visited this thread and found this dusty old draft from a few months ago. looks like i spent some time on this so, uh. here you go. my dusty old thoughts on re2make:
i keep starting and giving up writing a long post about RE2make (mostly summarizing and sorting through thoughts i’ve broached in several posts in the G.Y.P.T. thread starting on post #1812: games you played today chronicles X: ten things I played about you - #1812 by meauxdal) but i’ve basically decided to scrap it because i couldn’t get it reading the way i wanted it to read, and such an effort kind of demands a more thorough accounting of the game than i have time or energy to give it - i’m forced to rely on vibes and extrapolation and this game is a bit too complicated on multiple axes for that to be sufficient
in one sense i pretty unambiguously love it - in the absence of the game it is remaking, i don’t think i’d have much to quibble with. i’m having quite a good time playing it overall.
but with the original title still looming as large as ever in my mind and having just played through significant portions of the N64 and Dreamcast ports recently, it’s unmistakable that something in me vehemently rejects aspects of the remake. it unexpectedly (given the meaningfully consistent consensus of it being good even here) fails to inoffensively settle atop a pedestal of greatness apportioned for it
i find these understandings of the game to be effectively non-synthesizable. i can and have pointed to many things about the reimplementation that i dislike, foremost perhaps the over-the-shoulder view which feels ill-integrated mechanically compared to the tight line-of-sight management the area layouts were designed around. but it’s the holistic experience that ultimately informs my inability to fully love this game despite being similarly unable to fully hate it