While Umbrella Chronicles was a bit of an acquired taste, I found I enjoyed this game pretty much from the start.
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| I played the PS Move port of this on my PS3. |
On its surface it isn't a huge departure from its predecessor, they're both on-rails lightgun shooters that recap existing RE games while adding some new context and story sequences, but the structure of this game simply worked for me. Umbrella Chronicles felt more arcade-y in that high scores were your aim if you wanted to progress while this game, ending notwithstanding, just flows like a standard video game campaign.
Because I didn't need to worry about hitting an S rank in the tougher stages, I could simply let my first experience with it be my only exposure to it. I absolutely could still go back and try to S-rank every mission, or try to get every collectible, but, personally, I liked thinking of this as a single-player campaign that just-so-happens to be a light-gun game, rather than the arcade cabinet that Umbrella Chronicles felt more reminiscent of. This game is also a bit easier, or at least more generous with checkpoints, which contributed to that change in perception.
As for the content of that single-player campaign, much like UC, it was a lot of fun to play through. While that game recapped RE1 and 3 and added a new Jill/Chris scenario, this one recaps RE2 and Code Veronica and adds a new frame narrative of Leon and Krauser in South America prior to RE4. It was cool to revisit Raccoon City and its police station for the umpteenth time, and it was neat to see Code Veronica through the lens of a better lightgun game than Survivor 2.
Hearing RE4 Leon's voice, Paul Mercier, voice come out of RE2 Leon is a bit jarring at first but you get used to it and it ultimately helps sell that both of those games are led by the same guy. This game's CV retread recast Steve with Sam Riegel, and hearing his voice is always fun for me, but they also recast Alfred and I really missed his original voice. Or, well, I missed his original laugh. On the subject of its presentation, the pre-rendered cutscenes look better than I thought they would. For some reason, I had lower expectations for a(n originally) Wii game, but these look on par with the CG movies*.
I didn't play more than a few minutes of it so I don't know how elaborate it is, but there's also a "secret" tofu mode that, uh, has you shooting man-sized blocks of tofu that are wreaking havoc through the streets of Raccoon City. I doubt there's much depth to it but it felt worth mentioning.
Since I don't feel like sharing each individual clear screen, here are the screens that show my rank for each mission in the game. I've also included my overall stats screen.
This game isn't perfect and I doubt I'll revisit it in the same way I might some of the other games, but it's a good time and worth playing if you enjoy the series (and have a way to play it). I've enjoyed seeing the way that Resident Evil has kind of been doing soft remakes/retellings basically since the series began so I greatly enjoyed going through the motions of RE2 and Code Veronica again.
*I intend to watch those CG movies at some point but I'm not sure whether I want to get to them between games, as they were released, or if I should wait and watch all of them back-to-back as a sort of coda to this journey I've put myself on.
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