If I may get real for a blog that tends to be less emotional or personal:
My oldest cat died at the end of February. She was 17 years old, and was suffering from kidney failure, as old cats often do. About nine years ago, we adopted a pair of stray kittens who we think were born just outside our building. She was never a big fan of them, especially after they both grew significantly larger than she was (she had been a runt in her litter). Still, she mostly tolerated their presence until she started to slow down in her own age, and I think she began to fear that she couldn't defend herself if the younger cats got rough with her. So, we started to keep the cats separated, with the older one in the living room (our apartment is a weird Frankenstein creation of what was meant to be essentially a studio and a small two-bedroom, but which is officially a "three-bedroom" counting the whole studio as one).
She had her own space, but the sad thing is that for much of our time together (she had been one of my roommate's cats before we all moved in together) she liked to park herself on my bed for much of the day if I was at my computer. Just as a matter of where I happened to be most of the day, she didn't get to hang out with me as much.
So, I actually made a conscious effort to play more video games and spend more time in the living room, where she would inevitably park herself on my lap.
The last game I was playing when she was still well enough to hop up there was Resident Evil 2's remake, which I started blogging about here. She sat with me as I puzzled my way through the RPD.
When she died, I was down in the sewers, having beaten the second or third (whichever comes right before the Nest) Birkin fight. I hadn't really felt up to returning to the game since then. But I guess this must be a sign of grief being processed.
I played through the entirety of the Nest in one sitting, basically, the high-tech Umbrella laboratory that is the final act of the game. As I generally understand, RE games tend to shed their classical horror trappings in favor of sci-fi stuff toward the end. But I think that it's less jarring here than it is in 4 for a couple reasons:
The first is that the general setting is less separated out from sci-fi horror. While 4 evokes centuries-gone folk and gothic horror aesthetics in its first and second acts, RE2 is a modern zombie story, with no real suggestion of the supernatural. The RPD is an insane gothic structure, but I suspect not to the extent of the Spencer Mansion.
The second is that it's quite short: as I said, I did the whole thing in one sitting.
Indeed, I was surprised to see that my total play time was something like 8 or 8 and a half hours, though I believe the clock stops when you're in your inventory screen, so the actual time is probably a lot longer.
Also, the game is intended to be played twice, so it also makes sense that it wouldn't be overstuffed.
It's interesting that the end of the game has a true point of no return - several times over the course of my early game, I figured I must have hit such a point. Given my other experiences in the genre - the remakes of RE4, SH2, and Alan Wake II, only the latter actually allows you to backtrack to nearly everywhere you've been, but in a lot of cases (especially Alan's side of that game) you don't really have a reason to do so.
In SH2 in particular, the various "dungeons" you pass through are kind of puzzle-boxes that you peel back and open up over time, but each is a discrete experience, and once you leave them, you can't go back.
RE2 is built (I imagine much like the first game) almost as a single contiguous puzzle box, and until you go to the Nest, you can still go all the way back to the grand hall of the RPD if you want to, and I believe you do need to do that after accessing the garage and then the sewers below.
That's actually really cool, and makes it feel distinct from something like RE4 - where you're encouraged to be economical with your resources, but the game is still taking you on a grand tour of the area, rather than making every last room feel like it really counts.
I will say, I think the RPD is a fantastic location, and I actually liked the Nest. The sewers felt like they went on too long. It just wasn't as cool and interesting. Your time in the RPD, with the rain falling outside, the zombies bashing at the windows (I kept wondering if the boards you put up were only temporary, and always waited for that one zombie by the stairs to burst through, but they never did).
I also made quick enough work of the Nest that I never really felt very threatened by Mr. X's patrols (I also didn't encounter him more than a couple times in the sewers). I think the moment he becomes active is after you've solved the big puzzle in the botanical laboratory, after which there's very little to do other than to just go to the other wing, which is more or less just a cutscene and a boss fight.
As I understand it, in the original game, Claire and Leon's stories were totally separate from one another (I think Mr. X only shows up in one of them) whereas here they overlap a little to make each playthrough more substantial. I'll be curious to see how that works out.
Anyway, when the credits rolled, I thought of my beloved departed kitty cat. I'm sure she had very little concept of what I was even doing (if I had to describe it to a cat, I'd say "it's kind of like when you chase the laser pointer dot around, but for humans"). I'm going to miss playing games with her on my lap.
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