This Tokyo Games Show 2018 proved to be a good edition in most aspects. There was an abundance of good titles to try out, and some of the new AAA games were definitely worth a look. Capcom did not disappoint with the long-awaited Resident Evil 2 Remake. It was directly playable at the show. Resident Evil 2 was probably the best Resident Evil so far: it was basically 2 games in one: Leon and Claire get separated at the beginning and go on their on way to survive: and you can decide to play each one’s own stories. Better even, on PS1 when you had completed both stories, two alternative stories for both characters were unlocked, making it worth it to do the whole game again, with several key differences with the original episodes. Seeing the same situation under the eyes of 2 different characters was always a great concept, and it looks like this remake is keeping all the good stuff.

The demo had segments from both Leon and Claire’s stories, and I played the Leon demo. Capcom certainly does not use the word remake lightly, as pretty much everything has been redone here in some way, including characterizations and some elements of the story. The opening of Leon’s story has a creepy haunted house vibe, with a flashlight being the only source of light for much of it. Not sure about the voice acting yet, but Leon at least has a few believable rookie cop moments, such as quietly assuring himself he has “got this”, right before he very much has not. Here is a video we took of Claire’s part as well (not us at the gamepad):

Combat and movement are both quite similar to Resident Evil 4 and 5, although the swimmy laser pointer has been replaced with a fairly standard expanding reticule. There are still a number of mysterious locks and scraps of paper with scribblings of symbols that appear to be relating to another puzzle, so Capcom have chosen to maintain this aspect of the older game, it seems. Some aspects of inventory management seemed onerous, like asking the player to combine, and confirm they want to combine, ammo when picked up. Hopefully this doesn’t make it to the final game. On top of that, it was suggested that the combat knife could deteriorate with use, so hopefully this doesn’t manifest as overly tedious busywork. There are also wooden boards scattered about that can be nailed to window frames, though I didn’t encounter a situation where that really helped. Looks like there could be moments where you’ll make things easier on yourself later by barricading potential entrances for the zombies. At least on the show floor you were safe from wandering zombies…

RE2: Remake was available to play on PS4 at Capcom’s booth and PC on other booths. On PC the keyboard and mouse controls were either disabled for the demo, or are simply not present.

This is one of the titles that we will probably not see as a “native” title on Linux, but we can expect it to work with Steam Play/Proton at some point in time. Hopefully soon after release, which is currently planned for January 2019.