story beats and somewhat similar in the design of the police station; however, some puzzles are made different for less item-intensive ones, nor are there any statue-moving ones, which works considering Mr X could pop out of anywhere and tear you a new ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. X Gonna give it to ya, indeed!
Unlike the original, It's still either Birkin or Mr X chasing you at any given moment, whilst in the original it was either Birkin or a mutated offspring of his instead, which doesn't really appear in this one apart from in the form of rejected clumps of flesh that were dumped in the sewers.
A great improvement is changing from fixed-camera angles to a more free-form 3rd person view like RE4 which allows there to be a bunch of fun hidden gems through the whole game, but the game still has plenty of terrifying moments where zombies or BOWs could be lurking around any corner. Especially as places get updated with new enemies in a few areas.
They did a great job with Mr X, though unlike the original, you don't see him dropped from a container and he is, instead, just there. Loud, but also quite with his stomping footsteps as he not only follows you, but also tries to find you by searching the station room-by-room (saw a video of this guy using his camera to break the boundries and yes, Mr X does actually search the whole station for you when he doesn't know where you are, but, when far enough away he does so at double the speed.
His presence adds a whole new tension as he can also hear you running and firing your gun, meaning you can potentially draw him over to your location by defending yourself, which will put you in a real difficult situation. Especially between running from him and getting jumped by a licker or walking to avoid the licker whilst he punches you with all the force of a heavyweight boxer!
With the expansions to inventory, it feels more forgiving in some ways, however, the difficulty is still there as these expansions aren't all easy to find and require quite a bit of rooting around to get them, which isn't always that easy. Especially with Mr X tracking you all over the place!
I also liked how they made it more obvious that Chief Irons was a monster, long before the outbreak happened. His journal made it obvious that he was a useful tool for Umbrella, being extremely cruel and hunting people for sport. He even set it up so that his own officers would struggle with dealing with the waves of infected. Partly to protect himself and partly to laugh his ass off at their deaths, I'm sure.
This was a really good remake, keeping certain things the same, but not afraid to branch out and try to change things up a little to make them more entertaining and fun too!
