Resident Evil 2 is getting positive reviews from both critics and fans. I’ve been playing the game and I have to agree with most folks thoughts on the game. The RE2 remake feels like a wonderful mix of classic Resident Evil gameplay and modern Resident Evil mechanics. But I don’t see as many people praising the graphics menu in the PC port of Resident Evil 2.
It’s a perfect example of how these types of menus should work and more games should have settings like RE2.
I recently bought a new computer after years of not having a rig that could run modern games. Now I can finally play new releases without my computer buckling and catching on fire. But while I enjoy PC gaming, I’m not as knowledgeable with some of the more technical aspects and terms.
I know what Vsync means and how resolutions work. But when a PC game has a setting for something like “Mesh Quality” or “Chromatic Aberration” I usually have to go and check Google for what that means and how it affect the game I’m playing.
Resident Evil 2‘s graphics menu solves this problem and makes it easy for any player to quickly figure out what all these things mean and how they will affect gameplay.
In the settings menu, RE2 shows players screenshots showing how the setting you are changing will alter the game. It is a simple and effective way to show the player what their tinkering with. I wasn’t really sure what lens distortion would affect and so I flipped it on and off and I could visually figure it out in a few seconds.
Another great feature of this menu is all the different bars representing how demanding each setting is. I have a solid video card, but my processor isn’t amazing. So these bars let me balance the game’s settings.
Unfortunately I’m running into a bug that shows I have zero graphics memory, but still seeing the numbers change in real time as I mess with settings helped tremendously.
Best of all, you can change all of these settings and not have to restart your game. GTA V has a similar graphics menu, but almost every change requires a full restart of the game. Which is annoying. RE2 lets me change stuff on the fly and instantly get back into the action.
Resident Evil 2 isn’t the first game to have a robust and easy to use graphics menu, but far too many PC games seem to ship with limited settings or menus that don’t visually explain what you’re changing.
Hopefully in the future we will see more and more games with robust and useful graphics menus.
Comments
12 responses to “Resident Evil 2 Remake On PC Has A Fantastic Graphics Menu”
Much better than having to change settings, reload the game, and see if the hit to performance was worth the graphical improvement (or vice versa).
I wish all PC releases of games had this, it is so handy.
My favourite example is ghost recon wildlands. This one looks pretty nice too, though perhaps the picture showing what it looks like could be a bit bigger.
“affect” not “effect”. Use your journalism skills to look it up.
I wouldn’t comment for 1 but there were heaps!
Capcom really stuck the landing with this game in every single sense. Almost, almost every single inch of it’s perfectly made. The graphics menu was an utter pleasure to use 🙂
Its a divergence, but I’m quickly realising that Capcom sorta fucked up with the actual game itself. Not enough to break it (I’m still playing thru atm on my third playthru, lol), but enough that it probably should have had a few review points knocked off it.
Also, don’t bother putting textures above high, texture sizes above that are just supersampled, not actually higher quality.
How do you think they messed up personally?
Some small things, like being unable to unload a gun.
Some bigger things, such as Easy and Normals Adaptive difficulty being broken to the point that Normal can often be harder than Hardcore, and weapons having a very poor feel, never knowing if a shot will stun, or if the enemy will power thru it and fuck you up (let alone some of the ridiculous amounts of shots some enemies take).
And some more major one’s, like completely ignoring the wider city itself before arriving at the Police Station, with B campaign being particularly egregious considering it just drops an hour or so of game time down the drain to fast forward you to when the chopper crashes. I also don’t know how I feel about having Mr X on the A playthru, I’ve had two friends sorta freak out at this point and stop playing. If they were allowed to play thru A scenario without X like in the OG, I feel they’d be better equipped for B.
It’s weird, because I disagree on almost everything here. I think the weapons all feel different and in general they feel good. i think not being able to rely on the shooting formula of RE2 adds a lot to the game (I spent all of classic RE2 counting shots. Three quick shots for a knockdown, then two while down = kill. Use the pistol to stunlock dogs in their getting up animation. It became more like a process loop than a game). The lack of surety of kills means you have to use limb damage in a smart way to immobilise rather than relying on kills.
The wider city is part of Nemesis, not really RE2. Scenario B is already longer than A without the police station run at the start (S rank is 3 hours A and 3.5 hours B). Mr X is only in the game for short stretches and he stops you feeling safe during the latter parts of the police station after you’ve mostly cleared it.
Fair enough that he’s stressful for new players, but it’s a learning curve. Just like everything else, you keep your head and figure out the coping mechanisms.
Whilst formulaic combat can be an issue, I’m not sure anyone can say fighting lickers is in any way fun, and putting down zombies becomes an exercise in how quickly can be reticule tighten for bonus aimed crit chance.
And whilst you argue on game length time, I think its pretty jarring just being dumped into the police station on B.
Yeah being cutscene-ed into the station was weird, but you already know the trip into the police station once you’ve played the game once. I like a game that doesn’t waste time. Also, a lot of the trip to the station from original B is now included in the trip to the place after the station, which I really liked because it gave you a bit of the city to see that’s unique to scenario B. Now they both get entirely different parts of the city.
Fighting lickers isn’t really fun. It’s scary, though. They’re mostly in places as choke points, so you have to fight them, but you get the advantage of choosing your positioning and weapons if you’re quiet about it. In my second run, I focused much more on using the weapons as immobilisers than straight out killing zombies. I found I used much less health and ammo. I feel like the game needs a totally different mindset to the original and the later games it borrows from. You have to play it a bit like 4th Survivor mode.
I feel like there’s plenty of content, too. My first play through was Leon A and I took about 8 and a half hours, Claire B was about 7. Once I finish Claire A, Leon B I’m thinking those will be 5ish each. Then there’s 4th Survivor, weekly challenges, and 3 story DLCs coming. There’s a lot there.
God unloading the gun wouldve been a godsend…
And ta for the texture advice 🙂