Resident Evil 6 Review

BreakSlash Reviews

Resident Evil 6 Review


“It was nice knowing you horror.  I hope you find a new home.  Resident Evil and Capcom certainly aren’t going to house you anymore.”  

SPOILERS ALERT!!

Hello I’m BreakSlash, breaking down media to reveal their flaws.  For those who remember, I reviewed Resident Evil 5 a little while back.  It had its flaws, but I had fun with it and the co-op, while very out of place for a horror game and downright unnecessary, was an interesting first try.  I can’t really fault it because of trying something new.

Resident Evil 6, however, I can justly do so.  Everyone and their grandmother have torn the game a new one and some of it is very deserved, while some is not.  Now, don’t get me wrong here, I don’t hate the game outright.  In fact, I like it.  Parts of it I like even more so than RE5.  However…

It’s a strange case.  I like more things in RE6 than I did with RE5, such as the overall story actually mattering.  RE6 also didn’t royally butt fuck any beloved characters.  I will never let RE5 and blonde Jill Valentine go and I will continue to harp on the game for it to no end.  RE6’s story actual gives a damn to the overall plot of Resident Evil, though I’ve been informed that caring about a Resident Evil plot is a dangerous practice.  Yet, again… screw people who use the “throw plot out the window for the game” argument.  If it’s there, it’s fair game. And certain gameplay mechanics have been fixed.  So how isn’t Resident Evil 6 not “better” than Resident Evil 5?

There’s a difference between “enjoying” a game more than another and having a game “better” than another.  For example, as some of you may know, my favorite game of all time is Kingdom Hearts.  I will pretty much hold that to my grave.  However, I will conceive that it is not the best game made, which I hold to titles such as Super Mario World and Final Fantasy VI/VII.  (I hold those equally, but that is for another discussion later).

At the end of the day, Resident Evil 6 is just not better than Resident Evil 5.  It just isn’t.  Marred by many ill-advised decisions, RE6 just fails in many ways.

Gameplay wise, RE6 functions like RE5 but with a few added bells and whistles.  First and foremost, we can shoot and walk at the same time!  Hooray, something that the fans have been asking for has been delivered!  Sing the song of Halleluiah!  Also, there has been a running feature added to move along with.  Well, this doesn’t sound bad at all.  Yet.

Then there’s the inventory system.  Unlike the last game, there isn’t a 3x3 black grid to house all of your items.  Instead, there’s the gun inventory and the items inventory.  RE6 takes a note from old Duke Nukem (not the Forever variety, thank heavens) and has whichever character you’re playing as carry any weapon they find.  For just playing the game, that is actually a nice feature.  I don’t have to worry about not carrying a certain gun.  But… this is still a horror game (at least it “tried” to be one).  Any other game having the weapons like that is fine but not for a Resident Evil game.  It just feels… wrong.

And the items aren’t too different.  You cycle through weapons with the d-pad going right and left, as you cycle through items with up and down.  Sure, you have to cycle through things you don’t want and it eats a few seconds that a zombie is chewing on your skull, but it isn’t as stupid as RE5’s.  At the very least, there isn’t any armor within your armor.  I will never stop making fun of how dumb that is, having armor within armor.

Had those been the only things to worry about with items, I would say RE6 is a step up from RE5.  RE4 still had the best inventory ever in Resident Evil history though.  Just saying.  But there’s one small thing that just makes RE6’s inventory a pain in my ass.  The herbs.  You can still combine red herbs with green herbs to make more health.  But it’s how they are integrated in this game.

Instead of using them whenever you want or right away, just like every single Resident Evil game ever made, you have to turn the herb into a tablet and put it in a case that is indicated above the health bar, which consists of six cubes.  More on the cubes later.  Had I been able to use the herbs right away, I would have been fine.  But no.  You have to waste time putting the herbs in that bloody case and then you’re allowed to restore health.

Say that you’re on your last cube of health and there’s a bunch of zombies surrounding you.  There’s a pack of six herbs fused together to make six tablets in your inventory.  By the time you store the tablets in the case, a zombie grabs you and you are put into a state of red.  Since zombies surround you, you will most likely get curb stomped before you can stand up again or your teammate can get to you to help.

Why are the herbs so irritating in this game?  RE5 made them into an instant spray that healed Chris and Sheva at the same time.  How do you make a simple healing system even worse than before??  It doesn’t make any damn sense!

Now here’s how the six cubes of health work.  They of course represent how much damage you can withstand until you fall over.  If you can survive the bleed out or a teammate saves you, you are put into a state of red, meaning you need to get health NOW.  Or you die.

When dealing with zombies, a grab or single swinging attack will deplete one cube of health.  Some of the bigger enemies will probably take out more than one cube when given the chance.  And this is without the harder difficulty’s damage system in mind.  Should an enemy get an attack in that doesn’t do all that much damage, it will take a chunk of cube off, but not all of it.  The cube will regenerate back to full if no more damage is sustained or it will disappear when sufficient damage is taken.  I think they were going for a more realistic approach to how health works in real life, which I think works well enough.  I personally don’t care for auto regain unless it makes sense in game, like Halo or Final Fantasy.

New to Resident Evil, as stated before, is the running feature.  Characters are able to run fast this time around.  However, it should be noted below the primary set of cubes is another set of cubes, normally a set of five.  That indicates the power a character has in order to perform an action, such as a melee attack.  Yes, RE6 also introduces regular melee attacks that can be performed at any time.  Once you perform one it normally eats one energy cube.  While running doesn’t affect energy cubes, should you perform too many melee attacks, you will tire out the character, making him or her unable to run or fight back physically.

Now lets get down to the campaigns.  Calling back to Resident Evil 2, there are four different campaigns that are five chapters long.  Leon Kennedy and Helena Harper’s campaign is centered on zombies and “horror,” which is obviously the best campaign in the game.  Chris Redfield and Piers Nivans’s campaign is centered on shooting via Gears of War and Call of Duty, which is obviously the worst campaign in the game.  Sherry Birkin and James Muller’s campaign is a… mix of Leon and Chris’s, focusing on close combat.  And then there’s Ada Wong’s campaign.

Leon returns once again as one of the main characters.  Still keeping up his even numbered installments.  There isn’t too much to Leon in this installment.  Hell, Hunnigan returns to be the guide for Leon again.  The president turns into a zombie and he kills him.  New to Leon’s arsenal is the ability to duel wield pistols.

Helena, however, is what I consider the highlight of Leon’s campaign.  God damn is she badass.  She takes leaps in the air and knocks zombies’ heads off by kicking them with both feet like a wrestler!  And she has the hydra shotgun.  Her story is that Debra, her sister, is missing, most likely due to Derek Simmons, one of the antagonists of the game.

Chris is back… again, roids and all.  Seriously, he’s overstaying his welcome.  There’s nothing new to do with him.  We’re going through a repeat of RE5 for his drive.  His men are killed in action and he is feeling down about it.  Except there isn’t a twist where the teammate isn’t dead.  Just Chris getting drunk because he’s down.

Speaking of which, Jill is never mentioned at all in this game.  Sheva is at least mentioned in the files when they mention Wesker’s death and Chris’s involvement in Africa.  Capcom must really hate their characters.  Mega Man, Good Dante, Jill, most of the DarkStalkers if not all, the Breath of Fire franchise, and hell anything that isn’t Street Fighter and resembling Ryu or Akuma, or anyone that can “appeal to the broader audience” has the executive gun held at their heads.

Piers is by far the better character here out of Chris’s campaign.  At least he isn’t packing muscle you’d find in Dragon Ball Z or Street Fighter… wait (that’s a Capcom joke if you didn’t catch on).  His story is trying to get Chris back into the fight against bioterrorism.  I mean, what’s not to like about Piers?  He looks up to Chris, who is considered a hero in the BSAA, and he tries to help Chris back to his feet when he fell from grace.

Sherry is back from Resident Evil 2.  And my, has she grown since the last time we’ve seen her.  It’s great to see an old character who was once defenseless now able to stand amongst Leon and Chris in battle.  Her specialty is with a stun rod.  This is good and all, but I just find it… odd.  Sherry was a rather random choice in my opinion.  I wasn’t aware people were clamoring for Sherry Birkin’s return.  But then again, I know people who enjoy DmC for stereotyping the bad side of America while being developed by Brits.  We live in a very stupid world, but I’m glad to see a lesser-known character like Sherry quite developed as opposed to the other shit stain Capcom pushed out… stupid Twilight Fan-Fiction Dante.

While we’re talking about Sherry, I think that Capcom did something right in terms of characters.  They actually mention a fan favorite!  Claire Redfield, Chris’s sister, is mentioned quite a bit in each of the three main campaigns, whether it may be directly or indirectly.  Whether they do with Ada’s story I’m not quite sure.  At least they acknowledge Claire’s presence in the series.  More than other characters.  Damn it Capcom, give some love to Rebecca, Barry, and Jill!

Then there’s Jake.  He is the, ahem I’m quoting here, “Son of Albert Wesker.”  They say he’s the son, but I don’t know.  Anything to do with Wesker has been rather… hazy when we’re left in the dark.  Unless Wesker himself says it.  I still doubt Wesker is really dead.  They faked it twice already.

Anyways, Jake relies more on hand-to-hand combat.  And the best way I can describe Jake is by calling him a poser trying to be badass.  I would say trying to be Wesker, but please.  No one in the series or in Capcom’s library for that matter can upstage Wesker.  But he isn’t too bad of a character.  At least he has witty things to say, unlike a certain other playable steroid abuser in the game I know.

Lastly, there’s Ada.  Originally you had to beat all three campaigns to unlock her.  But as of this writing, that has been changed and you can now play as her from the start due to a patch.  She’s just like the old Ada we know.  She teases Leon, making him drop the perfectly single Helena (who is still badass).  She uses the grapple hook.  And she remains mysterious and a bitch.  Bitch in the red indeed.

Ada is running around going off the leads of what appears to be a clone of herself.  The clone is apparently the head of Neo-Umbrella and is giving Ada a bad name.  By bad name I mean the military wants her head on a silver platter.  Both she and the clone apparently have some ties with Derek Simmons as well.

Whew!  That was a lot of stuff to talk about.  So what’s the plot then?  To put it simply, the C-Virus, the new T-Virus to drive the plot, has been released by Neo-Umbrella.  Leon’s story starts in Tall Oaks, somewhere in America, with the president turned into a zombie and Leon shoots him.  Chris’s story starts in China as he deals with the outbreak and the J’avo.  Jakes’ story starts in Edonia, some snowy place, as the J’avo run amuck.  And Ada’s story starts on a submarine trying to find out what is going on with Simmons and this supposed clone.

Like I said, there really aren’t that many spoilers to this game that you wouldn’t know by hearing about RE6 through trailers or patches.  Leon and Helena stop Simmons when he transforms (too MANY damn times I may add) by shooting the only rocket launcher in the main game.  Chris and Piers stop the super monster the Ada clone unleashes.  Jake and Sherry finally kill the Nemesis-like monster, Ustanak.  And Ada destroys the research Simmons and the Ada clone started.

The only one I may add (this the spoilers kiddies) is that the Ada clone is named Carla Radames.  She was used by Simmons to recreate Ada when she left him.  I’d have to say, Simmons is a bit crazy.  Carla goes insane when she finds out she is a clone and wants to destroy the world.  She’s the one who killed Chris’s teammates a while back, causing him to drink and go blood thirsty for “Ada’s” blood.  Ada is the one who ends up killing Carla.

Then there’s Jake’s blood supposedly the cure AND enhancer to the C-Virus.  Not sure how that quite works, but lets just roll with it.  I’m trying to find logic where zombie dogs give you grenades and shotgun shells when killed.  This has something to do with having Wesker’s blood or something.  Yeah, sure.  And that’s just about it plot wise.

Oh wait, Piers dies to save Chris.  Ha, just checking if you guys are reading my SPOILER warning at the beginning.

That’s a lot of stuff to chew, isn’t it?  The game sounds like it has a lot of content and gameplay to explore.  I suppose, but the game is also banking on the fact that you’re going to replay everything again.  And again.  And again.  Quite frankly, I’m not too sure if the game is worth playing multiple times.

I only found myself playing each campaign (minus Ada’s) twice all the way through.  Once to get the jest of the campaign and the second time to clean up serpent medals, which are required to read all the files, and have all the weapons for each character should I play co-op.  Unlike RE5, which I played with a few of my buddies, I didn’t feel the need to go back again, whether it may be solo or multiplayer.

You see, there’s something… off with the co-op here.  RE5 had rather bad AI when it came to keeping your partner alive and doing what you need them to do.  RE6 fixed that by not even caring about the partner unless it was plot/puzzle important.  A zombie could munch on Helena or Leon (whoever the AI was) for ten minutes.  They will never die, something that helped a lot, as I hated when Sheva died when I had my back to her.

But that’s the thing.  If the AI doesn’t mean a damn thing in single player, why bother with the co-op in the first place?  I don’t need to baby-sit the AI unless a gate stands in my way.  Capcom is desperately trying to please the single player aspect and the co-op aspect at the same time, and they fail tremendously.

RE5 had better co-op because you had to keep your partner in mind most of the time.  And when you had an actual friend playing, it felt much better because you could rely on him or her to help move the game along.  But RE6 is saying, “Oh, you don’t need an AI here.  But we’re going to throw it in pointlessly anyways.”

They should have had something more akin to RE2.  Have two characters per campaign and have them go through the same thing, but they do different things and maybe fight a big monster once or twice at best.  Ditch the co-op if it isn’t even necessary to beat the game.  RE5 was better focused in that department.  If you must have co-op, either go full gear, akin to RE5, or have none at all.  Considering this is Resident Evil, it really doesn’t need it, and hopefully seeing the results for RE5 and RE6, Capcom will get the message.

But co-op isn’t the only thing that drives me to rage with RE6, though it helps.  You want to know what pissed me off to no end?  Zombies with guns.  MOHTERFUCKING ZOMBIES WITH GUNS.  And no, that’s not even considering that the regular zombies manage to have the mental capability to pull the trigger and somehow get the gun pointed at you.  I’m talking about the J’avo.

Resident Evil games are not built with a war schematic in mind.  The only thing I had to worry about were humanoid creatures getting close and bludgeoning me with an axe or eating my face off.  Sure, RE4 introduced rocket launcher enemies.  But they were telegraphing when they were about to shoot, so you were given enough time to dodge.  And sure, RE5 had the same rockets and a few of the enemies had machine guns.  But they too were telegraphed with green lasers and they only appeared for about two minutes in the last part of the game.  Then they piss off.

RE6, however, wants to get as much fucking money as it can by trying to make itself into Call of Duty.  Zombie-like monsters with guns.  And they will shoot you without any notice.  That’s just stupid.  RE5 may have introduced giant walls you can hide behind, but that was for like the rockets as well.  Here in RE6, they’re EVERYWHERE.  Chest high walls scattered about for little to no reason other than to have them about.

If you compared it more to Gears of War, at least those games had some charm to it when I got up close to an enemy.  Chainsaw galore baby.  And the cover system there was competent.  There, you either hold the A button for a bit or run up to the wall to take cover.  Once there, I didn’t have to worry about staying on until I needed to get off.  RE6?  Oh no, we have to make covering be useless.  It just feels so picky and arbitrary when you can shoot behind cover that at times you’ll randomly pop off the wall and take unnecessary damage.  Look, Resident Evil is just not built with crossfire as a core mechanic.  You shoot zombies and monsters.  They should NEVER shoot back.  Otherwise it turns into fucking Call of Duty.

Fuck the J’avo hard.  They are the worst enemies in Resident Evil history.  If it was just them with giant knives and already-mutated limbs, I wouldn’t complain.  They would just be like the Ganado and the Majini.  No, the J’avo wanted to be different and piss everyone off.

I’ve never got actively angry with the enemies in a Resident Evil title before.  With other titles, I felt that if I got hurt, it was my own doing because I was being reckless.  Here, I look at an enemy in Chris, Jake, or Ada’s campaign for a second and they pelt me with a storm of bullets.  And it isn’t like the enemy doesn’t know where you are.  They know.  All of the time.  And they will shoot you from every direction.  All the time.

Another major gripe I have with RE6 is the quick time events.  Oh, gee, more shit for QTE.  I know, but hear me out for a second.  They are fine if they are kept to a small minimum, don’t come in for a quiet cutscene, and they work when the button is pressed.  Believe or not, I love RE4’s because I didn’t feel choked by them.  Or take the God of War series as well.  They only pop up to finish off enemies, bosses, and puzzles.  They aren’t that bad.  And if you have to go all the way, take the route of Heavy Rain, my favorite PS3 game.  Have the game work with them at the core.

RE6 doesn’t know what the hell to do with QTE.  They just appear suddenly because, “Those dumb as shit kids love something exploding or something big happening, so we’ll just throw it in for no reason!!”  That’s how I feel about them here.  You know what baffles me?  RE4 and RE5 had better QTE’s and they are supposed to be inferior games!  How the fuck do you do that?  Why am I playing an inferior game when I can play the better-built game made years ago?  Come on Capcom!

Let me explain.  While QTE’s in RE4 and RE5 are established very well and allows leeway with button recognition, RE6 throws that out the window.  The buttons are not responsive enough.  Sure, there are times that they like to work, but times they don’t want to.  The worst case is when you have to press the button at the designated time as a line passes a light blue bar.  It feels like there’s at least a second delay when you press it and when the action registers.

And then there’s the off-putting QTE’s that just pause the cutscene.  This is most apparent when Ada is fighting the chainsaw monster on a bus in China.  When the button prompts pop up, the screen pauses for a few seconds, waiting for you to press the button or for you to fail.  That’s just lazy editing.  RE4 and RE5 made sure to keep the motion going and/or fade to a quick black screen and pop back up with the results.

The last set of annoyances is when it comes to the bosses.  I have never seen monsters this persistent before.  You know, Nemesis wasn’t this resilient as he just falls over for a moment, not showing he actually died.  He’s just taking a nap!  Besides, at worst he takes concussive explosions until the major weapon is introduced, thus killing him for good.  These damn monsters take rocket explosions, trains going at top speeds, drowning in lava, and electrocuted to Kentucky-fried levels and they somehow keep coming back.  Call it a damn day guys!  I shouldn’t need to fight and basically murder you six times just to get the point of fuck off across on your damn foreheads.  I’m not kidding.  Leon and Helena fight Simmons’s mutated forms six times until they launch a rocket launcher at him as a bug.

I guess I could finish by mentioning the multiplayer aspect.  The game Mercenaries comes back, just like it did in the last two games.  Certain levels show certain enemies appearing, such as the Chinese town having regular zombies and the train tracks level having the J’avo.  You can play as any of the seven playable characters, along with Carla.  She plays almost identically like Ada.  As of the update (and this writing) a Mercenary Agent as been added.  Why?  Beats me.

The Mercenaries minigame also has unlockable costumes for each character except the agent and Carla.  Leon can be a pirate, Helena has a naughty police outfit, Chris has a samurai outfit, Piers is dressed up as a NASCAR driver for Capcom, Sherry (with the best one in my opinion) has her old school dress… which hasn’t been fitted for her age (hey, at least they remembered to throw in costumes for call backs), Jake… wears sunglasses, and Ada has a Chinese dress.  Then there are costumes you can get from RE.net, but I’m not familiar with those, so if you’re interested that’s something to investigate.

New to Resident Evil is to play as the monsters.  It’s called Agent Hunt.  Granted, it’s just a Left 4 Dead clone in reality as you jump in as a particular monster in a particular level.  It’s nowhere near as good as Left 4 Dead, but it is at least better than Dead Space 2’s take on it.  Huh, another horror game that suffered from getting the multiplayer shaft down its throat.  Sorry Dead Space fans, but DS3 does not do its primary job right.  Co-op does NOT mix with horror.

From what I’ve played of Agent Hunt, it’s better when you team up with another monster or “teammate” to kill the two human players.  Because the humans will destroy your ass.  However, do keep in mind that this is just a little way of having some fun with others by messing with their games.  Trust me, it’s not as dickish as it sounds.

And with that, that’s Resident Evil 6.  How does it hold up?  Well… it’s bad.  But there are points that I really enjoy.  Helena, while she may look bland, is just badass.  By making what looks like an ordinary girl do all of these crazy stuff, Helena just seems so cool to me.  It’s great seeing Sherry again and it shows that Capcom cares a little about their other characters who isn’t Chris or Leon.  Though Leon and Ada are good in this game as well.  And there are right steps in making Resident Evil play better, like moving and walking at the same time.

But it’s the execution that pukes over on the player, pulling him/her away.  There are so many poor gameplay designs that make the game feel worse for a Resident Evil title.  The horror is no longer there.  Since there’s co-op, I don’t feel alone, secluded, and afraid.  The game is just way too saturated for action.  The QTE’s are poorly designed.  Zombies have FUCKING guns.

This game could have been really good.  It really could have.  But it got lost in between RE4 and RE5 and bloody Call of Duty.  Lets face it.  The previous two numbered games were just better.  Though what did you really expect from Capcom lately?  They’ve fucked up with DLC scams, kept Mega Man locked in the basement, screwed Devil May Cry with an awful reboot, continually starved DarkStalkers, ignored Dino Crisis, won’t send Japanese titles overseas… damn they’ve been shit.  Hey Capcom, how about we try and give a shit next time hmm?  That would be nice.

Final Verdict:  Good intentions, like Sherry and Helena, bad execution, like Chris’s campaign and no horror.  Oh yeah… FUCKING ZOMBIES WITH GUNS.  Seriously, how do you fuck that up???