Resident Evil 2 (2019) Catch-All

ccesarano wrote:
Red+Blue herb gives you a buff that halves all damage for about 2-3 minutes. It's great if you know you're going to take multiple hits in a row.

Y'know, I wish the game clarified this. It says the Blue Herb heals poison. I wasn't sure if it's because I played on Assist like a coward or I simply didn't get hit by anything that poisons, but I basically assumed that combining it with a red herb or something simply made you less likely to be poisoned. Knowing that it reduces damage you'll take, I'd have certainly made more use of that.

The G-Adults in the sewers can poison you if they grab you. I think that's it aside from one new enemy in Ghost Survivors. It's a nice addition because all herbs combinations are useful at all times. Green+Red+Blue is a full heal, poison heal, and 3 minutes of damage resistance. You should avoid using lone herbs whenever possible.

Thanks for the tips! I'll start this tonight or tomorrow depending on when I finish Crackdown 3.

beeporama wrote:

I find this weirdly relaxing: you kind of find you're going to die at a certain rate regardless.

That is good to know!

I played through Luigi's Mansion recently, and the entire time I kept thinking that it reminded me of Resident Evil. And now, playing this, I'm struck by how much it reminds me of Luigi's Mansion.

I played the first hour or so of Claire's story, which, because I'm a slowpoke, means I just opened the east door on the second floor with the spade key. I appreciate that the game let me know when I could safely discard the key.

I'm really enjoying this game so far. I'm a little nervous that I'll stop liking it once Mr. X shows up, but for now, I'm pretty absorbed. This is way better than I've come to expect from the Resident Evil series, and it makes me wonder if I shouldn't have skipped 7.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I appreciate that the game let me know when I could safely discard the key.

Out of curiosity, did you ever play REmake? I've seen a lot of people highlight this statement, but that was also a feature in REmake itself. Whenever you no longer needed a key, the game asked if you'd like to discard it. I've been wondering if it's just been that long since other people played that they forgot, or if there's a surprising number of people that never got around to it.

I never got around to it. I own it on PS4, naturally, but I can never quite get it started.

Archipel did a sort of combined feature on both Hideaki Itsuno of Devil May Cry and Dragon's Dogma fame, as well as the two designers of Resident Evil 2.

I've hit the point in Claire's run where I have to activate Mr. X, and I'm nervous that it'll make me like the game less. So far, it's been fantastic: just the right kind of tense, the right level of horror, and a focus on a nice confined space. I have herbs practically coming out my nose at this point, but ammo has been tight because I'm killing everything as I find it. But I've been moving slowly and cautiously through every space, and that's where I'm worried about Mr. X.

I can't think of anything to say, truth told. We've typed a lot of advice on how to deal with him and such, but the play style is about to change for good, which means what you've been enjoying is no longer going to be present.

I didn't know about Mr. X going in, so at first I wasn't aware of the change and didn't like the constant pressure. Maybe some of it has to do with the "community response" I followed online that gave a sense of shared response, but I've grown to feel like the game would not be the same without him. That's about the best I can say, really.

If there's any advice I can give, it's not to worry about thoroughly exploring on this portion of the police station. You'll have an opportunity to go back, in both A and B routes, one last time and Mr. X will be gone, so if you just want to explore the place thoroughly then that's the best time to do it.

Are you low on gun powder in addition to regular ammo?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I've hit the point in Claire's run where I have to activate Mr. X, and I'm nervous that it'll make me like the game less. So far, it's been fantastic: just the right kind of tense, the right level of horror, and a focus on a nice confined space. I have herbs practically coming out my nose at this point, but ammo has been tight because I'm killing everything as I find it. But I've been moving slowly and cautiously through every space, and that's where I'm worried about Mr. X.

A few suggestions.

1) Have you looked up the exact trigger point for Mr. X already? If not, do that. Explore any other avenues available to you before you trigger him and take care of any other threats you can. The difference between stumbling into him unaware and being prepared to the max is huge. I triggered him pretty early during my first run on normal, but I did everything I could before triggering him when I played on hardcore, and his impact was substantially reduced for me.

2) You'll soon figure out that if there aren't other enemies around, Mr. X is much less threatening. You are faster than him. He will never catch up to you unless he corners you or another enemy slows you down. When you're not sure what to do, head to a safe room that he cannot enter, or find a place where you can kite him around in a circle while you figure it out. The main lobby works great for this.

3) When ccesarano says the play style is about to change for good, that isn't quite accurate. He's gonna be on yo ass for a while here, but it's not the rest of the game. In fact, if you do everything else you can before triggering him, you won't have much to do before entering the next area of the game. Mr. X's presence is comparatively sparse after this point.

4) If you really want to give yourself an advantage before you bring him in, you could look up any safe and locker combinations that you may still be missing. They are always the same.

I just finished the game (normal run) a couple days ago. The only times Mr. X was more than a nuisance was:

Spoiler: Mild gameplay spoilers

When there's also lickers nearby and you're trying to juggle between avoiding him and them. Looking back on my time with my good buddy X, it was more about tension and "is he outside the door of the safe room" rather than actually having to deal with him directly much. I think I only had to shoot him to avoid being cornered once or twice. A grenade or two in the face will usually knee him.

Specifically, I'm about to:

Spoiler:

Extinguish the fire in the crashed helicopter.

What I've done so far is:

Spoiler:

I did everything (and killed everything) that I was able to do in the police station prior to activating the goddess statue except for: board up a couple windows on the west side of the first floor, and kill a guy in the library. I've now done everything I'm able to do in the underground facility and the east parts of the police station around the chief's office.

But I've acquired a number of things since the goddess statue that would be useful over in the main part of the police station (the heart and spade keys, mainly, plus some safe combinations) that I'd like to go use, but I was under the impression that the only way to get back over there is to douse the chopper and activate Mr. X. If I can backtrack through the underground facility and go back up through the lobby, I'll do it. :P

Really, I'm just enjoying the progressive-exploration/Metroidvania structure of the game but am not so sure how compatible that is with a constant pursuer.

Oh, and supply-wise:

Spoiler:

I have some flame rounds and acid rounds for the grenade launcher, a couple flash bangs, and a nice cache of 9mm bullets. I've used all the gunpowder I've found so far to make ammo. I used up a bunch of flame rounds in the boss fight in the underground facility. The good news is that I haven't snuck or run past a single god damn licker yet and have only not killed one or two zombies, so as long as the police station hasn't gotten too repopulated, I shouldn't run into too much unfinished business.

Capcom's Twitter has notified of a sale at various establishments. For a limited time get the game for $39.99.

Best Buy ends 4/6
GameStop ends 4/13
Amazon ends 4/13
Capcom Store ends 4/13

Looks like it's only on physical. PSN store doesn't have it listed. However, Sony will no doubt have a Spring or Easter sale (if they haven't had the former already), as will Steam and Microsoft, so it might get a digital price reduction around then.

For anyone wondering, no, I haven't yet been able to go back and trigger Mr. X.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

For anyone wondering, no, I haven't yet been able to go back and trigger Mr. X. :lol:

I finally did last night, and boy, was that anticlimactic. I guess I didn't quite understand how that all worked.

Spoiler: Late game spoilers, Claire A

I didn't realize that by being diligent before triggering him that I wouldn't have much more to do in the police station and that once you leave the police station, Mr. X dies and isn't really a factor anymore.

I also didn't realize that he was so easy ťo avoid. You all tried to warn me, but I didn't quite get that he wasn't so much "run and hide" scary as he was "walk slightly faster" scary. The comparison to Alien Isolation gave me very inaccurate expectations.

I was looking at my playtime of four hours and anticipating another four hours of similar gameplay while being tailed by an inescapable killing machine. I want expecting about thirty minutes of power walking down hallways until Mr. X eats it in a cutscene.

Oh well, egg on my face.

Alien Love Gardener wrote:
Dyni wrote:
Spoiler:

Berkin requiring an extra crane hit to kill. I hate that fight!

He can take 2 on all difficulties, afaik. It just depends on how much damage you deal to him before the first hit.

And yeah, that fight is pretty much the low point of the game. I'm more or less fine with it now that I know how it works, but it's really poorly signposted.

Interesting. I did this fight last night and didn't have any trouble with it except right at the very beginning of the encounter when you're trapped. After that, I felt like what to do was pretty clearly communicated. Of course, that first part gave me my first deaths for Claire in the game, so that was fun.

The part of the game I've struggled with the most so far has been:

Spoiler: Mid-game alternate gameplay sequence

When you play as Sherry trying to escape from the Chief. I felt like where to go and what to do wasn't communicated well at all and mostly got through the encounter by trial and error.

The sewers were fun and had my favorite moment in the game so far.

Spoiler: Late-game Claire A

When the sewers link up with the underground facility and then back into the police station. It reminded me of the unexpected connections in a Metroid game or Dark Souls.

I assume that I'm into the last part of the game now. I got a pretty obvious point of no return warning from Claire. What's the advantage of doing Leon's B route? Will I see new areas and encounters, or is it all the same things in a different order?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I assume that I'm into the last part of the game now. I got a pretty obvious point of no return warning from Claire. What's the advantage of doing Leon's B route? Will I see new areas and encounters, or is it all the same things in a different order?

The second run is a bit more difficult than the first because there's a smaller ramp up towards the introduction of Mr. X. You can still prepare the vast majority of the police station for his entrance, but you'll probably see him closer to hour 1 than hour 3.

Leon has access to a couple new areas in the police station. The heart key is unique to Claire, and the club key is unique to Leon. There's also a section in the mid-game that is completely unique for each character. Leon never meets Sherry or goes to the orphanage. He has a different companion and side story.

Leon also has some different weapons than Claire.
Grenade Launcher --> Shotgun
SMG --> Flamethrower

There's a few other minor differences, but those are the main ones. Locker and safe combos are the same, so you can give yourself an early leg up if you remember the codes.

Edit: It's also worth mentioning that most of the game besides what's listed above is the same. If you're expecting totally unique puzzles as the other half of Claire's coin, you'll be disappointed. You repeat most of the same puzzles that Leon does.

I might be a compulsive saver. Maybe.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/h8CEpl4.jpg)

Wow, Clock. That's putting it lightly I think I just barely passed 30 saves during my first run.

The funny thing is that I only died four times, I think? Not including my umpteen efforts to get through Sherry's section. But only one of those deaths wasn't in a boss fight and so threw me back to a typewriter instead of a baked-in checkpoint. I probably didn't need to save every nine minutes.

I think I get it. in a good horror game, saving your game is one of the only times the tension is temporarily relieved.

So a buddy of mine never finished Resident Evil 5 or played Resident Evil 6, so he and I are beginning a co-op journey through both games on PS4. It's really weird to consider that I played Resident Evil 5 and did trophy hunts with a friend from Wii60.com back when I was in College, which was over 10 years ago at this point. RE5 does not feel like it's over 10 years old, and yet... it's also pretty clear that we've come a long way since. In particular, did you realize how exaggerated the lip movements were back then? You got these graphics striving for realism and then the mouths move like cartoon characters.

But, more relevant to the current discussion, the controls. Going from Resident Evil 2 back to Resident Evil 5 is a major adjustment. Not just in standing stationary while aiming, but in having to hold a button to run, only being able to reload while aiming, keeping track of which button does what while in what stance or state... RE2 is definitely the best refinement of these ideas.


Anyway, more on topic, Capcom posted a series of Roundtable discussions. The first two were during a dinner outing with several lead members of staff discussing the game's development. The second two, the directors of the RE2 remake and the executive producer are joined by Hideki Kamiya, director of the original RE2, to discuss his experience with the remake and their shared memories of working on the original game.

It's a good watch.

beeporama wrote:

I think I get it. in a good horror game, saving your game is one of the only times the tension is temporarily relieved.

I wouldn't have thought of it that way before, but I think you're right. It's also interesting that in the 4th video that Chris posted just above, Kamiya talks about how at one point he got ambushed by a licker and sprinted back to the safe room to save; once he did, he felt like he could relax. So I'm not the only one!

I'm afraid I might have screwed myself. There have been quite a few times when I never heard the head "squish sound" and kept on putting bullets into downed zombies and the sound never came. For some reason the complete dead state is allot harder for me to tell on this one then all the other RE games I have played.

Now I have like 3 shotgun shells and two pistol bullets and there are a bunch of

Spoiler:

lickers?

in the main mansion.

How much gunpowder do you have?

Also: yeah, this isn't a game that's going to make it clear when a zombie is down for the count. It used to be you'd look for the pool of blood, but no such thing shows up here. In addition, the game is coded so that the more ammo you have, the more it takes for a zombie to go down for good.

Which means if you stick to the knife like I did, you'll probably increase the wear and tear on it just making sure zombies stay down for good.

EvilDead wrote:

I'm afraid I might have screwed myself.

All hope might not be lost. RE2 has adaptive difficulty like previous games, so dying a few times might remove some of the enemies, increase the amount of ammo you pick up, and allow you to catch up on inventory.

You can sneak by lickers by walking. Just press forward on the stick without using the run button. If they touch you, sneaking is off, but if they're just walking towards you, you're can continue to sneak by until you're in the clear. If there are other enemies in the area besides the lickers, this obviously becomes much trickier.

ccesarano wrote:

Also: yeah, this isn't a game that's going to make it clear when a zombie is down for the count.

Yes, I would recommend not using bullets to check if zombies are dead unless you have plenty of reserve ammo. Use knives to check if you have them, otherwise, just leave them be and deal with them if they pop back up.

ccesarano wrote:

How much gunpowder do you have?.


Spoiler:

all used up

Thanks for the tips. I'm going to keep pushing but this is going to be tough. A lot of trial and error and hopefully that adaptive difficulty will throw me some bones. Managed to kill one licker that was blocking a needed doorway with a knife.

There was a point when I was doing fine on ammo then fought a boss character, in the basement, then wasn't in such good shape. A bit after that point I noticed that the extra 20% ammo I probably wasted on trying to finish off downed zombies was probably going to be needed.

Dyni wrote:

You can sneak by lickers by walking. Just press forward on the stick without using the run button. If they touch you, sneaking is off, but if they're just walking towards you, you're can continue to sneak by until you're in the clear. If there are other enemies in the area besides the lickers, this obviously becomes much trickier.

Wait, so even if you're walking fast enough for each foot step to make noise, they won't attack? Because every time I encountered a Licker and tried sneaking past I pressed as lightly as I could on the analogue, moving agonizingly slow so that the foot steps wouldn't make any noise.

Would have been much easier if I knew I could at least walk at full speed.

I tried to walk past a licker once, failed, died, and from then on just nuked those f*ckers. I kept explosives on hand just for them.

ccesarano wrote:
Dyni wrote:

You can sneak by lickers by walking. Just press forward on the stick without using the run button. If they touch you, sneaking is off, but if they're just walking towards you, you're can continue to sneak by until you're in the clear. If there are other enemies in the area besides the lickers, this obviously becomes much trickier.

Wait, so even if you're walking fast enough for each foot step to make noise, they won't attack? Because every time I encountered a Licker and tried sneaking past I pressed as lightly as I could on the analogue, moving agonizingly slow so that the foot steps wouldn't make any noise.

Would have been much easier if I knew I could at least walk at full speed.

I think so. It's been long enough since I last played that I'd have to check to be sure, but I'm pretty sure lickers can only hear you if you use the run button. It doesn't actually matter how much you push down on the stick while walking.

Edit: See it in action at 1:50 here:

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I tried to walk past a licker once, failed, died, and from then on just nuked those f*ckers. I kept explosives on hand just for them. :lol:

I usually just killed them too, but I learned to sneak when trying some of the DLC campaigns where they do not give you enough ammo to deal with every enemy.

Wow. Definitely gonna just walk around 'em next playthrough. I think I have video footage (might have deleted it last night, though, to clear space) of creeping slowly away from a Licker, its body slowly creeping and following me until I turned a corner and exited a room. It was a wonderfully tense experience, but now that I know I can just walk full-speed instead of inching ever so slowly...