Resident Evil 6 Game Review

I guess without realising I started a marathon... so yay!

I was thinking about a marathon to do and it seems I started one for Resident Evil; The only games I have talked about for this series are Revelations 2 and RE4 so I plan to tackle every RE game I can (lastly I will talk about the movies; both the live action by Paul Anderson and the CGI films based on the games cannon)

Resident Evil 6 was released in 2012 for the PS3, XBOX 360 and eventually for PC, although the sales for the game were enthusiastically high for the first few weeks it got polarised by many fans and critics for diverting far too much from the survival horror elements that defined the franchise. I played the game back then and after completing it I didn´t touched it again... I have decided to re-buy the game for the PS4 at only 20 euros and with all it´s DLC content included this is supposed to be the definitive version of the game.

Through trailers and gameplay footage that started to come out I began to notice a problem with the general game and I am sure many other fans did too, the over abundance of action oriented gameplay, it didn´t felt like the resident evil game it should be so I started to slowly loose interest. When the game finally lunched my brother and I picked it up just so we could play co-op together on split screen and we had fun at the time so I don´t feel it was a waste of money.

The franchise saw a huge decline around this time with some mediocre spinoffs and the life action movie Resident Evil Retribution came out around that time, indeed it was a dark time for the franchise, RE6 raised hopes for fans that the series could still come back to the focus on survival horror, I guess at this point it´s pretty obvious Capcom wants to focus the franchise on an audience of action games and it has antagonised it´s own fans; I am sure Capcom has realised this now and they seem to be trying to fix this.

Resident Evil 6 tackles 4 separate campaigns with fan favourites Chris Redfield, Leon Kennedy, Sherry Birkin and Ada Wong... for fans of the franchise this is an All-Star cast with 3 familiar faces, one we haven´t seen in a long while and some new faces, however the game´s story is not only way too ambitious for it´s own good but it also seem to miss a very big part of the franchise: the humour, this is the most joyless entry in the franchise where not a single attempt at comedy made me crack a smile... I get that what is happening is tragic, people are dying and stuff but the problem is that everything that is happening is so over the top that you can´t take it seriously, the attempts at making the player feel bad for what is happening fall flat and that´s without mentioning the rest is just non sense action that doesn´t build up to making the player feel bad but to be wowed by the circumstances the main characters make it through. Overall the story is way too fool of itself that it thinks is being deeper than it actually is.

Like I said before there are 4 campaigns: you are supposed to play all of them to get what is going on, understand the overall story and "figure out the big conspiracy" but here is the problem; Leon´s story spoils EVERYTHING and unless you are unobservant you will know who the bad guy is very early on and you play the others just to know where they were... the ordered I played was Chris, Sherry Leon and lastly Ada, I got plenty more out of the overall experience, it´s still an overall average popcorn story that can be funny if you leave your brain turned on but it at least kept some of the mysteries away from me. Through each campaign the player will notice the difference in tone and passing of each and every one of them:

-Chris Redfield: Chris´s campaing is the most hated by many because of it being more of an "army" type game rather than a survival horror, you are almost always in company of fellow BSAA soldiers pushing forward through enemy lines of machine-gun wielding zombies called J´avo... and it does feel like playing any action 3rd person shooter rather than a resident evil game with the difference being this time we have to put up with weird control skims (I´ll get more in depth the the games controls later).

It´s action orientation aside; Chirs´s campaign features the most memorable moments of the game thanks to it´s huge creatures and even some of the bosses are very interesting to fight, the j´avo enemies are obviously built to be like the plagas enemies with mutations upon damange and that kind of stuff... it dosen´t surprise me anymore at this point so I particularly am not bothered by this.

I am annoyed however by the honestly sincere lack of respect for environmental storytelling and more slower methodical gameplay and design: Resident Evil games have always had both very well built into it´s DNA and also allowing you to take the story at your own pase... Chris´s story is extremely linear and the only times I would deviate from the main path is when I am scavenging for ammo, with only a couple of times finding something interesting.

-Sherry Birkin: Sherry´s campaign is very much like Chris´s however here is slightly slower and allowing more versatility but just like in the general design of the overall game it isn´t quit has I am making it out to be: Sherry´s campaign is plaged with QTE´s at around pretty much every corner.

I want to say that I am not the kind of guy that will hate on QTE´s just because they exist... I think this mechanic can (and has) been used for very interesting scenarios; Sherry´s campaign is always eager to tell you to mach a button has fast has humanly possible... in a much smarter game, the player would be trusted to react to the incoming danger.

Despite all of this I have to say: Playing has Sherry was the most fun I had out of all the campaigns, the chemistry between Sherry and Jake works better than that of the other characters and is still a very fun experience overall thanks to many of the scenarios the two come across... is not amazing but is still much better than some parts from the others.

-Leon Kennedy: Many claim Lean´s story to be the best scenario and they are right to a certain extent: it is very slow paced and methodical than the others (at first) but it still comes across with plenty of annoyances like forced walking sections and cheap "instadeaths" but for the most part it is a very Resident Evil-ish affair.

I am having a hard time thinking of things to say about Leon´s campaign because for the most part it´s kind of "meh", I don´t hate it but it´s nothing really special and it got me thinking, Is it because the series in general is loosing grip of is it just me? and after much thought I think I figured it out: is not the franchise nor the campaign itself but the passing and game design has a whole. The first hours is very Resident Evil-ish but it immediately blasts with energetic action set pieces that leave no room to character interaction and right there is the problem: If you read my review for Resident Evil Revelations 2 I said that part of the charm of these games is the character interactivity... RE6 lacks that to a ridiculous extent and it shows on the character of Helena Harper where she kinda is forgotten in the character development department.

-Ada Wong: originally, Ada´story became unlocked after playing though the other 3 story lines and she is ok... her play style is similar to that of Leon´s where she has to sneak around enemies and it gives that vibe of being a stealth game with slight puzzle elements, but just like with previous campaigns they are not handled particularly well.

The stealth elements due play a big roll in Ada´s story but the action build controls of the game doesn´t blend well with stealth mechanics... thankfully Revelations 2 picked up on this and added an standard (much more improved) stealth system.

Just like the other entries since RE4, RE6 features the mercenaries mode: same deal has in does games exempt that this mode allows you to earn more time by performing more powerful melee executions to enemies, it´s always addicting to find every way possible to multiply the timer and keep up your timer. At this point the mercenaries mode in resident evil games feel like a must have because of their fun and addictive nature.

Thanks to the complete edition for PS4 there is now access to other extra content that players can stick their teeth into after the story is done like:

-Agent Hunt: Or has I like to call it "Trolling mode", where you join into another player´s campaign has an enemy monster to try and kill the player or players. This mode was available at lunch.

-Survivors: The PvP of RE6, I particularly don´t like this mode because the controls and health system is clearly build to be used differently and not has is; they should have actually tweaked these builds at the very least for this mode. There is a regular Free-for-all Deathmatch mode and a traditional Team Deathmatch mode for up to eight players and the character selection (same cast from mercenaries) features different arsenals.

-Predator: A 5v1 PvP mode where one player controls the powerful Ustanak monster, the other five players have to try and neutralise it

-Siege: A 3v3 PvP mode where three players control the monster and have to neutralise BSAA soldiers while the other three control main characters have to protect them.

-Onslaught: A mercenaries mode variant where two players are thrown into a map separately and have to neutralise monsters in order to have them invade the opposite player, the one with the bigger score at the end wins

The extra content in this game is varied but much like the main game is very disjointed and lacks any kind of substance basically because the mechanics seem to be at odds with core gameplay of each and every mode, for example: the Ustanak creature´s control mapping and usage just doesn´t feel right with it´s movement same has the Survivor mode´s gameplay style of PvP goes against the player control.

In games like Uncharted where there are good multiplayers; the controls are adjusted to allow more mobility to fight back against the other players... RE6 lacks such adjustments.

Resident Evil 6 is a game that lacks direction; is desperately trying to appease every audience possible that it just becomes a jack of all trades, master of none; sometimes just focusing on a simple mechanic and mastering it can make a far better game than if you try to put in far too much. The story really doesn´t move anything forward in terms of character for the majority of the cast (except for maybe Jake), the series has to either ignite a new generation or end the current story to truly move forward... Chris and Leon won´t live on live forever unless you stay in the early 2000s but moving upwards in years it has to finish the arc with these characters (It already kinda did anyway in RE5).

The general reception towards RE6 was negative and this has definitely forced Capcom to re-think the way they want to keep producing these games. The future will only tell if this will change or not...