Resident
Evil 6 is the latest entry in Capcom’s
long standing and storied survival horror franchise. As a huge fan of both Resident Evil 4 and 5 I
had a pretty high level of expectation for Resident
Evil 6 ever since it was first announced.
As time went on and more details like the ability to move and shoot were
shown off I was worried that the game would lose what had made it feel so
unique and special to me in an attempt to become more like every other 3rd
person shooter. While it failed to blow
me away like the previous two main entries in the series did it is still a very
enjoyable title and is worthy of the Resident
Evil name.
Two of the most common complaints levied
against Resident Evil 5 were that it
didn’t provide a strong enough emphasis on horror and that you couldn’t move
during combat. Personally I can
understand the first one, but felt that the combat worked exceptionally
well. The dilemma with these complaints
is that people act like improving the combat detracts from the horror, meaning
that Capcom would have to pick one of
these options and abandon the other. However,
Capcom managed an impressive feat in
that they made you more capable in combat and yet brought back a lot of the
horror elements from past games, proving that action and horror are not
mutually exclusive and that one does not have to come at the cost of the other.
The game’s story is divided into multiple
campaigns, each with a different feel and because of that, some are more horror
centric and others are a little bit more action oriented. Leon
Kennedy’s campaign, for instance, is the scariest of the campaigns with
armies of slow zombies coming after you in the dark. The thing that kept me on my toes the most in
the game was that it was impossible to tell if a corpse on the ground was dead
or undead. They have no tells, so
whenever you walk past a body, and there are a lot of bodies, you have no idea
whether or not they will reach out and grab you. It added an almost constant level of suspense
that I rarely ever have in games that lead to me slowly checking every hall, sweeping
each room and staring at corpses as I walked by to make sure it was safe. On the other hand; while there are still
scary parts and a lot of tense moments in a campaign like that of Chris Redfield’s, overall it has a much
larger focus on action. Rather than
fighting slow, dumb zombies you are facing off against fast, smart zombies; the
type that like to use guns. This makes
the game’s cover system much more useful, since I only ended up using it by
accident in Leon’s campaign. Unfortunately
I found the cover mechanics to be touchy and a bit annoying to use. Also the puzzles that were actually quite
well designed, they aren’t so complicated that they would make you think about
giving up or consulting a guide but are still rewarding when you complete them,
in Leon’s campaign are completely
absent in Chris’s.
I knew going into the game that the story of Resident Evil 6 would follow multiple
characters, but I was surprised that the story didn’t hop back and forth
between them from one level to the next.
Instead you select a character’s campaign and play it from beginning to
end and then start another. This leads
to you reaching the end of the game’s storyline the first time with the feeling
that a lot was glossed over and ultimately a little empty, but it gets filled
in as you play through the other sides to the story. I actually think it was a smart choice to
separate the campaigns because it allows you to remain focused on each pair’s
story and motivations throughout each 5-8 hour arc without any confusion or
trouble remembering where you left those characters the last time you played as
them a few levels back. Another thing
that is just a nice little bonus is that all of the cinematics in the game are
put on a timeline so if any of the story intersections are confusing or you
want a clearer understanding of the overall story and how things played out, it
is there to help. Plus I feel like every
game should allow you to view all of its cinematics once you have beaten it and
very few do. Overall I thought the story
was alright, the overall plot was crazy as to be expected from a Resident Evil game
and was largely there just to set up situations with zombies and B.O.W.s (Bio Organic Weapons). That being said I did enjoy the characters and
their individual/joint arcs.
Now hopping back to the gameplay, which I
brought up earlier, and outlining some of the changes. You can move and shoot but the camera is
still positioned in the same spot, which I appreciate, so it hasn’t turned into
Operation Raccoon City or
anything. With the addition of being
able to move you are significantly less precise in your aiming as the laser
marker now sways even when standing still, although obviously less so. I loved the tension of being frozen in place
in 4&5 as you try to line up the exact right shot and having to decide
whether to stand and shoot or fall back for more space and a better
position. With that gone it felt strange
and the lack of accuracy was bothersome in the beginning, but after spending
enough time with it and getting used to it (as well as buying the accuracy
upgrade) I did start to like it. Melee
combat has also been ramped up as you no longer need to shoot someone first in
the right spot to allow for it. The
shots to the leg, arm and head still provide the opportunity to hit opponents
with more deadly melee attacks, but you can also just walk right up and combo
them to death. Since it is still a survival horror game ammo is limited and
being able to kill all weaker enemies solely with melee attacks would really
throw off the game’s balance, so there is a stamina meter that limits the
amount of attacks you can perform before becoming exhausted causing your character
to slow down and becoming useless up close.
This is actually a nice addition that comes in handy quite often. You can also evade at any time now rather
than just as specifics attacks are about to land, which is great for getting
away from crowds of enemies and a joy to have for boss fights. However, I never felt that the combat quite
managed to hit the spectacular rhythm achieved in the previous two major installments.
In regards to character progression in the
game you can no longer purchase new guns or upgrade the guns you already have. Instead there is a skill system in place that
lets you earn points and purchase skills that will give bonuses like steadying
your aim, or increasing your stamina, or making your melee attacks more
powerful. There are actually quite a few
skills available although unfortunately, they all cost a lot of points so you
can play through all the campaigns and still barely get enough points to really
experiment with a bunch of different skills, especially if you want to upgrade
said skills.
One issue that ties into skill points that
will be more significant if you haven’t played RE4 or 5 is that the game
lacks a real tutorial, which some gamers may be happy to hear judging by
regular complaints of games holding players hands too much. If you are one of these gamers lodging said
complaint then I have this to say, there is a difference in holding the players
hand and explaining how to play and Resident Evil 6 fails to do either. While it was annoying that I had to figure
out certain things by accident, like that I don’t have to stop and aim in order
to reload, my biggest issue with it was that because I was discovering stuff a
few hours in by accident I had no idea if there was more that I was
missing. This is pertinent to the skill
system because the menu for purchasing skills is only available after a level
and the first level in Leon’s
campaign took me over two hours. That is
two hours in which I am constantly coming across skill points that I have to
pick up and have absolutely no idea what they are for or what I am going to do
with them. At a certain point I stopped
picking some of them up because I couldn’t figure out the point to it and just
wanted to focus on playing.
Now that covers just about everything I have
to say about the game from a single player perspective, so onto Resident Evil 6’s online components. Co-op is obviously a very significant part of
Resident Evil now and the way they
have imbedded co-op into the campaign is really cool and caught me by
surprise. You once again have an AI partner tethered to you throughout
the game, who is taken over by another player when doing co-op. The really cool part however, is when you get
up to four players together. You see at
certain points in the campaign characters like say the pair of Leon & Helena will run into others like say Jake & Sherry. What happens then is the game takes up to 60
seconds to search for anyone online who has just reached the same story point
in whatever campaign you are intersecting with and match you all up. You all then work together briefly and part
ways. When playing in co-op each player
gets unique item drops so you don’t have to worry about taking ammo from a crate
that your partner might need because they have their own separate item on their
screen, which is an absolute must because it means that there is twice the ammo
(since AI partners have infinite
meaning sharing would cut your supply in two and there isn’t a ton to go around)
and that you don’t have to negotiate over every drop. For those wondering if you will need to play
with a human partner to get through the game rest assured that the AI can handle itself. In fact there were plenty of times where I
was glad not to have a human playing with me because we would be separated and
I wouldn’t have any ammo left to cover my partner, but the AI has infinite ammo
and health (they can die in very specific events though if you don’t help like
in QTEs and some set-pieces) so I had
no need to worry about them.
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In addition to the story mode Mercenaries can also be played in either
single player or co-op. Mercenaries is a mode where you have to
try and set as high of a score as possible by linking together kills and taking
on up to 150 infected while trying to keep the clock from running out by
finding time bonuses or performing melee kills.
I love this mode; I spent many hours going back and playing it over and
over again with different characters to try and beat my own as well as my
friend’s high scores. Much like Horde
mode it is great for when you just want to quickly throw in a game and get some
gametime in or for playing with a friend.
I would have liked to see the mode expanded to four players as the campaign
does support that number, but unfortunately it has been kept to two. There are 14 characters/character variants to
choose from each with their own unique loadouts, but unfortunately there are
only 3 maps. The latter really bothers me;
even though the mode is still really enjoyable and highly replayable because
there is an obvious amount of time and effort that was put into this game and
yet they choose to hold back half of the maps so that stores could have
pre-order bonuses.
An example of the lofty effort Capcom put into this game is the brand
new mode called Agent Hunt. In it you can enter the game of another
player or pair of players (so long as they turn this option on) and play as an
infected trying to kill them. You can’t
control bosses and there is a limit of two players entering as zombies at once,
but you get infinite respawns. Every time
you spawn you are given a type of infected at random and there are a bunch of
options, just about every infected type outside of the ones that have guns is
playable, even some that are basically mini-bosses. The problem is the controls are pretty bad, moving
as a zombie is slow and difficult to maneuver plus you don’t have much health
so if you are stuck with the regular infected (as you very often will be) you
are pretty much just fodder. It isn’t
like Left 4 Dead where you can just
end up as any infected including the Tank at any time, if you are in a section
without powerful infected scripted in, then you won’t be playing as one. When you are playing as one though it can be
interesting and a little fun, for instance I once played as a man sized mutant
bird that could fly around and swoop down at the players trying to make it
through. It was a lot of effort on Capcom’s part to make all these
different creatures playable but ultimately I just found it to be slow and
tiring from all the constant deaths as a zombie. Then again maybe they perfectly captured the
essence of being a zombie; after all I suppose it would be very slow and
tiring. One thing that would be
interesting to add to it is the ability to party up and invite specific people
in, so that a friend and I could join two friends who are trying to get through
the campaign and try to take them down.
As it stands if I invite someone to my game I am inviting them to be my
human partner, the zombies in your game have to be random. Also there is no partying up as zombies to go
into a campaign together, both of these seem like weird missed opportunities.
Overall I had a great time with Resident Evil 6 despite some bumps along
the way. The lack of a tutorial makes it
a little challenging to get into at first, but it is nice to not have
descriptions of what I have to do pop up every other minute. The campaigns are all a decent length and end
up making one really long single player experience, but also changes things up
from one campaign to the next so it keeps from feeling too repetitive. Even though I still enjoyed RE5’s gameplay a little more, I still
loved RE6’s. The implantation of co-op in the campaign was
very intriguing and well executed, however that just makes it stranger that Agent Hunt is missing rather basic co-op
options. Ultimately Agent Hunt was an interesting idea that didn’t pay off and turned
out to be forgettable. Luckily Mercenaries is a lot of fun and will
keep you coming back even though it feels like it is lacking in the map
department (because it is). The game’s
sound design is great as always and the graphics are gorgeous. If you loved Resident Evil 4&5
than you should definitely pick this one up.
Oh and lastly there are a lot of disturbing and gruesome scenes in the Resident Evil games, but this one I feel
takes the cake so just make sure you can stomach some intense and disturbing
gore before picking this one up.
Score: 4/5
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