Resident Evil 2 speedruns are incredibly optimized. From the opening seconds of the Capcom horror game to the climactic, wild dash to the finish, a single misjudged line or errant shotgun shell can ruin your world record attempt. But with rumors swirling of an RE Code Veronica remake, and the original RE2 almost 25 years old now, it seems we’ve discovered the magnetic, spiritual opposite of speedrunning, as one Resident Evil 2 player and streamer manages to finish the entire game without making Leon Kennedy take a single actual step – as opposed to speedrunning, a hypothetical ‘slow walking,’ as it were.
There are a few handy exploits in the original Resident Evil 2. If you tap the aiming button while holding down ‘shoot,’ for example, you can vastly increase the handgun’s fire speed. Similarly, tapping and releasing the shoot and aim buttons when you’re using the sub-machine gun allow you to fire it and inflict damage but without using any ammunition.
It is also possible in Resident Evil 2 to move without actually, you know, moving. When you press the button to make – in this example – Leon ready his weapon, it moves him an imperceptible but tangible distance in the direction where you’re aiming. Ready the weapon, lower the weapon. Ready the weapon, lower the weapon. Repeat this enough times, and you can navigate the corridors of the RPD building and beyond without ever using the ‘run’ key.
And that’s exactly what ‘Punchy,’ a devout Resident Evil player and speedrunner, has managed to achieve. Without taking a single, actual step, Punchy completes the entirety of Resident Evil 2’s Leon A scenario. Final time? 13 hours, 34 minutes, and 14 seconds. You can see Punchy’s breakdown of the run (or rather, not run) below.
Of course, as well as the agonizingly slow movement, not being allowed to use the walk or run button presents some other, more immediate challenges. Take the crocodile boss, for example. In a typical game, you’d just turn, run to release the gas canister, and blow it up with one bullet. Not possible here – Punchy has to stand his ground and use the aforementioned submachine gun trick to try and kill the croc before it one shots him.
Likewise, the very ending, after you’ve defeated the Birkin boss and need to escape the Umbrella lab before it explodes. Typically a formality – you have about three minutes to make it from the elevator to the train, a mere one corridor away – becomes an excruciating, against-the-clock, slow-motion waddle. Using the recoil from the enhanced shotgun and the enhanced magnum, Punchy is able to progressively launch himself backwards, but it’s not enough.
On the verge of giving up, the intrepid streamer discovers one final trick that helps him complete this Sisyphean gaming challenge – if you aim the magnum down instead of across, you get a little extra propulsion, allowing Punchy to nudge Leon over the line and into the ending cutscene before the timer expires.
It’s an incredible feat of both ingenuity and patience, and perhaps the finest Resident Evil 2 slow walk that I’ve ever seen. Well done, Punchy. Now, I wonder if we could pull off the same trick in that Code Veronica remake that Capcom is seemingly considering.
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