Resident Evil 6 review - November 5th 2012

You guys thought that this was just a horror film blog didn't you? Well it was, but now it's expanded into horror media. I haven't posted in a while and that's because I've been paying this little "survival horror" game.

This game series has honestly gone down the pan. Resident Evil 1, 2 and even 3 basically started the genre of games we call survival horror. However, these games have been getting more and more orientated towards the 'Call of Duty generation' of gamers than the more traditional horror gamer. Resident Evil 4 introduced a brand new control method with a lot more active and action based style of gameplay.

Now this was all fine for me, as a long time Resi Evil fan. The game was still full of scary horror elements and dreadfully tiring puzzles which is what fans had come to expect. However, this game had no zombies... I mean, how can you have a Resident Evil game with no zombies? How did this idea come to pass? I have no clue.

 Now, after the aftermath of 4 came the bane of all Resi fans. Resident Evil 5 essentially butchered the horror genre of games. This one was definitely aimed a wider demographic and basically chucked all the elements that 4 had kept from it's horror lineage and replaced it with button/key mashing when turning cranks etc.

This was a big shock for the fans of the series, this led to many fans calling the series Action Evil and taking a back seat to all upcoming releases. Now I am not going to talk about Operation: Raccoon City because that was just Gears of War with some zombies, so I'm going to move swiftly on to talking about Resident Evil 6.

RESI 6

Right so, we went from actual survival horror to slight action with a lot of original elements to Gears of War with this series. Resident Evil 6 is a whole new beast. This game is entirely focused on the action.

The gameplay is just an advanced version of the gameplay we got from 5.This isn't necessarily a bad thing but, oh my God, they did screw up with this game. The enemies have nothing about them, at all. 4 had the terrifying, chainsaw wielding doctor Salvador, even one of the villager's steal Leon's jacket after chapter 1.

This is fairly amusing for the fans. 6, on the other hand, has absoloutley no quality in the bad guys that Leon, Chris or even Jake, the karate master, face. After we get past this, the story is just meaningless. Every character's personal background is locked in a vault labelled 'Collectibles' so we don't get much emotional interaction between protagonists.

The main story is nonsensical and, even though they all meld into one story at the end, is just a very linear progression to an unsatisfying end. I wont spoil the end for any of those that would like to play this atrocity to horror games so that's all I'm saying on story.

So, we've talked about everything bad about this game, which is most of it, but let us talk about something that works well and is very interesting. Agent Hunt mode.

Now, this new game mode is interesting in the fact that Capcom have borrowed from Left 4 Dead 2. Basically, if someone decides to play any campaign mission with Agent Hunt active, on veteran of professional difficulty, then another player can join as a random spawning creature and will be charged with killing the protagonist. This is done well because the player who is playing as one of the protagonists wont know who the player playing a creature is. Obviously they will when they see that this controlled creature has a much higher intelligence than the lack luster AI that has no sense of self preservation what so ever.

Another game mode that is interesting to play is the return of The Mercenaries mode. In this mode, players take control of one of the several protagonists of the story and go onto a map in which they must eliminate 150 enemies in a given time limit. Time can be found as pick ups and time can be gained by killing an enemy using a melee move. This mode is your basic, stand around and kill stuff, kind of game mode. No depth, no story but is great fun with a friend and an hour to kill.

So, I'll come to a final conclusion about this game. This game sucks. Simply put. From a survival horror video game fan, I was very disappointed in Capcom for what they actually delivered with this game. Now, of course, if you like this kind of gameplay and this genre of game, then this is right up your alley. But, for the majority of fans of survival horror, this game was very disappointing and very lack luster in it's delivery of any aspect of this game.

Thanks for reading, come back Wednesday for my next post.


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