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Resident Evil 6 review

Game: Resident Evil 6
Platform: PlayStation 3
Genre: Action (Horror)
Developer: Capcom
AKA: BioHazard 6 (JP)

Reader review by zippdementia

December 04, 2012

Somewhere amidst the zombies, the parasites, the secret organizations, Resident Evil has lost itself. You can tell that Capcom wanted Resident Evil 6 to be big; an homage to sixteen years of fandom. The problem is, they don’t know who they are appealing to any more. Fans of the old games? Fans of the new games? Fans of the--god help us--film franchise? Is Resident Evil a survival horror title? Is it an action title? Is it a third-person shooter? Is it a stealth puzzler? Disparate as all of these definitions might sound, Resident Evil 6 tries its damnedest to fit all of them in. Seven characters are featured in four different campaigns, each one trying so hard to be different from the other that even the menu systems change between campaigns.

The result? Depending on your love for the series (and whether you have a friend to play with), Resident Evil 6 is either a complete mess of a game or one good game amidst three bad ones.

First, the good. You can move while aiming (I can hear the cheering across three continents). Also, cooperation has been worked more into the design since Resident Evil 5. Many situations now call for branching paths where one player is providing cover fire for the other or activating switches and events to clear the path. You can also better distract enemies, leading to nice bait-and-switch tactics where one player leads a horde straight into the gunfire of a second player. And while you can’t take advantage of these thrills so much with an AI partner, at least the computer has thankfully been improved. In fact, it’s almost been improved too much--the computer partner has great aim, can’t be killed, always pulls off insta-kills with its melee strikes, and has infinite ammo. I prefer a human ally, but at least the game is playable on single player, any difficulty.

Now some of the bad. The quick weapon select has been replaced with a weapon scroll, which will often leave you accidentally selecting the wrong weapon in the heat of battle (it’s how I wasted all my Magnum shots in Chris’ campaign). The weapons upgrade system has also been completely removed. This upsets me to no end, as one of the best things about Resident Evil 4 and 5 was unlocking new guns and boosting them to be ridiculous. Here, it has been replaced by an idiotic skill system, in which you choose three skills to equip for each mission. It’s idiotic because there simply aren’t that many good skills. I found the best skill set early on: increased firepower, increased defense, increased ammo drop. I’m not the only one: a quick tour around the FAQ boards shows that about 90% of the players use this. So that’s a wasted illusion of strategic choice.

The biggest bad is a little more complicated and gets to the issue I was talking about up front. There is no consistency between the four campaigns, so what you’ll like about one won’t carry on to the others. For instance, if you’re looking for action, you’ll want to pick newcomer Jake Muller (who you’ll quickly discover is the son of Wesker and apparently Capcom’s bid for the main character of Resident Evil 7). Jake teams up with the long-absent Sherry Birkin and uses a flurry of martial arts moves and combos to punch enemies to death; whenever he’s not being chased by tanks, helicopters, and a Nemesis-style villain who is nigh unstoppable.

Chris has been relegated to the shooter route. He is teamed up with new character Piers and together they get involved in a lot of shoot-outs against J’avo, which are almost exactly like the Majini and the Ganados--except they have even MORE of a tendency to use guns. Think of Chris’ campaign as a poorly executed Gears of War rip-off and you’ll get the basic idea.

Fans of survival horror are going to feel most comfortable with Leon’s story. Stuck in the Raccoon-esque city of Tall Oaks with yet another new character--Helena--Leon deals with the classic Resident Evil enemy: zombies. His campaign also throws in the most references to the old series, with nods to the G-Virus and Resident Evil 2 in particular. It was my favorite of the campaigns, not least for its use of dynamic lighting to create some intelligent scares: like a series of terrifying shadows in an abandoned subway station announcing the eminent, frenetic, arrival of a hoard of flesh eaters.

Even Ada Wong makes a playable appearance. In an odd departure from the other campaigns, her mode is single player only and features what I think of as “the leftovers.” Anything that wasn’t used in the other campaigns is haphazardly shoved in hers, from puzzles to a helicopter flight simulator.

I’ve already said I have a favorite campaign; yet it doesn’t mean that I think it is a perfect campaign. I don’t know that there is such a thing in Resident Evil 6. For instance, while I enjoyed the design of Leon’s campaign the most, I found his story to be beyond emotionally unsatisfying. It was barely coherent. And Chris’ campaign had a surprisingly moving and well-written story, but was painfully dull to play through. On the other hand, Jake and Sherry controlled best and were the most fun to play (and most interesting characters), but had stupid boss fights and utterly boring enemies. And Ada’s campaign had the best mood and use of graphics but was, like I said, a mess of leftover ideas.

That takes us back to the main point: Resident Evil doesn’t know what it wants to be. I think it wants to be an action shooter game, and I even believe that one day it will achieve this goal. What’s confusing, though, is that it hasn’t achieved it already. We all thought Resident Evil 4 was a transition title away from survival horror into action. Some of us complained, some of us celebrated, but no one denied that it was a fantastic action game. So why the step back? Why is it taking so long for this series to reestablish itself?

If anything, Capcom should have had the easiest time making this one a good action title. There are many good action games in the horror genre to draw upon now. Resident Evil 6 isn’t breaking enough ground to not take a few pointers from titles like Dead Space 2 and Left 4 Dead. Yet it’s almost like the Capcom developers gave themselves amnesia before locking themselves in their cubicles. I first had this thought while playing the online “Agent Hunt” mode. In this mode, you join a player’s game as a monster and try to kill them. Again, we’ve seen this in both of the previously named titles; there’s no reason it shouldn’t be good here. But it’s not. It sucks.

Playing as a monster in Agent Hunt is about as intuitive as speaking R'lyehian. Every monster controls completely differently and you switch between the types randomly, with little chance to get used to the new controls. Depending on the level, you may start the stage right next to the players (in which case they can kill you as you spawn) or miles away--in which case you’ll end up spending most of your time getting to them. And remember, they have long range weaponary. Your chances of actually getting close enough to attack are slim. A couple stages work alright; mostly in Chris’ levels, which are set up with plenty of cover to hide behind and tight spaces to trap players. But the zombie stages in Leon’s campaign are ridiculous. Try maneuvering a slow, shambling, zombie across a long stretch of open terrain while Leon snipes at you with a rifle. It’s like getting to play the targets in a shooting gallery. Fun.

The main Resident Evil franchise has yet to produce a truly terrible game. There are enough moments of fun in Resident Evil 6 to make it a passable experience, but not enough cohesion to make it a satisfying, well-rounded, experience.

The executive producer, Hiroyuki Kobayashi, has defended Resident Evil 6, saying, "we do listen to the fans but we can’t be beholden to them at every turn or I don’t think we’ll ever make progress in terms of the series’ development.” But is this really a defense? After all, what progress has been made here? In many ways, such as in Agent Hunt, Resident Evil 6 is three steps back--but in most ways, it’s not even that. It’s three steps in different directions. No progress has been made here because there isn’t a clear destination.

And that’s a big problem; one that needs to be fixed if the series is really going to move forward. It’s not the fans ruining this franchise. Capcom, you have control over where this goes, now you just need to take it somewhere.

Rating: 6/10

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