Beating Resident Evil 2's One-Shot Demo Totally Doesn't Require 30 Minutes

It turns out that the Resident Evil 2 "1-Shot" demo isn't as limited as we initially thought. Folks have already figured out how to bypass the trial's 30-minute time limit while others are simply beating it really, really quickly. It turns out you only need about three minutes to beat the entire thing. Check it out.

The Resident Evil 2 demo launched last week, but with a couple of stipulations you don't usually see attached to these kinds of game trials. It's called the "1-Shot" demo because that's the max number of times a player will be able to experience it under normal circumstances. When you start playing the demo, a 30-minute clock starts running in the background. When the clock hits zero, your time with the demo is supposed to be over.

On launch day, most folks were clocking in at around 20-25 minutes to complete the demo. Once they jumped back in for another run, they found they only had five to 10 minutes left before the game simply ended with a message thanking them for playing. So, for someone simply trying to play the demo without rushing, you probably only got "one shot" to complete it.

But as it turns out, the demo's timer is attached to your profile, not the hardware. In other words, if you've got a few different profiles on your PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, you could play the demo once per profile. You could theoretically keep doing this for as many profiles you feel like creating. On Steam, folks have also figured out how to finagle their client settings to reset the timer for the demo, but that seems like a much less appealing method of getting an extra run through the Raccoon City Police Department.

But what if I told you there was a way to play the demo 10 times on a single profile? Well, folks like YouTube user JPreemo have managed to do exactly that. All you have to do is absolutely master the chunk of story available in the demo and finish your run in less than three minutes.

That's a pretty impressive feat, considering how well you would need to have the map and interlocking mechanisms memorized in order to clear the RE2 demo in just 2:52. You'd also need to be pretty focused not to let the sound of approaching zombies distract you by accident. And in case you're wondering about JPreemo's decision to play the game in Japanese, folks in the comments of one of his other videos explain that speedrunners frequently play games in Japanese because the dialogue boxes move more quickly.

Of course, this is not the way the demo is "supposed" to be played. While some folks complain that having a time limit on a demo is odd, I think Capcom's goal here was to add an extra bit of tension to the proceedings. If you're taking things at a normal pace, the game goes out of its way to spook players. If you combine that with fear of running out of time, then I imagine the frights will be boosted quite nicely.

If you want to give the RE2 demo a shot, it'll be available on PS4, Xbox One and Steam through Jan. 31. The game itself launches on Jan. 25.