Resident Evil 6 Review

Posted By Gabriel B. about 7 months, 1 week ago

Resident Evil 6 Review

So… Resident Evil 6. 4/10. Avoid It. The game’s few good points are drowned out by filler gameplay that takes place in a mostly non-engaging story. The game goes on for far too long and abandons almost all aspects of survival horror so it can utterly fail as a third-person shooter. The music and graphical quality remain almost unchanged from 5. “The Mercenaries” is still fun and the co-op, while mostly average, does have a couple redeeming features, but it’s not enough to keep me from feeling that the franchise needs a reboot. There’s the review. Oh, you can keep reading, but I don’t think we should waste anymore time discussing this game, since it does a great job at wasting everyone’s time already.

Going into this game I was completely neutral. I was ready for an action game, for the horror to be practically nonexistent, and for multiplayer to play a bigger role. What I was not expecting was for the game to have a terrible story, weak gameplay, and to be so damn tedious. This game is a waste of space in anyone’s collection and should be considered a sign that the Resident Evil franchise needs to be put in a box and given a watery grave.

THIS IS THE WAY, THEY BECAME THE RE BUNCH!

The story of RE6 fails for a number of reasons and unfortunately, since the game clocks in at around thirty hours, the story can’t be ignored. Capcom went with the novel approach of splitting the story between four campaigns which interweave with each other to tell a complete narrative about old Resident Evil characters teaming up with new allies to bring down Neo-Umbrella and their C-virus infused monsters, the Ja’vo. To be completely honest, Neo-Umbrella is one of the bigger problems with the game. The big antagonist of this game is presented as a global threat and is one of the more effective villains in the entire franchise, but they have absolutely no menace. This is thanks in no small part to the death of a long-standing antagonist in RE5. Say what you want about the shades-wearing cornball, but, in addition to having a personal connection to the protagonists of the series, he created a menacing shadow over the entire series and it felt like all the games from Code: Veronica on, were building up to something truly epic. Instead, he got killed off in 5 and an entirely new organization with a magic funding source has set itself up in the brief time period between games. So instead of an old favorite raining hell down on the Earth, we get two new villains we know nothing about who are even more effective than him despite having some of the lamest motivations ever written and being face-palmingly idiotic.

Still, terrible villains or not, the story could still be enjoyable, right? No, gods no. The villains might be bad, but at least you only have to contend with them during a few cutscenes and in a series of boss fights where one of them will just. Not. Die. The new protagonists and Chris in this game are much worse. While Leon, Sherry, and Ada do their jobs well enough, Chris, Jake, Hanna, and Piers are either completely forgettable or downright detestable. Piers, who is Chris’s partner, wins the award for the least amount of characterization in any video game, to the point that I was stunned when the game actually gave him something to do. Otherwise he keeps up a Starbuck/Capatain Ahab routine with Chris but fails to be effective since Chris is an utter douchebag filled with RIGHTEOUS ANGER and, despite the fact that the story does contain a subplot about Wesker’s son, his past connection to the franchise is almost completely ignored, to the point where he could have been replaced by anyone. Hanna is a terrible person that everyone goes out of their way to take care of and the only reason I don’t hate her is that she does get a small comeuppance. Jake, Sherry’s partner, is a character that the game loves, but that I utterly loathe. He acts like a smarmy jackass for the first half of his campaign and then undergoes a radical change of heart after some off-screen character development, though he’s still a smarmy jackass. These characters are completely uninteresting and are yet another reason that I hope Capcom just puts this series to rest.

To round out the utter failure that is the story, the game has all the trappings of a hack writing team. There are plot lines that go nowhere, terrible internal continuity, and it fails to sell the idea of splitting the campaigns, since you must play Leon’s campaign first to understand what the hell is going on in Chris’s campaign. Chris’s campaign is honestly the biggest stumbling block of the entire game, as it includes the worst gameplay and only ties into the main conflict right at the very end. His campaign could have been completely scrapped and his final boss given to Jake and the game would have benefited for it, as Jake’s final boss is (SPOILER) the same one he’s been fighting for his whole campaign.

HI SAME BOSS THAT WE’LL BE FIGHTING WAY TOO MANY TIMES!

So, now we can turn to gameplay. At its core, Resident Evil 6 has kept the over-the-shoulder aspect from 4 & 5 but has made an attempt to add on a lot of gameplay mechanics, mostly to the game’s detriment. For example, melee combat has been retooled, making hand-to-hand combat not only more important but overly powerful. It is completely possible to clear a majority of most chapters using only your fists. Yes, there is a stamina bar but it depletes rather slowly and as long as you attack enemies from behind, you won’t waste much stamina. Considering how slow and stupid the A.I. is in this game, you can easily circle around every enemy. The game also takes a page from Left 4 Dead by allowing you to shoot away at enemies while you are downed until the enemies are defeated, you recover your stamina, your partner rescues you, or you are hit and killed by an enemy. This mechanic does actually work, though it takes forever for your character to ready their weapon, unlike Left 4 Dead, where your character automatically whips out his or her guns to mow down zombies.

The game also includes two gameplay elements, vehicle sections and stealth sections, that admittedly do add some variety, but have their own problems. The vehicle sections are some of the worst parts of the entire game, with one exception, though even that one suffers from going on for too long. However, the ones that are bad are really bad, including a flying section that has terrible controls and involves you firing at targets that are too far away to really see and dodging missiles by doing barrel rolls (and Peppy is nowhere around). Then of course there two driving sections, one of which gives the second player nothing to do and the other one forces one player to be completely dependent on the driving skills of the other (expect fights to break out during these sections).

The stealth sections are a mixed bag though, though it was an element I appreciated overall. Within the game, it is always possible to sneak up on enemies and take them out with a physical attack, but there are a few points in the game where you either are up against an invincible enemy or there are too many enemies to take on by yourself. The first type is actually pretty fun since it has a hiding mechanic similar to Capcom’s Haunting Ground and Clock Tower series. The only thing that hurts this experience is the fact that it is FAR too easy. The other type mostly shows up during the last campaign and is actually pretty fun since it shows the engine is capable of doing a decent stealth game, with the exception of a segment where you have to dodge spotlights, where the limitations of the engine are shown off; namely, that the cover system in this game is crap.

THE JA’VO: NEVER HAS FIGHTING PEOPLE WHO CAN SPROUT INSECT APPENDAGES BEEN SO UNENGAGING.

If this game was still survival horror I wouldn’t mind, but Capcom made the game a straight-up third-person shooter without adding a lot of the trappings that the genre has become known for like a cover system (or at least one that allows you to hide behind low walls) or decent enemy A.I. Instead, we get enemies who can easily be beaten to death with melee attacks and rarely, if ever, try to dodge out of the way. The controls are also mostly left unexplained. There’s no manual and, aside from a tutorials that explain combining herbs the menu and how to slide, there’s nothing to tell you how to do the more complex options, like a shortcut for combining herbs so you don’t have to go into the menu or how to equip different types of grenades on the grenade launcher.

Of course, one thing that doesn’t need much explanation are the games many, many, dear-god-why so many quick time events. While games like Bayonetta use QTEs to pull off special moves or do extra damage, RE6 has you use them for practically everything, including some of the most annoying climbing sections in gaming ever. Add in some annoying timing puzzles and some split second input time during a vehicle section, and you have some of the biggest abuses of this mechanic in gaming history. In addition to be annoying, it also raises your expectations that you’ll be using quick time events to escape from almost everything. Then you run into enemies that will automatically kill you if you are knocked down, or get crushed by falling ceilings without warning. So not only are these QTEs annoying, they don’t even get you away from danger.

Another big problem with the game is that most of the bosses are surprisingly uninteresting and the ones that are interesting, like a lot of other elements in the game, go on far too long. For example, Leon and Jake both have recurring bosses that you fight at least five times. While recurring bosses can be used effectively in video games, these two examples are extremely grating and are only slightly redeemed by having one awesome moment each. The other bosses in the game feel like they are rip offs of better bosses from earlier entrants in the series.

EAT HIM, EL GIGANTE RIP-OFF!

As for multiplayer, the only options you have are The Mercenaries, co-op, and “Agent hunt.” The Mercenaries has remained virtually unchanged and so has co-op, with one exception. Since there are points in the story where the campaigns merge, the game will try to join with other players who are at the same point, so up to four players can be tackling a mission. The only real complaint I have about co-op is one that I had with single player: each chapter is too long. You will need to spend up to two hours on a single chapter and you can’t load from a checkpoint if you turn the game off, which is quite the commitment. Expect to see people step out on you if you’re playing co-op and make sure to clear your schedule when you play this game.

Agent Hunt is another game aspect that feels like it was ripped off from Left 4 Dead. In it, you can take the form of a monster from the chapter a player is going through and try to kill them. This mode COULD have been fun, it SHOULD have been fun… but it’s not. For one thing, there is no reward for killing a player outside of a score; you don’t even get skill points. In fact, you have to pay skill points to upgrade your stats so your monster won’t get taken out by one clip of bullets. Additionally, the monsters control terribly and you have no choice over what monster you get to use. For example, the only monster that is really fun to play is the Ja’vo since they control the closest to the main characters and even have a chance to mutate or change into a greater monster, but you’ll rarely ever get a chance to play as one. In short, this mode is a wasted opportunity.

So, is there anything good about this game? Well, yes. The final campaign and Leon’s adventure are actually pretty solid. The last campaign has some fun puzzles, the only good vehicle segment, a pretty cool boss, and some stealth sections that are pretty fun. Leon’s campaign also is the only one that has actual zombies and, aside from some parts feeling like a lost level from Left 4 Dead, these parts of the campaign are really effective. Unfortunately, both of them still suffer from bad writing and Leon’s campaign goes on for far too long. So in the end, only about a fourth of the game is any good.

Hey look! Frozen Ja’vo!… I’ll go hit myself.

Overall, this game feels like it was killed by committee. A lot of the modes and encounters felt like they were put in because a marketing team wanted to shove in whatever it thought was popular. Bosses feel like they are retreads from past games (I didn’t even mention the chainsaw enemy that shows up out of nowhere) and more than a few sections of the game feel like they were taken from other games, with Left 4 Dead being the one that gets the most “homages.” The worst part is, that despite having lots of content, the game would benefit by having whole chunks of it (including Chris’s entire campaign) cut out. This game is an unfocused mess that sacrificed any trace of scares for some extremely sub-par shooting action. If you must play this game, rent it, shake your head in disgust and return it, knowing that it will take a miracle to make this franchise good again.

This game was purchased for review and played on the Xbox 360 to completion in about 30 hours, with an additional 3 hours spent on multiplayer. The game is also available on the PS3 and will be released for the PC in the future.

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