Can't Touch This: Resident Evil 2 Remade In UDK
For educational purposes only
Resident Evil 2 was my favourite of the early Resi games. Sure, its predecessor was the more iconic, and Resident Evil 2 contains not even one Barry Burton or sleeveless vest jacket, but Resident Evil 2 was my Resident Evil. Until Resident Evil 4, of course.
So here's something very neat indeed! A fellow Resi 2 fan, Rod Lima, has seen fit to import the game's assets into the Unreal Development Kit and recreate the game - purely as an educational project to assist in his learning the UDK ropes. So no, you can't play it.
As well as rebuilding the game in a fancy modern engine with improved models and textures, he's also added a co-op mode. I'm far from convinced that a co-op mode adds to the survival horror experience, but on the other hand I'm not convinced that Resident Evil 2 is still scary anyway.
News of Lima's project did the rounds early last year, after he liked some of the results of his work enough to upload a few videos. Since then he's received hundreds of comments from people requesting he share his remake project - which he has, sadly but entirely sensibly, refused to do. I'm fairly sure Capcom wouldn't look kindly upon it.
A full playthrough of the game is now available on YouTube. It's the next best thing to actually being able to play the remake. My, it does look prettier than the lumpy old PlayStation original.
You get all the original cutscenes too, which might disappoint some. Personally I find Resident Evil's approach to storytelling so fundamentally naff that crude 90s CGI only enhances its charming cheesiness.
At an hour and a half long this is also an impressive playthrough - not far off the original game's speedrun records. I guess after recreating a game in a different engine you're going to know it pretty darned well.