I used to love Resident Evil. Actually, that probably isn't fair because I'd like to think I still do. When I go back to reflect on the series on the series as a whole, I can honestly say that there weren't any major disappointments. Sure, there were some bumps in the road (See Resident Evil: Survivor, Dead Aim, and Outbreak) but all and all the main core of the Resident Evil series was consistently good.
1, 2, 3, and Code Veronica continued to improve on a format I enjoyed. Then Nintendo of all people threw us a curve ball and threw us a nice glossy remake of this first game and prequel in Resident Evil Zero, both of which I loved.. Things were looking great and then they shook up the whole industry with Resident Evil 4, which stands as probably the best game on the Gamecube. Completely shook up the formula on how its played and was hugely successful. 5 tried to follow suit and throw in co-op but it never took off like the 4 did. It wasn't a bad game it just wasn't as great as 4.
So it was with somewhat of a heavy heart I picked up my version of Resident Evil 6. I was pretty excited to pick the game but the week before the game was released, a number of pretty credible review sources started unceremoniously smashing the game with poor reviews. I still picked the game up, but now its with the curiosity if this series truly could have stepped so off the mark.
RESIDENT EVIL 6 ANTHOLOGY (PS3)
Its usually at this point in my reviews I like to give a recap of the story. But really that is becoming exceedingly more difficult to do as each release in this series comes out. This series has never really been known for its excellent story telling, but I'll try to give it a shot. The story takes place near the end of 2012 and tries to interweave 3(4) stories to Resident Evil 6's complex tale. It bases of crossing events of Leon Kennedy, Chris Redfield, and Jake Muller.
Leon is currently at the side of fictitious 2012 president Adam Benford. He planned to release the truth about the Raccoon City Incident of so many years ago, in an attempt to try to quell the influx of bio-terrorism. However, they are attacked by a group called Neo-umbrella and basically the Raccoon City Incident is repeated. Leon is forced to shoot down the now infected president, and secret service agent, Alena Harper (who looks like Lori from Walking Dead but is about 8 billion times less of a cunt) tells him if he follows her to the cathedral, he will find answers.
Chris is spending his days getting shitfaced in a dive bar in Europe battling a colossal depression (at first, I thought this was a game starring me). He is confronted by his former BSAA subordinate Piers McNotfuckingimportant for abandoning his unit. You come to learn that Chris lost a squad of soldiers in a mission gone awry thanks to the betrayal of Ada Wong, whom at the time they thought they were saving. Chris then takes up his gun again in vengeance with sole goal of finding Ada and killing her.
Finally, Jake we see actually starting this story (in a chronological perspective) working as a mercenary in Edonia. He is given some kind of injection by Ada Wong that doesn't affect him, but mutates his colleges into BOW monsters. He's then confronted by special US agent Sherry Birken (the same little girl from Resident Evil 2). She is tasked to bring Jake to the US because he has the anti-bodies that might be able to provide a cure to BOW terrorism, and Jake goes along with her under the expectation of high compensation.
So ok, we start out hopeful. Lots of story campaigns and hopefully starting tie this series together a bit. But my first question is, where the fuck is Claire? After they tried to turn Jill Valentine into Nina Williams from Tekken I am terrified to find out what happened to one of my favorite protagonists in the series. You know what? Nevermind, I'd rather just imagine her chilling on her couch watching tv then have her get dragged in this mess again (the writing, not the situation).
So to keep this as brief as I can I won't go through every chapter, just shit that really stood out to me. To start off, You get to choose which of the two characters you can play as in the campaign which I thought was a nice gesture. But also before you start the game, you can choose to turn off the online settings and play offline with an AI partner, which I couldn't do fast enough. You all by now should know my feelings on Online multiple player communities, but if you don't here's the cliff notes: Fuck multiplayer up the ass with a salt covered wicker dildo.
Leon's chapter starts off incredibly sluggishly. After cinematic you are treated to slowly walking a survivor through darkened abandoned corridors. I almost would have looked past how slow the segment took to do if they were trying to set a legitimate horror pace. But no, right after the appearance of the first zombie all sense of pacing is thrown right out the goddamn window with a stream of nonstop zombies. Cool, but not Resident Evil.
I picked up the game with relative ease, the controls all felt pretty familiar. I just had to get used to the little quirks to navigate the menu as you can't really pause the action to browse your inventory. I was fighting I noticed that it wasn't using the laser sighting system I remembered from Resident Evil 4 or 5. It was using the recital system. That alone didn't bother me, but the recoil of gunshots was ridiculously off. Every two shots you were completely off target. In addition to that, there's no guarantee you can hit the head shot because the red dot in your recital doesn't hold still either. It was fucking annoying.
But moving on a little father in the level I reached a quick time event where I had to outrun an explosion. I died on it multiple times because up until this point, you had to mash a button to escape these. In Resident Evil 6 you have to just hold the button down and the "hey idiot" indication at the bottom did not really clarify that. By putting up instructions, I thought it was giving me different controls. Highly frustrating.
Then I was struck with a realization, and sour one at that. I was not playing Resident Evil. Sure, the box said Resident Evil 6 on it, and it had characters from the series. But nothing about this game felt like the formers of the franchise. Even with Resident Evil 4's overhauling, it still sort of felt like an RE game with the tank style controls, and core concepts still in place. With this kind of game mechanics, this game could have just as easily been "Uncharted 4: Drake and friends fight a bunch of zombies" and it would have been just as relevant and more tolerable.
But don't get me wrong, there isn't really anything wrong with these mechanics. Its why it felt so familar when I played it. But when I shill out 60 bucks to play the new Resident Evil, I expect to be treated to a new fucking Resident Evil. If I wanted to play a generic 3rd person shooter I could have picked up almost ANY fucking game on the shelf. Its so cookie cutter in its overall design I'm left with this complete disappointment that I've been ripped off.
Anyways, back to the game. I usually like to take a few lines to talk about the score or the music. But as is with pretty much every Resident Evil game, the music is completely unimpressive. None of it memorable, none of it lasting. Score fits great for each scene as they come, but none of them leave a lasting impression.
All of the campaigns in the game tell a different story, but nearly all of them follow the exact same format in have very similar puzzles. A massive indiscretion of this is ALL of them have a section where you have to escape like 3 unkillable enemies while trying to find 3 separate keys to unlock a door. The setting is different, but every character has to do it, and they are all chased by the same type of monster at the time. Its incredibly lazy.
While I'm on the subject of unkillable monsters, this is something else they abuse this time around. Ok, so Resident Evil likes to have that one boss that's just menacing and non-stop.
Resident Evil 2 had the Tyrant and he'd appear in various rooms as your progressed in the game.
Resident Evil 3 had the Nemesis who would hound you for a few rooms at a time and was a thorn in your side nearly the whole game. Resident Evil 4 and 5 had difficult enemy types that would reoccur often. All of these are fine.
But Resident Evil 6, the bosses just don't fucking die. Period. Every single time a character would say "we got him!" or "It's finally dead" only to open one door and have that same mother fucker right back on your ass. It happens on nearly every significant boss in the game. Even more frustrating is they keep mixing up what it takes to kill said bosses. Sometimes you just need to last a timer. Sometimes you need do enough damage. Sometimes you have just empty all of your ammo to trigger the end sequence. It makes it nearly impossible to ration your ammo properly and proves to be constant headache.
I also love how true to the series it tried to be in this installment. Having to do such classic Resident Evil moments like Metal Gear Solid style stealth sections, an Ace Combat style dogfight, or trying to outrun an avalanche on snow mobiles. Wait, no. I'm thinking of other games, none of this shit happened in other Resident Evil games. SO WHY THE FUCK ARE THEY IN THIS ONE? I suppose for story, thematic, and theatrics they fit cohesively, but again: Its not fucking Resident Evil!
So after all this ranting, you can basically assume I hate this game, right? Well not so fast. The game is loaded with flaws, but I'm not so quick to dismiss it, there are a handful of things that I like. By the game being kind of cookie cutter in its design, it was very easy to acclimated to the controls. Each of the campaigns had something I liked. Leon's story was best, Chris had the best boss fights, Jake had the best characters.
They brought back the Mercenaries mode, which was probably one of my favorite things in the franchise. I loved it in Resident Evil 3 and 4. Even with all my gripes about how this version of the game plays differently, when that clock is ticking on the top of the screen and I'm scrambling to find the best spot to hole up and shoot, all of the complaints are immediately forgotten and I work on boosting that score. It can be done two player as well, which I'm actually interested in trying.
They also have something called agent hunt, where you get to play as the crappy weaker monsters and try to take down someone actually trying to complete the story mode. This to me is a great concept because it really ups the challenge of the game, or allows you to just ruin somebody's day. It was very satisfying to watch some asshat have to waste both his first aid sprays because I keep tackling him with a zombie dog.
Oh yeah, and the Bowgun still sucks bag of dicks.
Leon is currently at the side of fictitious 2012 president Adam Benford. He planned to release the truth about the Raccoon City Incident of so many years ago, in an attempt to try to quell the influx of bio-terrorism. However, they are attacked by a group called Neo-umbrella and basically the Raccoon City Incident is repeated. Leon is forced to shoot down the now infected president, and secret service agent, Alena Harper (who looks like Lori from Walking Dead but is about 8 billion times less of a cunt) tells him if he follows her to the cathedral, he will find answers.
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| "I don't give a shit that you lost Carl again." |
Finally, Jake we see actually starting this story (in a chronological perspective) working as a mercenary in Edonia. He is given some kind of injection by Ada Wong that doesn't affect him, but mutates his colleges into BOW monsters. He's then confronted by special US agent Sherry Birken (the same little girl from Resident Evil 2). She is tasked to bring Jake to the US because he has the anti-bodies that might be able to provide a cure to BOW terrorism, and Jake goes along with her under the expectation of high compensation.
So ok, we start out hopeful. Lots of story campaigns and hopefully starting tie this series together a bit. But my first question is, where the fuck is Claire? After they tried to turn Jill Valentine into Nina Williams from Tekken I am terrified to find out what happened to one of my favorite protagonists in the series. You know what? Nevermind, I'd rather just imagine her chilling on her couch watching tv then have her get dragged in this mess again (the writing, not the situation).
 |
| Which one is Jill again? I can't fucking tell anymore. Get a new character archetype, gaming industry. |
Leon's chapter starts off incredibly sluggishly. After cinematic you are treated to slowly walking a survivor through darkened abandoned corridors. I almost would have looked past how slow the segment took to do if they were trying to set a legitimate horror pace. But no, right after the appearance of the first zombie all sense of pacing is thrown right out the goddamn window with a stream of nonstop zombies. Cool, but not Resident Evil.
 |
| The J'avo are a billion times more annoying the Palagas were. |
But moving on a little father in the level I reached a quick time event where I had to outrun an explosion. I died on it multiple times because up until this point, you had to mash a button to escape these. In Resident Evil 6 you have to just hold the button down and the "hey idiot" indication at the bottom did not really clarify that. By putting up instructions, I thought it was giving me different controls. Highly frustrating.
Then I was struck with a realization, and sour one at that. I was not playing Resident Evil. Sure, the box said Resident Evil 6 on it, and it had characters from the series. But nothing about this game felt like the formers of the franchise. Even with Resident Evil 4's overhauling, it still sort of felt like an RE game with the tank style controls, and core concepts still in place. With this kind of game mechanics, this game could have just as easily been "Uncharted 4: Drake and friends fight a bunch of zombies" and it would have been just as relevant and more tolerable.
 |
| Boss Fights can get a little clusterfucky at best. |
Anyways, back to the game. I usually like to take a few lines to talk about the score or the music. But as is with pretty much every Resident Evil game, the music is completely unimpressive. None of it memorable, none of it lasting. Score fits great for each scene as they come, but none of them leave a lasting impression.
All of the campaigns in the game tell a different story, but nearly all of them follow the exact same format in have very similar puzzles. A massive indiscretion of this is ALL of them have a section where you have to escape like 3 unkillable enemies while trying to find 3 separate keys to unlock a door. The setting is different, but every character has to do it, and they are all chased by the same type of monster at the time. Its incredibly lazy.
 |
| Sherry has no idea what she's doing. |
But Resident Evil 6, the bosses just don't fucking die. Period. Every single time a character would say "we got him!" or "It's finally dead" only to open one door and have that same mother fucker right back on your ass. It happens on nearly every significant boss in the game. Even more frustrating is they keep mixing up what it takes to kill said bosses. Sometimes you just need to last a timer. Sometimes you need do enough damage. Sometimes you have just empty all of your ammo to trigger the end sequence. It makes it nearly impossible to ration your ammo properly and proves to be constant headache.
 |
| Ustanak is RE6's knock off version of the Nemesis. A tough kill, but not nearly the menace the Nemesis was. |
 |
| "Ok fuck this. If your going to force me to do stealth you can at least give me a chance." |
They brought back the Mercenaries mode, which was probably one of my favorite things in the franchise. I loved it in Resident Evil 3 and 4. Even with all my gripes about how this version of the game plays differently, when that clock is ticking on the top of the screen and I'm scrambling to find the best spot to hole up and shoot, all of the complaints are immediately forgotten and I work on boosting that score. It can be done two player as well, which I'm actually interested in trying.
They also have something called agent hunt, where you get to play as the crappy weaker monsters and try to take down someone actually trying to complete the story mode. This to me is a great concept because it really ups the challenge of the game, or allows you to just ruin somebody's day. It was very satisfying to watch some asshat have to waste both his first aid sprays because I keep tackling him with a zombie dog.
And graphically the game has never looked better. All of the characters (except for Chris's massive muscle tone) are life like and believable. Although, someone at Capcom must really be an ass man, because whenever you have to crawl through a duct or something the cam zooms in so far up ass of the player I'm actually afraid we'll need to wipe brown off the lens (When playing Sherry, That ain't so bad. When playing Leon.... Uh, not so much.).
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| I'm sure we all had this moment when playing Sherry or Ada. |
Lastly, I paid the extra 20 bucks for the Anthology edition, so my copy of the game came with the codes to download the first 5 games, which does include the gold edition of 5 and HD version of 4. Which personally I thought was an awesome deal, since now I don't have to dig out the gamecube if I wanted to play RE4 again. I would have liked it have Code Veronica as well, but that one appears on the Xbox version. Can't get greedy I guess. Still a great deal.
So I guess after all of this the real question is "How do I rate this?" I guess the best way to do this is to be as lukewarm as my feelings. The game is Average, cookie cutter, run of the mill. Doesn't deserve the hideous reviews its gotten but doesn't deserve the great ones either.
If you are looking to continue on with the Resident Evil mytho's baffling storyline they by all means pick it up. If you are looking for another shooter to kill your time until the next stupid Medal of Halo: Advanced Duty Black Cocks 3 comes out then I suppose you could do worse than Resident Evil 6. But don't expect this game to really wow you in any sense of the word.
But if you are fan of Resident Evil. And I mean REALLY a fan of the series, you may wanna sit this one out. Much like the Resident Evil movie they seemed to think it was totally ok to just come up with a generic 3rd person shooter, and just tossed in the Resident Evil characters and that was good enough. Guess what, it's not. Somewhere along the way this franchise lost its spark, and with the constant middle finger Capcom keeps throwing to its customer base? I don't think they care to find it.
Oh yeah, and the Bowgun still sucks bag of dicks.
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