I played Episode 1 of Rev 2 yesterday and the game is a mediocre 7/10 at best title that feels like the kind of game some no-name developer making a generic RE clone would make.
I don't get the praise. Is it just lowered expectations coming off the last few years of shitty RE? The last RE I played was 5, since people said 6 sucked and never got around to playing Rev 1 or Operation Racoon City.
The whole time I was playing Rev 2, I kept feeling like I must be missing something for how to make the combat enjoyable, because from what I experienced, the combat was janky ass shit. And as a huge horror fan whose played almost all the RE alternatives in the genre, I know that shit combat is a pro in horror games. But the thing is, in horror games with shit combat that are actually creepy/scary...there's nowhere near the amount of forced combat that's in Rev 2. I mean most shitty combat horror games you can just run past everything and conserve ammo/items and use them only when you have to. But from my experience with Rev 2, most of the time, aka every other room, you have to kill a handful of enemies. So it's a game that's still fairly action heavy (though obviously nowhere near the RE4/5/6 school of good combat action-heavy REs), yet has terrible combat, which is a pretty damn awful combination.
And that's not even getting into the forced 2p co-op that was already super terrible in RE5, but at least it was manageable and you could handle almost everything on your own. In Rev 2 the only way to "conserve" ammo is to either be a goddamn perfect shot or to play the "let's try to constantly change characters while shine stunning with one and then hitting with the other and then back to the first one and down strike" which in motion is a jankfest, especially because your partner AI is dumb as fuck. If you try to save ammo and run for it, they love to get trapped between two zombies in a zombie sandwhich or run into fire or some other dumbass thing which you gotta go back to save them for.
On top of that there's the usual godawful RE writing/story that you can't give a rats ass about, and the level design is pretty uninspired/generic. So what's left is awful unfun combat, forced co-op changing, an uninteresting story, not particularly scary/creepy and bland/boring level design. Wait, how is this anything other than a mediocre RE?
I mean The Evil Within has problems (like, serious, serious problems in encounter design and balance), yet TEW is 10x a better "old-school" RE experience. It captures the atmosphere, has good combat and survival conservation mechanics, has an interesting compelling story, is creepy and has some interesting levels/areas. RE Rev 2 just feels like shovelware in comparison.
Although I'll fully admit maybe I just "didn't get" the combat. Maybe there's some hidden tricks and commands that make it fun. I'm sure in 2p with another human being it's fairly enjoyable with one character stunning and the other attacking. But with the cpu, it's just painful. Oh man and so glitchy. That last room for Claire in ep1 with the flame and a billion guys, the first time the enemies just walked through the flame like it was nothing, cornered me and Moira and killed us both. Did not leave a good impression.
