Though we somehow managed to defeat Nessy, we’re not in the best shape. Coughing up blood is never a good sign. And yet, David Phillips and I still need to get the key to the church, so we can rescue the President’s daughter.

So we best get to work.

One of the things I can’t help but notice as I play through the game is exactly how tightly controlled the drip-feeding of resources is across the campaign. It’s not that ammo or healing is scarce. In truth, there’s plenty of it to go around, but the game does an excellent job of making us feel like we’re always low on ammo despite that.

Though I wasn’t involved with the design of the game, I would guess that the secret lies in the items that enemies drop as they’re killed. If the game sees that we have plenty of ammunition, enemies are more likely to spit out money when they die. However, if we’re running below a certain threshold, it starts to loosen its grip on our ammo count and starts putting ammo, gunpowder, and crafting resources in the loot table.

That fosters an illusion that we’re running low, just barely scraping by, when in truth Resident Evil 4 is holding an almost bottomless supply of resources to the side, waiting until we need them to throw them our way. We’re in much less danger than we actually are, and it’s important to the tone and the tension that it remains that way.

It’s the balance of a horror game. The player needs to feel overwhelmed without actually being overwhelmed. Like any work of art, it’s a well-crafted illusion that elicits a powerful emotional response. The game doesn’t want us to fail, but nor does it want us to think that the adventure is too easy, lest we get bored.

Looks like something nasty is in that lake, but if David Phillips and I want to get to the church to look for Baby Eagle, then that’s where we need to go.

No better way to end a recording for a remake of an old PS2/Gamecube-era game than a classic video game boss fight.

As silly as it may be, it’s also quintessentially Resident Evil. The game wouldn’t feel right without that layer of goofiness spread on top.

You know what’s like to play Resident Evil. David Phillips and I are shooting infected and solving puzzles, but not necessarily in that order.

Give us a real threa… Oh okay.

I can’t stress enough that a large reason why I’m having no trouble on this second playthrough is that I started with highly upgraded weapons and equipment, and a maxed-out life meter. In a normal run of Resident Evil 4, these enemies would be significantly more threatening than they are.

And with luck, we’ll be able to keep up this breezy pace we’ve been going at throughout the run so far.

Our hunt for Baby Eagle has begun, and already some strange and unusual behavior has been detected in the locals.

Hopefully, that’s not an ill-omen for either myself or David Phillips.

Something that impressed me while playing through this version of Resident Evil 4 was just how tight the resource loop is for the game. I assume there’s some algorithm in the background making sure that players only get ammo when they’re running low, but even then it always feels like a fight takes up the vast majority of our resources.

And yet, once we scour the battlefield after the fight, we find that are almost exactly enough resources to replenish the ammo and health we consumed in the fight and no more.

I can’t imagine how much work went into making sure that lines up so perfectly and consistently.

Now that we’ve wrapped up Uncharted 2, it’s time to take a break from Naughty Dog in order to play something a little more current.

Not too current, since that would be off-brand for me, but still something released this year. Since we played the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3, it’s only natural that David Phillips and I continue with the remake of Resident Evil 4.

To set the ground rules, this isn’t like the Resident Evil 2 run where I was going in completely blind. I have already beaten the game on my own. This is a New Game+ playthrough, bringing in my inventory from the original run to give us an easier time playthrough again.

However, I am unique in that I never got around to playing the original Resident Evil 4 on any of the various platforms it is now available for. On the other hand, David has. So he will be helpful in understanding what changed between the original 2005 release and this more modern incarnation.

Starting with how this opening sequence in the village is different because of the sheer volume of enemies that spawn during the encounter. Because we don’t have the awkward tank controls of the older version, the only way to make this fight feel as tense as a new player’s experience with the 2005 originals would be to increase the number of enemies coming at us at the same time.

It’s smart, and as we progress I imagine we’ll see a lot of other smart changes to the game.

Now that we’re finished with Uncharted 2, let’s sit back and chat for a minute about the game.

And that’s a wrap, folks. See you next week for Resident Evil 4 (2023).

It’s all or nothing. There’s nowhere for us to run to or hide. If we don’t stop Lazarevic, we’ll be in for a world of trouble.

So let’s ruin his day. FOR JEFF!

This is only the second final boss for an Uncharted game, but I hope you’ve started to see a pattern with them. This is definitely a step up from the disaster that Navarro’s boss fight was in Drake’s Fortune, but it’s still not good. And higher difficulties only make it worse, since Lavarevic’s shotgun deals far more damage.

That said, we’re officially done with Uncharted 2. Once we have our post-completion final thoughts and discussion, we’ll move on to our next game: Resident Evil 4 (2023).

At last, the road to Shambala has finally revealed itself, but what awaits us on the other side? And what are we going to do about the madman intent on using it for his own ends?

Would I eat the resin if I knew it would transform me into a superhuman hulk like the guardians of Shambala? Why, yes. Yes, I would. Leave me alone, it’s a fantasy.

Having said that, there’s something to be said for a villain who is just evil, without any redeeming qualities whatsoever, like Jack Horner from the recent Puss in Boots movie. Lazarevic is just an irredeemable monster who openly hails vile tyrants like Hitler and Pol Pot as “great men”. There’s no reasoning with the man, as he gets his way largely through cruel audacity. It makes taking him down all the more satisfying. Nothing messy about it.

Schafer may be gone, but whatever he was trying to keep the Nazis away from is still here, and it’s close to falling into the hands of a madman.

We have to stop him. For Jeff!

One of the funniest aspects of video game puzzles is how they need to be simple enough for the average person to solve them without difficulty. And because of that, when our protagonist solves one, it feels less like they’re very smart and more like the rest of the people they hang out with just aren’t that smart.

Uncharted 2 tried to remedy this by both making the person actively competing with us, Harry Flynn, out to be someone who isn’t too bright even in-universe, but also by having all the answers locked away within Drake’s notebook, taking the place of Sir Francis Drake’s diary from the first game.

Yet, I don’t know how effective that tactic ultimately is. Sure, it makes sense with something like the statue puzzle in Nepal, not here in the monastery though. If Harry had just tried to play around with the blocks, odds are he could have stumbled into the solution by sheer dumb luck. Even I figured out one by accident before opening up the journal.

It’s not a big problem at the end of the day. Just another one of those little quirks of video games.

As we continue to storm the monastery, we get ever close to finding Schafer and the secrets of Shambala. But more than that, we may finally get the chance to avenge our closest friend: Cameraman Jeff!

Something I didn’t notice until I replayed both Uncharted 1 and 2 on stream is how well both games foreshadow their big supernatural elements while keeping the details close to their chests until the late game reveals.

They call just enough attention to details like the black teeth that most players will pass right over them, but on replay, it’s clear that they’re hints as to what might really be going on. It’s executed well and the team should be commended for the deft hand with which the reveal was seeded.