Definitely One of the Hardest Resident Evil 2 Feats To Pull Off
A Resident Evil fan & speedrunner named “CarcinogenSDA” recently posted on YouTube an impressive Resident Evil 2 playthrough on the game’s hardest difficulty (Hardcore Mode) without taking damage even once. The lengthy three-hour playthrough can be viewed below.
In an interview with COGconnected, CarcinogenSDA explained just how he was able to pull this playthrough off.
CarcinogenSDA told COGconnected that he had received a pre-release copy of the game from Capcom a week before it launched which gave him plenty of time to get a feel for how Resident Evil 2 works. According to the speedrunner, it took him two days and “14 saves of routing, testing, and recording” to accomplish this no-damage playthrough of the game.
When asked how difficult this was to do, CarcinogenSDA described the experience as “tough”. “Subsequent No Damage runs have gotten easier after other players made discoveries,” he explained. “Routing out anything is about players researching stuff and sharing their contributions. When you’re unable to work with other people (except maybe other people who also have pre-release copies) then you don’t have many tools in your box except what you can do on your own.”
“Ultimately there are better, easier, more consistent strategies within Week 1 of the game’s release,” he continued. “All I did for mine was plot out the fastest way to get from point A to point B while also getting all the extras like inventory upgrades and weapon upgrades.”
“Any in-game event progression tied to enemies (bosses) is routed by getting everything up to that point and experimenting,” he added. “I had the Steam version and unlocked framerate, but I didn’t think to try the knife, which is currently the most broken thing there is.”
CarcinogenSDA also said that he’s currently working on another Hardcore Mode playthrough as the game’s other protagonist, Claire, and he recently posted another Resident Evil 2 playthrough on that difficulty in which he achieved the game’s highest rank: S+.