[REVIEW] Resident Evil 6

Mat Paget
(PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 [REVIEWED], PC)

The state of Resident Evil 6 is almost depressing. Actually, the state of Resident Evil in general. A series that most, including myself, held in such high regard has truly never reached the lows it has in the past year. Resident Evil: Revelations and Operation Raccoon City didn’t raise too much of an alarm, as the former was mostly well-received and the latter wasn’t developed by Capcom, but the series has seen a decline in quality with each title. In fact, if you recall from my review of Revelations, I toyed with the idea that the future of the series was in grave peril. Little did I actually know, I was pondering the truth: Resident Evil 6 might quite possibly be the worst in the franchise so far.

Now, first off, the game’s story elements are still as great as ever. The voice acting is superb, the cutscenes are well-orchestrated, and the visuals are the best the series has seen so far. The actual story, however, is not any of the above. There’s a new virus threatening the world, and the story is told in the perspective of four separate campaigns. Leon and Chris return with a brand new partner for each, while Sherry Birkin, the little girl from Resident Evil 2, is all grown up and partnered with the mercenary Jake Muller. I would spoil Jake’s big “reveal,” but Capcom already did so — I also don’t want to ruin it for anyone who may have missed all of the trailers.

Anyway, the biggest issue with the story is it’s not as focused as its predecessors. It doesn’t take time to develop any of the individual character’s storylines, and it jumps from location to location, making it difficult to connect to the newly-introduced characters, as well as get attached to the area you’re making your way through. And the lack of information you’re fed throughout is disappointing, and hurts the story more than makes it “mysterious.” In fact, there’s a lot of important information locked away in the Special Features that could have been elaborated on in the story. These tidbits can be collected by finding and shooting Serpent Medallions. These aren’t exactly easy to find if you’re not actively searching for them, and the game doesn’t exactly make you want to play through it a second time to look.

“I know I wasn’t in Resident Evil 4, but you totally remind me of Ashley.”

Now, before I get into talking about playing the game, there are some multiplayer options. There is both cooperative and competitive multiplayer in the campaigns, and both are actually pretty awesome in concept. Throughout the story, you’ll come across characters from other campaigns and get to work together to face off against whatever threat is posing itself at the time. And the characters you meet up with can be played by real people going through their campaign at the same time. Yes, that also means you’ll be playing through the same part twice if you decide to go through all four campaigns. And that’s not very fun, especially in Jake’s campaign where there are quite a few instances where this happens; thankfully, they’re not very long, and I found them to be much easier the second time.

On the other hand, we have Agent Hunt, which is the competitive part of the campaign’s multiplayer. It puts you in control of an enemy, and gives you the task of killing the players. Once the players have been killed, you win, and are given the choice to continue searching for new players to screw over. If you don’t succeed in killing them, however, you fail. It’s a pretty simple mode, but it’s not one I would want to spend a lot of time with. A lot of the enemies aren’t fun to control, especially the zombies, and there are very few creatures that can get the upper hand on a moderately-skilled player. It’s a lot of waiting until their back is turned, then going in for the kill. But when you get that kill, it’s really satisfying to know that you sent some poor soul to a game over screen.

The campaign itself is a mess; clocking in at 25-30 hours, it’s twice as long as it needs to be. It’s also a lot more action-packed than any entry in the series before, but the clunky controls making a return cause it to be especially frustrating to play. And that’s only the beginning. On default settings, you’ll be using a crosshair with a laser-sight in the middle for aiming. This sounds fine until you actually see it in action; the laser doesn’t stay still, and sometimes even strays outside of the actual crosshair. Switching the aiming setting to the laser-sight that was found in Resident Evil 4 and 5 feels a lot better, but doesn’t magically fix anything. Another problem that comes up is the lack of ammo, which I find hilariously ironic. The ammunition shortage doesn’t fit the game’s pace, or action, and it becomes exceedingly evident when you don’t have any thanks to the bosses being complete bullet-sponges.

Chris is NOT in the mood.

And there are a ridiculous amount of quick time events used in even more ridiculous ways. There are times where you don’t have to perform a QTE, and it’s honestly really surprising. The biggest offender is definitely Leon’s campaign, as there are times when you’ll need to perform one to climb a rope by alternating both shoulder buttons; a lot of them could be less annoying if it was just a simple direction with the analog stick. Some of them get to the point that if you even let up for just a second, you’ll die; there are a lot of times where I started mashing the button with all my might before the actual event started, just so I wouldn’t fail it again.

Players better also be ready to succumb to seemingly random deaths. There were countless times where I was wondering whether it was a cutscene that was supposed to happen because I literally had no idea how I died. The deaths can pile up in this game, and yes, you will most likely swear at the top of your lungs. There are quite a few set pieces throughout the game, and instead of looking amazing, the camera and controls weigh them down to annoyances. The chase scenes are especially annoying, as there are times where they demand absolute perfection, or you’ll die. And if all those deaths aren’t enough, it’s quite common to die immediately after being rescued. But none of these are quite as vexing as being knocked down from an enemy bullet; it may be realistic, but it just makes the game excruciatingly annoying when it happens as regularly as it does.

There are some user-interface annoyances, as well. During Chris’s campaign, you’ll have a completely different options menu to deal with, and it’s a mess compared to Leon’s, or Jake’s. Instead of a simple grid with the different selections laid out for you, it’s a circle that is harder than it needs to be to navigate. Along with this, the new herb system is completely ridiculous and unnecessary. First off, you must mix the herbs; no big deal at this point. This is where it gets a little silly. Instead of selecting the herb to heal yourself straight from the menu, you must first store it, then hit the designated button the appropriate number of times to fully heal yourself. This just feels unnecessary, as there’s no reason to not heal yourself completely if you have the herbs to spare.

Zombies might be back, but the quality is missing…

The weapon upgrades in this game are completely missing. No longer can you increase the capacity, firing power, or reload speed of any gun you happen across. In its place, there’s a new skill system where players can buy, and assign, up to three skills at a time. These include increasing your firepower, decreasing the recoil, having stronger attacks against certain enemies, and increasing the chance of items dropping. This is fine, but the weapon upgrades made the game an absolute blast to play through multiple times. The skill settings just don’t carry that same weight in replay value. It’s an unfortunate, disappointing change.

But not everything I have to say about this game is negative; there are some good ideas and improvements in store. One of the most appreciated is the partner system. You no longer have to worry about your partner’s health, or inventory — if you did, the game would probably be responsible for a few broken controllers. Another improvement that’s worth appreciating is being able to shoot from the ground, which makes getting rid of enemies that are in your face considerably faster and easier. Also, the Mercenaries mode makes a return, and is just as good as it has been in past instalments. The best of all, however, would have to be the finishing moves players can perform on enemies. The best ones consist of wrestling moves. No further comment needed, as far as I’m concerned.

As you can see, it’s a game with a few good ideas that are quickly forgotten by the myriad of issues the game suffers from. It’s actually quite depressing; Resident Evil is one of the franchises I hold dearly to my heart. There isn’t a game in the bunch that I haven’t loved — well, until now. None of the issues I have with this title, however, have to do with it not being like a Resident Evil game. Videogames evolve; that’s just how it works sometimes. But Resident Evil 6 is not only a departure from almost everything people have come to expect from the franchise, it’s a departure from the quality that the series has become so well-known for. If you’re heavily invested in the series, you might want to wait for a drop in price. To everyone else? Well, as attractive as the game may look, I’d suggest spending your money elsewhere.