H
eading into this lavish
remake, I had my
reservations. My
assumption was that
much of the original’s
retro strangeness wouldn’t hold up
in the harsh light of HD graphics
and modern sensibilities.No amount of clever streamlining
and updated controls could make its
Scooby Doo-esque police station,
replete with elaborate statue-based
puzzles, an impressively stocked
library, and secret underground
passages, make sense. The original’s
setting, though deeply atmospheric,
was a product of an era when we
expected less logic from videogame
settings. Transplanted to 2019, and
invested with so much more detail
and realism, how could it possibly
maintain the suspension of disbelief
that’s so vital to truly tense horror?
And yet, I think that weirdness is
its greatest strength. Raccoon City
indeed doesn’t feel like a grounded,
real place, but it doesn’t feelincoherent either. Instead it’s almost
dream-like, a world that at first
glance seems mundane, but houses
no end of strange mechanisms and
creatures behind the facade.BRAIN DAMAGE
I’d thought of Resident Evil 2 as
B-movie horror, but this reimagining
feels like something more surreal. As
I descend into a sprawling industrial
space beneath the station, there are
hints of Day of the Dead, but I’m
reminded more of the Silent Hill
series’ transitions from everyday
spaces into nightmarish realms.
Even its denizens feel more
archetypal than biological. An
enormous reptile dwelling in the
sewers. A hulking stranger that
simply follows you. Savage hounds
that roam abandoned streets. They’re
more like urban legends than escaped
test subjects. Even the zombies feel
unearthly in their relentlessness.
Are Leon and Claire lost in some
urban purgatory? His anxieties over
starting a new job unravelling into a
nightmare where he has to shoot past
the undead, then solve a convoluted
logic puzzle just to open his desk?
Her need for familial connection
reflected in a lost little girl trying to
make sense of her dad turning into a
horrible eyeball monster? And which
one subconsciously associates sewers
with chess?I have met these people. I have
been this boy. I have dealt with the
quiet judgement—the banal malice—
that is a countryside village. You
might think the gardener of the first
act is just a nice man tending to his
beds. But I know his shed is filled
with the footballs of every child who
kicked one over his fence. The
developers might be Australian, but
they clearly know what we’re like.
They have seen us with our
broadsheets and our rakes. They have
lampooned us, good and proper.
But then, a goose! The goose is the
perfect foil. It’s a harbinger of
disorder, stripping the falsehood of
civility. It is wrong in a way that can’t
be ignored. I can say with confidence
that there is not a goose in your
garden right now, because, if there
was, you would not be reading this.
You would be dealing with the fact
that there is a goose in your garden.
HONK!
By letting us be the goose, we’re given
permission to take a break from our
own social obligations. Hating people
can be exhausting—the sheer mental
effort of constructing a justification
for your disdain that holds up to even
the smallest of scrutiny. But Untitled
Goose Game gives permission to cast
off the flimsy code that keeps us from
tearing each other apart and lets us
celebrate in the mentality of petty
jerkdom; the sheer joie de l’oie of it all.
Fuck that gardener and his simple
toil. Why? Because goose.
ROBIN VALENTINE
THIS MONTH
Developed a lifelong grudge
against Mr XALSO PLAYED
Unavowed, Disco Elysium,
The Outer WorldsExploring RESIDENT EVIL 2’s nightmarish otherworld
“Are they lost in an
urban purgatory?”
Honkedy-honk!THE GAMES WE LOVE RIGHT NOW
NOW PLAYING
Of course, the most unrealistic
thing of all is Leon’s surreal haircut.Honk!