Despite all the trouble Discord’s outage caused, we still managed to get together and continue our adventures in Resident Evil 2.
This time, we traverse the dreaded sewers. I was told to that this is one of the toughest areas in the game, so I was a bit nervous.
I have… mixed feelings about the horror genre. As one can see, I don’t often actually get all that scared. However, I can’t deny that a find a lot of the core design principals frustrating.
Some of that is intention, and to be expected. I could hardly blame them for limited ammo, strong enemies in tight spaces, and restrictive inventory space requiring resource management. These add a layer of tension to the normal gameplay. Personally, I enjoy feeling as if I’m barely surviving against overwhelming odds. That doesn’t bother me so much, especially since the helplessness is such a well crafted illusion.
No, my irritation comes mostly from the puzzles. Perhaps I’m just bad at them, but very often they seem needlessly obtuse. I spend most of my time with a guide open just so that I won’t get lost (to which David is serving as GameFAQs’s stand in). Further, they often require a lot of complex navigation in spaces between all of that. It’s confusing to say the least.
It makes me wonder if I just don’t like the genre, or if there’s a way to get the tension I want without all that wandering and getting lost.
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