Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (PC) review "Res-flavoured L4D."

Operation Raccoon City. "The Ugly Duckling" in Resident Evil franchise. The precursor of the changes that the Resident Evil franchise has experienced. Changes that shook the RE fanbase to its very foundations. Changes that haunt people to this day. Changes that made people who accepted them to be shunned and called heretics or even worse - casuals.

No more classical steady aim, it's run and shoot now. Dodge and and squeeze the trigger and let God sort em' out. This is the game that set new directions and gameplay changes that were the backbone of Revelations and RE6 gameplay mechanics.

No more "jump-scare-conserve-your-ammo" scary, instead it's "get-into-cover-and watch-to-not-get-overwhelmed-by-whatever-the-game-throws-at-you-while-you-keep-throwing-grenades-and-blind-fire-like-crazy" scary. And dodge. Always dodge. Especially when fighting against T-103's and MA-124's. Of course there are some jump-scares still but if you played Resident Evil before they are as predictable as they always were.



If you're an RE fan - remeber how you used to go back time and time again, either to fix some random tram wire, use a key or get that morgue door open to get the gun? Forget it, there is no going back this time. There's no puzzles either. The only puzzle you'll ever have is trying to understand and cope with the teammates AI - especially if you'll try to play offline. When the AI teammates are just your group filler it's slightly better - but only at a statistical margin of error. I guess they do their best to keep it real and die as often as possible to enhance your feeling of hoplesness and despair just to keep up the biohazard zombie horror appocalypse theme.

Playing with real people, now this is where the fun begins. If you get a well oriented team that know the ropes, feel and fill their roles, you can have an almost action movie experience - the one the subpar Res movies never gave you. Otherwise you can feel like a one man hero, real wolfpack leader, trying to save the day. Or at least try to and fail miserably and be ensured that this is just a nice zombie fairy tale and in real life it's impossible to survive it without teamwork and dealing with other peoples selfishness. (You bastards picking up first aid kids when I'm a medic and I can heal you better with them than you can heal yourself - I'm pointing at you)

And don't trust your teammates too much; in the end you will find out that they might not feel the same about what you've all went through.



Despite receiving many negative reviews both from the players and the press this game is not as bad as it seems so don't believe everything you've read or heard. Personally I believe that this is one of the most underappreciated games of these few last years. When it comes to Resident Evil franchise. Sure, it falls out of canon - in terms of gameplay - but it does that well in order to be what it is.

When it comes to storyline it's non-canon too, a hypothetical scenario, but the way it's presented, the mix of real protagonists and antagonists, revisiting places from RE2 and RE3 can make you feel like it's the story untold. The story is about a desperate attempt to cover up the greatest viral outbreak in the whole Resident Evil franchise, something that a company like Umbrella - with its both private and government funding and with its own special forces and R&D divisions - would most likely attempt to cover up. And that's where you step in as the cover up team alongside your favourite Umbrella Security Service cleaner HUNK (guest appearance in RE2 cinematics, many RE games extra modes and first mision in ORC)

There's also the DLC that allows you to play the gov side that tries to investigate the outbreak on their own and assess the situation - I've found those missions are tougher and more challenging, but its good to see both sides of the story.



This game was meant to be a step into another direction, away from mainstream series and it did it well. Imagine a Left4Dead game with third person perspective and an Resident Evil theme - that's Operation Raccoon City. Does it have replayability value? That depends. If you like to play better and better the same scenarios with different random people - just like in L4D - then sure, it has great replayability value. If you want to just do a co-op with random players once in a while - sure it does. You want some sense of achievement? Sure there are guns and skills to unlock. It will get extremely repetitive at some point though, but if you are a RE fan and you love Raccoon City as the best RE setting - you will enjoy coming back, even if its just once in a blue moon.

Community review by izu (October 16, 2017) Make Your Dreams a Reality!