Anyone who’s played Capcom’s excellent remake of Resident Evil 2 will shudder at the name of Mr. X. While most of the enemies in the game are shambling animated corpses that are relatively easy to avoid, Mr. X is a hulking, practically unstoppable monster who actively stalks you through the game world. He’s a genuinely terrifying presence, with the mere sound of his thunking footsteps nearby causing intense feelings of dread. But it seems that things can get even worse than we thought.
Speedrunner BeastGamingHD encountered a rather scary glitch while attempting their S+ hardcore difficulty speedrun. As you can see in the video below, the player expertly uses flashbangs to disorientate Mr. X, slipping between his fingers with consummate ease. But perhaps the game realized that this individual didn’t seem to have a problem with him anymore, spawning another Mr. X as retribution.
The moment at about 1:35 on the video in which Claire is trapped in a corner with two giant killer zombie men bearing down on her is probably the most screwed a player’s been in a while, and needless to say, she’s soon mushed into a fine paste.
While I can’t say I truly like Mr. X, he certainly delivers the goods by scaring the absolute crap out of me whenever he’s nearby. I was a huge fan of the criminally underrated Alien: Isolation which used a similar mechanic, and having a horrible unkillable monster actively hunting for you makes for some very stressful, nail-biting gameplay. Fortunately, Resident Evil 2 has an incredibly smart adaptive difficulty, so if you do start running out of ammo by firing everything you have into Mr. X, the game will stop spawning him for a while.
Of course, if the rumors are true and Capcom remakes Resident Evil 3: Nemesis next, we’ll then have to deal with an even more enormous and terrifying creature hunting us, this time coming equipped with its own rocket launcher.