RIP Resident Evil – RE6 Demo Impressions

Fair to say if you read my ‘Five Things Resident Evil 6 Needs...’ article you’d understand that I’m quite a fan of the series, and zombies, and blood and all the fun stuff that makes video games great. So imagine my delight when I recently got hands on with the Resident Evil 6 demo, and got involved. The demo offers the choice of three of the games four campaigns, and each option drops you straight into the action. You get to choose between series favourites Leon and Chris, or new boy Jake. So rather than take you through a boring play by play of what goes on, let’s compare what I felt the game needed and what Capcom have delivered. Buckle up, this could get angry…

Bring Back The Feeling of Isolation:

Being backed into a corner, running out of ammo and the horde of undead slowly inching towards you. It was this feeling of isolation and terror that made Resident Evil such an iconic series, and something which has been lacking since the game adopted the all action approach with RE4. Does RE6 bring back the feeling of dread and genuine horror? Does it bollocks. Despite claims from the development team about making each campaign play differently and bringing back the horror which made the games so popular, RE6 ignores that once again and instead gives you more bullets than the SAS and lets you shoot away to your heart’s content. Each of the three campaigns sees you running point to point with the very occasional quick time event to break it up. It feels lazy and makes me long for the days of static cameras once again.

Less Action, More Atmosphere:

I wanted Resident Evil to revert back to the times when there weren’t three million enemies on screen so when they did appear it was shocking and a challenge to defeat them, add in the slowly building score and how tense this could make you it really drew you in and then subsequently soil yourself when something that wants to eat your brains did appear. Alas, RE6 ignores atmosphere and building anticipation in favour of moar baddeez. I estimate that it only took about twenty eight seconds to get into my first fight with Leon, and about three nano seconds in Chris and Jake’s campaigns. It feels like any generic shooter and there’s so little present which made Resident Evil great that it nearly brought me to tears. There’s more atmosphere in a black hole, which is probably where this game belongs.

Bring Back S.T.A.R.S:

This hasn’t happened. Chris Redfield though is now some sort of John Connor leader of the resistance by all accounts. But still Jill, Rebecca and Barry etc are apparently on the most awesome of all the all inclusive holidays in the world, because they are long gone it seems. In their place are a load of bland, uninteresting Marine sorts with the obligatory newbie who apparently nurses a semi when Chris talks. I wish I was making this up.

Bring Back Zombies:

This does seem to have happened!! Hooray!! From the demo though it appears only Leon’s campaign sees the undead, the others see some genetically modified people who sprout tentacles and stuff. Or in Redfield’s case, fifty foot tall giant thing with a tumour on its back. So one step forward I guess… Let’s not talk about the fish like things which spit acid at you, I’m guessing the developers were on acid when they thought this was a good idea.

Don’t Make Having a Helper Compulsory:

I previously said that having a helper removed the atmosphere from the game, but as we’ve since learned there is no atmosphere here anyway and if there was, Captain Get In The Way is right there to wind you up. Every campaign appears to have some stupid moron follow you like a lost puppy, getting in the way and being more of a hassle than a helper. There’s no option to turn it off or only use it online – You have to have this lap dog follow you round. It’s annoying, it’s still less intelligent than one of my stool samples and it sucks away the very essence of Resident Evil. If I could just shoot them in the head and then they get the idea I wouldn’t mind. But they still come back, and it’s the final nail in this very shoddy coffin.

I can’t really comprehend how this feels so wrong, or why it was decided to change the series so much so that it doesn’t even represent the series original entries. Things evolve, and that’s fine, but this is such a bastardisation of the series it’s not anywhere near close to what it should be. The one positive I took out of the demo was the added option to now walk and shoot, it’s just a shame that the only thing I wanted to shoot was myself, in the head.

Summarising what RE6 is all about is quite simple; imagine a very clunky Gears of War. If that sounds like your idea of fun then I’m sure come 2^nd October you’ll enjoy this. If however you grew up with Resident Evil and loved the premise and what the original games did then much like me you’ll wish there had actually been a zombie apocalypse to stop this travesty being produced. At least the new movie will be better than the game, which I’m sure a lot of people will find upsetting, but unfortunately for Capcom… It’s true.

RIP Resident Evil.

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Tags: capcom, resident evil, zombies

About the Author

Aaron Roberts International Rockstar, Adopted Londoner, Nerd. Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2012.

http://www.facebook.com/chad.yamamoto.3 Chad Yamamoto

i agree with you to a certein extent, leons campaign was decent, chris’s honestly felt like a crappy shooter and jakey boy, well the melee was fun, but i dont think thats a good enough reason to playthrough, all in all this seems like a step in the deadspace direction and capcom needs to realise that zombies and space monsters are 2 different things, id rather re*5 than this
- A True Resident Evil Fan
  
  Wow, are you sayin that RE i trying to be like dead space! man i guess america does deserve to be 27 on the list of intelligence.
HarryMasonHerpDerp

It’s just a gears of war clone and a bad one at that.

Bad controls.
Bad camera.
Bad shooting mechanics.
Lame wrestling melee crap.
Bad cover system.
Dated gameplay.
Lame QTEs.

It’s just all so bad.
It looks nice and the places and characters look cool but don’t let all of that fool you it’s a bad third person shooter where you go from room to room shooting “zombies” if you can even call them that anymore and not much else.

I wasn’t a fan of RE5 or the action direction the franchise has taken in general but this wasn’t even a good action game.

Most disappointing demo I have played in a long time and it’s actually put me off buying the game completely.

R.I.P Resident Evil you had a good run!
- ignusblanch
  
  Bad controls.
  Bad camera.
  Bad shooting mechanics.
  Dated gameplay.
  Almost everysingle one you listed is exactly what made you like the old ones in the first place, those reasons where the only reasons the old ones where even scary (at the time) …you’re an idiot
A True Resident Evil Fan

look im sorry that you didnt like this demo, but your a really bad critic. a good critic doesnt bag on a game cus it isnt like a 20 year old game were you need a walkthrough just to complete. If you feel isolated GREAT. I thought that meant i was going to die, cus in every RE game i have felt isolated, and then i have died. Even in RE5 i felt isolated, and dont get me started on atmosphere. I swear all you critics care about is being like the old games, but if they were like the old games everyone would say “its too much like the old games.” Has anybody thought that capcom is just trying to make their game more modern? Not everything can be a dead space, sometimes a game series changes, but be happy cus that means you dont have to play a game that you have already played a thousand times. Also in the first RE6 demo they put PLENTY of atmosphere in the leon demo, and everybody WHINED. Breaking news, GET WITH THE PROGRAM. Stop getting stuck in the past and move on, cus games change, i have never seen a game series be successful without change(excluding halo) So please, all RE fans out there, if you truly love RE, then you will except the change, for Chris, Leon, and even Sherry and Jake cus a TRUE fan wont cry cus they didnt get the game THEIR way, cus thats all i see. THIS GAME ISNT A BAD GAME JUST BECAUSE IT ISNT JUST LIKE RE1 AND RE2, ITS STILL A VERY GOOD GAME!!!!!!!!! GET YOU HEAD OUTA 1996 AND GET IT IN 2012, NEW STYLES + NEW RE + ACTION + BETTER GRAPHICS + HORROR + LOVEVABLE CHARACTERS + A WEBSITE AND FOUR CAMPAIGNS + A TRUE LOVE FOR THIS SERIES AND ITS STUBBORN FANS WHO WONT GIVE THEM A BREAK FOR TRYING TO ANSWER OUR CALLS OF MODERNIZATION = A GAME THAT DESERVES GAME OF THE YEAR, AND DESERVES MORE CREDIT THAN ANYONE HAS EVER GIVEN, SO STOP BEING CRYBABIES FANS, AND START GETTING YOUR HEAD WHERE IT NEEDS TO BE!!!!! Get it in 2012, please. I love these games, and i always will, look at the new controls, how we can dodge, Quickshot, even melee(which does have limits) I mean for alot of us this is what we have been looking for, so please, Stop Being So NEGATIVE To a Series that is trying to PLEASE YOU!!!!!!!!!
- HarryMasonHerpDerp
  
  Thing is though it’s a bad third person shooter.
  Forget it’s called Resident Evil for a second.
  It’s not even a good action game.
  Also turning the brightness down and putting lightning flashes outside does not equal atmosphere, there is zero tension in Leon’s demo.
  You seem like one of those fans that lap up any old shit as long as it has the brand name on and call yourself a “true fan” when all you’re doing is holding the series back buy buying this garbage that has blatantly been made to sell to the COD crowd,so tell me how is that trying to “PLEASE” fans of Resident Evil?
  Resident Evil 4 modernised the series this game has taken huge steps back it’s outdated and quite frankly boring.
- An Evil Resident
  
  Don’t listen to this guy, hes a really bad critic. point – the fact this game has a website is a not a plus to the game. i don’t care that its TRYING to please coz its failed TO please me
  All the review points are valid as are some of True Resident Evils comments but this is not a game i enjoyed playing though again and again (not like all other RE games) such a chore, don’t get me wrong this does have good points but its just out weighed by the bad ,
  I’m really gutted but RE may be dead – dead space has taken the tile
  
  PS A True Resident Evil Fan
  “STOP BEING A CRYBABY AND START GETTING YOUR HEAD WHERE IT NEEDS TO BE”
Will

R.I.P.
d0xdix

The problem really is that this game is awesome! Awesome but no resident evil. Code Veronica was the last great re horror game. I’m all for bringing back the static camera too provided the controls are 3d and not the tank style from before. I want horror back in my games. Silent hill is made by incompetent hacks hopefully kojima makes the next one. Dead space has for some reason gone the action route so what’s left? Nothing! If they are worried about sales then make a 8 hour game and release it as a download and I’m episodes or something
thunn94

Its bad.
Mark

You could say the same for RE5 but that shit got 9′s and 10′s but somehow 6 sucks?

Plz
- http://twitter.com/stuartwood1989 Stuart Wood
  
  Just because it sells, doesn’t make it a good game. Most of the kids playing these games today won’t even remember the older games, so they have no benchmark. It’s got guns so it’s cool, so it sells due to reviews posted by like-minded players.
  
  Take away the RE, and you have a generic shooter… with zombies, and even that is overdone these days.
  
  Take a game like Dead Rising, where you are in a room with potentially hundreds of zombies. That’s ok because you can pick up a traffic cone and start smashing away, and many laughs are to be had. Take one of the earlier Resident Evil titles, and my skin starts to crawl as soon as I hear just one of those things shuffling around before I even make visual contact with it. It’s about quality, not quantity.
  
  When all is said and done, it subjective. If you like it, great! Play it and have a good time. If not then don’t, but there is nothing wrong with yearning for a time when survival horror was actually horror, and not action with a bit of fog and lightening.
Granty

It hasn’t taken steps back – what we’re inferring here is that would be good.
What it has done is taken a step in the wrong direction, which is bad.
You are correct: RE4 modernised the series and RE5 can be said to have built upon that.
RE5 didn’t got too far in it’s attempts to bring fresh action, gameplay, essentially a fresh game to the market. That is what a sequel is about: freshness, something new, but with the series’ familiarity. RE6 strays too far from the RE formula and loses the series’ familiarity.
RE familiarity is feeling cornered, out of ammo, out of ‘erbs; feeling suspense, tension.
RE6 is unfamiliar because it is Rambo-like and so far in the demo, there is almost no suspense or tension building. These two problems also complement each-other and compound the issue further. It’d be a hard issue to fix before release no matter how much time the developers had on their hands.

To address the claims of RE6 being outdated: it’s not. But it is a bad game because the RE formula which is made fresh with each entry into the series, was merged with a Rambo gameplay-style. RE favours slow movement, care with your shots, survival tactics.
Action-orientated gameplay does not merge well with RE, and the result is a sluggish dash through European streets as Chris which didn’t have a hint of Resi’s atmosphere. The developers have tried to change gear up from police actions to a warzone, change gear up from the previous installment and the result feels like another game: which as a developer you’re supposed to do because the majority of gamers don’t want to play a carbon-copy of the last game
RE is not outdated, RE5 is proof of that. RE6 however tries to be two things at the same time and doesn’t succeed.