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Resident Evil 6 announcement coming soon?
- Thread starter genjiglove
- Start date
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Shocking review from Taiso. After a week with the game I feel it's like uncharted a lot. I have been between completely frustrated and enjoying the game. What's frustrating is the poorly executed control and the QTEs are a joke. The AI is also ridiculous especially with the Hind, flown by a single javo, but knows exactly where to be to kill you regardless the difficulty setting.
But I do like a lot in this game now. Ada's campaign redeems a lot of this game. it has a classic feel. Hunter mode is fun. I jumped into some guys game and raped him with a zombie. I imagine playing with agent hunt on makes the game insanely unpredictable. The skills are a bad idea, and reminds me of the same crap that killed MGS online.
But I do like a lot in this game now. Ada's campaign redeems a lot of this game. it has a classic feel. Hunter mode is fun. I jumped into some guys game and raped him with a zombie. I imagine playing with agent hunt on makes the game insanely unpredictable. The skills are a bad idea, and reminds me of the same crap that killed MGS online.
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Wasabi:
I felt Ada's campaign, overall, was the best of the four. I feel Leon's campaign is actually pretty weak (in contrast to what a lot of people feel about it), Chris's is about what I expected, and Jake's was at times really good and at times really bad.
I put myself into seclusion from the internet (for a number of reasons) and wanted to play this game completely in a vacuum. I didn't read a single review until after I was done with all the campaigns and really didn't know just how badly panned the game was until I came out to see what the world was thinking.
Here are my bullet points of the problems I have with the game, as well as the few areas where I feel the game's praiseworthy. Agree or disagree, I honestly don't care.
Things I disliked
Lack of exploration in zones
Linearity of progression through zones
Constant cutscenes and QTEs kill the momentum
Disjointed narrative makes it difficult to decipher what's happening, and once I pieced it all together, I just didn't care
Irresponsibly inserted QTEs-I feel this has become Capcom's answer for tension, and I think it was a mistake to put so many in.
Enemies spamming attacks in 'bleed out' mode causing death-doesn't feel tested or balanced. It just makes me feel like the game code and developers are punishing me for daring to play their game.
Poor selection of character choices-IMO, Chris and Jill should have been a team, Leon and Claire should have been a team. How much more awesome would it have been if Jill was the one that went to get Chris out of his drunken stupor? Especially after all he went through to save her in 5? Good writing could have kept the old characters or brought them back into the fold. I understand what RE is now, but there is no reason not to include these characters.
Narrative falls woefully short of fulfilling the promise in the cast selection-characters should have had more engaging interaction with each other, rather than a few tense moments that threatened an explosion of fisticuffs or gunplay.
Too many set pieces
Being told where the key items are by on screen indicators
Combat stamina gauge-I understand why it's there but I just don't personally like it and felt a different, more compelling mechanic could have been used to introduce an element of danger to CQC.
Counter-intuitive cover mechanics
Obvious enemy spawns you can't proactively deal with-these guys are all experienced B.O.W. killers. They're all going to wonder WHEN, not IF, they'll animate. Capcom could have implemented better monster closets.
Gunplay doesn't compel me to continue playing-the shooting isn't bad, but for some reason it's not as engaging to me as it should be
Stumbling over corpses-as if the game doesn't already do enough to kill momentum
Soundtrack is remarkably unremarkable
Things I liked
Zombie instant death kills w/weapons
Monsters randomly flailing in near death state
Zombies (not J'avo) mindlessly shooting guns or swinging club weapons
Sprinting, sliding, rolling, fighting on your back, 'free running' by sprinting into and sliding under interactive objects-creates a real sense of motion and energy, and can be quite tactical and strategic in dealing with enemies.
Voice acting's surprisingly very good this time out
I felt Ada's campaign, overall, was the best of the four. I feel Leon's campaign is actually pretty weak (in contrast to what a lot of people feel about it), Chris's is about what I expected, and Jake's was at times really good and at times really bad.
I put myself into seclusion from the internet (for a number of reasons) and wanted to play this game completely in a vacuum. I didn't read a single review until after I was done with all the campaigns and really didn't know just how badly panned the game was until I came out to see what the world was thinking.
Here are my bullet points of the problems I have with the game, as well as the few areas where I feel the game's praiseworthy. Agree or disagree, I honestly don't care.
Things I disliked
Lack of exploration in zones
Linearity of progression through zones
Constant cutscenes and QTEs kill the momentum
Disjointed narrative makes it difficult to decipher what's happening, and once I pieced it all together, I just didn't care
Irresponsibly inserted QTEs-I feel this has become Capcom's answer for tension, and I think it was a mistake to put so many in.
Enemies spamming attacks in 'bleed out' mode causing death-doesn't feel tested or balanced. It just makes me feel like the game code and developers are punishing me for daring to play their game.
Poor selection of character choices-IMO, Chris and Jill should have been a team, Leon and Claire should have been a team. How much more awesome would it have been if Jill was the one that went to get Chris out of his drunken stupor? Especially after all he went through to save her in 5? Good writing could have kept the old characters or brought them back into the fold. I understand what RE is now, but there is no reason not to include these characters.
Narrative falls woefully short of fulfilling the promise in the cast selection-characters should have had more engaging interaction with each other, rather than a few tense moments that threatened an explosion of fisticuffs or gunplay.
Too many set pieces
Being told where the key items are by on screen indicators
Combat stamina gauge-I understand why it's there but I just don't personally like it and felt a different, more compelling mechanic could have been used to introduce an element of danger to CQC.
Counter-intuitive cover mechanics
Obvious enemy spawns you can't proactively deal with-these guys are all experienced B.O.W. killers. They're all going to wonder WHEN, not IF, they'll animate. Capcom could have implemented better monster closets.
Gunplay doesn't compel me to continue playing-the shooting isn't bad, but for some reason it's not as engaging to me as it should be
Stumbling over corpses-as if the game doesn't already do enough to kill momentum
Soundtrack is remarkably unremarkable
Things I liked
Zombie instant death kills w/weapons
Monsters randomly flailing in near death state
Zombies (not J'avo) mindlessly shooting guns or swinging club weapons
Sprinting, sliding, rolling, fighting on your back, 'free running' by sprinting into and sliding under interactive objects-creates a real sense of motion and energy, and can be quite tactical and strategic in dealing with enemies.
Voice acting's surprisingly very good this time out
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Yeah, I actually expected you to do just that, secluding yourself to make an unadulterated judgment, just didn't expect us to feel similarly about the game (at all). I don't see this as a great game, but it's decent. I am too much a fan of the series not to play it out.
Zombies are by far the best enemies in the game. They somehow make more sense than the Javo. Their AI is something I can deal with. But some of the AI is just terrible, not to revist the Hind, but CPU partner AI is complete crap.
Not a fan of the storyline for Jake, but as far as characters go, his concept is fine. His partnership with Sherry was probably the least grating on my nerves. Helena and Leon had no chemistry. And their premise was very weak. Come to the Cathedral and you'll find out everything - ok, what was discovered there that couldn't be explained beforehand? She didn't want to say because he wouldn't believe it. The guy survived Raccoon City, but he won't believe the story that Helena saw......... derp. I wasn't too down the Chris (once a police officer in Raccoon City, now a captain in the BSAA) and Piers partnership. They were way too corny with their lines. I didn't feel like I really ever got to know Piers, but he had that awesome anti-materiel rifle from the start of the game, which, I don't know if you know this, was awesome with a thermal scope (don't use it in the daylight!). I want to play through with Ada more. Her story relied a lot more on stealth than any other, which I really enjoyed. But otherwise, I don't see myself coming back to this later on.
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I completely agree with you on all this except for feeling the game's decent. I don't think it's decent. I think it's pretty bad, and an incredible letdown.
Capcom could easily patch so much of this game to make it worthy. But they probably won't.
They're apparently making all the on disc DLC free at some point in the future. This will include:
A harder difficulty level
Ada's story available from the start
Co-op for Ada
The game needs more than this to be worthy, IMO.
100% agree.
Without elaborating, I'd say I mostly agree with this.
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OK, spent a lot more time with the game.
You can tell they tried to trim the fat with this game. One thing that I love is that you don't have to juggle a dozen different weapons, and then spends an endless amount of time grinding to raise each stat, like ammo capacity, power, etc. I love that there's three levels of fire power you can raise, and it applies for every weapon. You'll still need to grind to raise skills, but overall, it's just better the way they did it in RE 6. I don't have to take up an inventory slot wearing a vest just to get a damage reduction. Thank god. You can also save different skill builds which is a cool way to change up the game.
I also love how the inventory is set up in RE 6, too. Switching between weapons and items is so seamless. I can be running and dip into my inventory to combine or drop items without missing a beat. Being able to move while you aim is great, too. I love how you can evade, slide, shoot while you're on the ground. For as much as people bitch about the controls, I scratch my head over those complaints. Everything feels better in this game.
I don't like how linear the game is, though. You can explore, sure, but not very much. It feels a lot more confined. There's also way too many cheap deaths. I died 17 times in the chapter where Jake and Sherry escape to that ice cave (which made NO FUCKING SENSE why those things would be there). I could go through it without dying now, but I was frustrated with how many beginner traps there were in that chapter. I must've died 10 times in the room where you have to distract Ustanak and grab the keycard. I knew the remote bombs were placed there for a reason, so I would set it, run to the other side, detonate it, and then run to the corpse to grab the keycard, and circle around it aimlessly, like I was fucking up because I wasn't standing in the right position to see the prompt to pick it up. He'd run back and gut me every time. I had to google to find out you have to send Sherry up the wall to do the exact same thing I was trying to do. I hate Jake's campaign (although the lab part was very cool).
Overall, the story is somewhat of a letdown. Leon acts like an idiot when he gets strung along to go to a Cathedral because the woman, for whatever reason, couldn't tell him to his face what was there. Chris is a whiny emo faggot who can't control his erection to kill Ada. Jake starts out like a bad parody of Dr. Evil with his 50 million DOLLARZ demand (he gets better, though). I liked Ada's campaign, a lot. Taking everything into account, though, I felt the characters were kind of dumb. Simmons was an awful bad guy, too.
The game play makes up for everything, imo. There were only a few times where the camera angle fucked with me (such as running away from something and I'm running toward the camera), and there's a few times where the camera stays stationary and you move around like oldschool RE (a bad thing). Not too much that I could really complain. I did find a weird bug where you're running up the spiral staircase in Chris's campaign, as the boss smashes everything down. I got kind of behind, and the boss smashed the stairs from under me, but I was still running on thin air. I'd approach obstacles that weren't there, either, but I'd still slide under them, like I was a mime or something. I got all the way to the top, and then it showed the dying animation for me. It was weird.
I'll definitely 1000/1000 this game.
You can tell they tried to trim the fat with this game. One thing that I love is that you don't have to juggle a dozen different weapons, and then spends an endless amount of time grinding to raise each stat, like ammo capacity, power, etc. I love that there's three levels of fire power you can raise, and it applies for every weapon. You'll still need to grind to raise skills, but overall, it's just better the way they did it in RE 6. I don't have to take up an inventory slot wearing a vest just to get a damage reduction. Thank god. You can also save different skill builds which is a cool way to change up the game.
I also love how the inventory is set up in RE 6, too. Switching between weapons and items is so seamless. I can be running and dip into my inventory to combine or drop items without missing a beat. Being able to move while you aim is great, too. I love how you can evade, slide, shoot while you're on the ground. For as much as people bitch about the controls, I scratch my head over those complaints. Everything feels better in this game.
I don't like how linear the game is, though. You can explore, sure, but not very much. It feels a lot more confined. There's also way too many cheap deaths. I died 17 times in the chapter where Jake and Sherry escape to that ice cave (which made NO FUCKING SENSE why those things would be there). I could go through it without dying now, but I was frustrated with how many beginner traps there were in that chapter. I must've died 10 times in the room where you have to distract Ustanak and grab the keycard. I knew the remote bombs were placed there for a reason, so I would set it, run to the other side, detonate it, and then run to the corpse to grab the keycard, and circle around it aimlessly, like I was fucking up because I wasn't standing in the right position to see the prompt to pick it up. He'd run back and gut me every time. I had to google to find out you have to send Sherry up the wall to do the exact same thing I was trying to do. I hate Jake's campaign (although the lab part was very cool).
Overall, the story is somewhat of a letdown. Leon acts like an idiot when he gets strung along to go to a Cathedral because the woman, for whatever reason, couldn't tell him to his face what was there. Chris is a whiny emo faggot who can't control his erection to kill Ada. Jake starts out like a bad parody of Dr. Evil with his 50 million DOLLARZ demand (he gets better, though). I liked Ada's campaign, a lot. Taking everything into account, though, I felt the characters were kind of dumb. Simmons was an awful bad guy, too.
The game play makes up for everything, imo. There were only a few times where the camera angle fucked with me (such as running away from something and I'm running toward the camera), and there's a few times where the camera stays stationary and you move around like oldschool RE (a bad thing). Not too much that I could really complain. I did find a weird bug where you're running up the spiral staircase in Chris's campaign, as the boss smashes everything down. I got kind of behind, and the boss smashed the stairs from under me, but I was still running on thin air. I'd approach obstacles that weren't there, either, but I'd still slide under them, like I was a mime or something. I got all the way to the top, and then it showed the dying animation for me. It was weird.
I'll definitely 1000/1000 this game.
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I finally finished Leon's campaign last night. So far I feel that the online reviews in the range of 3/10 to 5/10 are a little harsh. The game looks good, the audio sounds great, and the gameplay is average. The only thing I can't stand are those QTEs, they kill both the atmosphere and the momentum the game tries to set.
I should be starting on either Jack's or Chris's story today. With the census being that Leon's story is the best I'm keeping my expectations low for either campaign.
I should be starting on either Jack's or Chris's story today. With the census being that Leon's story is the best I'm keeping my expectations low for either campaign.
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Games for Windows is huge. There are a lot of ports of console only games that I see on GFW. For real console games, there are slim pickens and I'd say they're all boots. It's easy to find hardware no problem (360, Wii, PS3) but physical media? Nope. I assume a lot of games are downloaded, somehow.
The arcades are really amazing, at least. I got absolutely sonned in '97 the other day and I had a stupid grin on my face the whole time.
(I don't mean to sidetrack this thread)
The arcades are really amazing, at least. I got absolutely sonned in '97 the other day and I had a stupid grin on my face the whole time.
(I don't mean to sidetrack this thread)
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Fucking nowhere.
The gameplay is nothing like any of the previous installments, and certainly nothing remotely like what you experience in 1 - 3, 0, REMake, RE:CV. It's more Gears of War with RE characters. The closest you can compare it to is 5 for gameplay, and I don't think that's being kind to 5 imo.
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If you like uncharted you will like this.
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As a Resident Evil game, this is the worst in the series.
As an action game, I'm enjoying it.
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This is actually a very good summary of what the game is. It's just a shame I don't really like this style of gameplay, I'm trying to give it a chance, but I just cannot warm to it.
I would almost use the analogy of Alien 3 - as a stand alone film I think it's pretty well done. As part of the main Alien(s) canon I think it is pretty poor.
Have gone back to basics and am now on my second play through of Resident Evil 2 trying to get sub three hour run times... good times
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Spot on assessment.
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That sounds horrible. Nobody should suffer through GFW, not even the chinese.
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I spent a lot of time with this game over the weekend.
Mercenaries is incredibly fun, because the gameplay is interesting and engaging, but the problem is that an arcade style zombie massacre simulator is not Resident Evil, IMO. I just can't bring myself to care that there is a new Resident Evil game out because this game just fumbles the ball in so many important intangible areas.
There is no emotional power behind anything this game has to offer.
The reason I play Resident Evil is not just for the gun shooting action. There are better games out there if I just want to point and kill.
The series has a vast, if somewhat cheesy, mythology to draw from. 5 raised the stakes by bringing back both Chris Redfield and Albert Wesker and effectively establishing an emotional arc that led to a satisfactory closure in an action vein. It may not be zombies and mansions, but it drew effectively from the series' mythology that I'd spent so much time with. It mined crucial relationships and elevated them to a place that, in the action game/film milieu, made sense for a world evolving beyond secret laboratories hidden underneath rustic mansions.
The story for 5 is silly and cheesy, but it creates instant emotional attachment by giving you a hero, an NPC who is in peril and in need of rescuing, and an old enemy come back to haunt him. This is basic storytelling 101, but because I've gotten invested in the series, the conflict means something to me.
Resident Evil 6's story has no emotional arc worth exploring and no build of tension or excitement to get me to care about how it turns out. This game STARTS with action equal to the gunship sequence in RE 4 and just...has no where to go.
Is the gameplay tight? Pretty tight, IMO. Is it engaging? Yes, but not in the campaign.
Just when the campaign starts to build some steam, it's time for another batch of QTEs or a cutscene. Or my personal favorite, walking for ten seconds before a QTE or a cutscene, followed by about 30 seconds of zombie killing and another QTE or cutscene. All of this would be fine if I actually cared about anything that's going on, but I don't.
Leon's campaign starts so abruptly, with the appearance of a mysterious new character who promises answers. But those answers only come to the player after a series of frustrating, linear environments that don't allow you to get a feel for the gameplay and leave you lost, bewildered and piecing the story together for yourself so that you can at least derive SOME satisfaction out of it. When you introduce new characters to an existing mythology, they need to be eased in, not just standing there at the start of the game next to one of the series' long running heroes. ESPECIALLY for a game that is so dedicated to being a story based game first and a gameplay based game second. Leon's campaign would have benefitted mush more strongly by a return to action beside Claire Redfield. Even though in the story, Claire's no longer a woman of action, there is no reason they couldn't have been thrust together into a situation that required her to run and gun all over again. It worked for Degeneration. It could have worked here, and would have been a nice tribute to older fans who like RE 2.
Chris's campaign has the same problems, but I am a bit more compelled by them initially because Chris seems to have lost his memory. I thought to myself 'oh, this is sort of like what happened to Jill in 5' and felt that the game was thematically drawing on events from previous games while not regurgitating the same sequence of events or dating its gameplay or structure. But lo and behold, rather than Jill coming back and returning the favor, we get a new character who does nothing but spout militaristic jingo about 'returning to duty' and 'doing the right thing.' How much more compelling might it have been if Jill had been the one beside Chris in this game, walking beside him and helping him back on the road to recovery just as he did for her in RE 5? Especially after all of Chris' vaunted talk about remembering your partners and helping them no matter what? I don't have any real beef with Piers, and it's all right thathe's there, but the narrative missed a real opportunity to make fans care about the story here, especially older fans.
Jake's campaign starts out very strong, with a really cool 'leading man' introduction, but then it's completely ruined by the sudden appearance of Sherry Birkin. Newer fans may not mind as much, and I'm okay with that, but older fans know who she is and their minds are probably filled with questions. 'Why is she here? Why does she have guns? Oh, she's a secret agent now? When did this happen?' And then, the reverse becomes true later on. When she starts talking about her past, older fans who played 2 will appreciate her revisiting those events, but now the newer fans will probably be confused and unable to suspend their disbelief, even for this game's storyline. 'Wait, who is this character again? Why does she hae to have all this baggage? What's really the point of giving her superpowers?' I understand that by giving Jake a partner that can relate to his unique status, it helps to crack the hardened shell of his existence, and I also understand that Jake represents the window for newer fans to peer into the backstory, but it all feels very clumsy, uneven and badly executed. One could argue that there is no way for Capcom to successfully introduce Sherry into the mix without angering some fans one way or another, but I disagree with this notion entirely.
This game feels like you had eight dfferent groups of people working on eight different parts of the game. And then they all shoehorned every element into it without:
A.) Ensuring the narrative flows properly
B.) Trimming any of the fat off what was developed
The game itself doesn't feel rushed, but it feels like the producer didn't take a good look at everything they put in this game to determine whether or not it met the thematic requirements to be a worthy sequel to a long running series. There was no one to hold the game's hand and walk it down a more straight and narrow path.
I think it's apt to say that this series has lost its way.
Not because 'it's not Resident Evil' anymore. People can criticize 4 and 5 for the same reason, but both of those games are good and, in their own way, fit into the larger tapestry of the series. But those don't have zombies and mansion.
Tension is gone. It's been replaced by spectacle, exploding helicoptors, exploding gas stations, exploding cars, exploding zombies, exploding...everything. There is no emotional arc in this game, nothing to make me care. It's just a zombie death simulator, and I just don't feel any resonance for this game.
Even when the characters cross over with one another, there is absolutely no payoff. Leon talks to Sherry, but there is nothing there to grab hold of. Jake talks to Chris about Wesker, but the outcome is unimpressive. Chris and Leon meet onscreen, anywhere, for the first time, and it's a colossal letdown.
I'm not knocking the gameplay at all here. It's fine. But I AM knocking the game.
People can say whatever they want about 'story' in a video game, but there is no getting around the fact that story, and the mythology of this series, have been the engine driving Resident Evil from the very beginning. It's such an integral part of what makes Resident Evil, well, RESIDENT EVIL. Even as cheesy as the story is, it resonates with the audience.
When I first played RE, I said 'This is the future of video games. Emotionally driven games.' If you remove that emotion, that tension, if you ramp it up to the point where it loses its scope and focus, you have a game with a broken progression that never quite gets its legs underneath it.
The gameplay's good, sure, but why even include a Campaign mode if it doesn't matter?
It DOES matter. It matters a lot to a series like Resident Evil.
You guys will still see me playing this game because I'm still going to unlock as much as possible. I'm OCD about RE in this way. And admittedly, I love the Mercenaries mode. But I doubt I'll ever revisit campaign once I've gotten all the seals and beaten all the difficulties. Campaign is just a chore, not fun at all.
Mercenaries is incredibly fun, because the gameplay is interesting and engaging, but the problem is that an arcade style zombie massacre simulator is not Resident Evil, IMO. I just can't bring myself to care that there is a new Resident Evil game out because this game just fumbles the ball in so many important intangible areas.
There is no emotional power behind anything this game has to offer.
The reason I play Resident Evil is not just for the gun shooting action. There are better games out there if I just want to point and kill.
The series has a vast, if somewhat cheesy, mythology to draw from. 5 raised the stakes by bringing back both Chris Redfield and Albert Wesker and effectively establishing an emotional arc that led to a satisfactory closure in an action vein. It may not be zombies and mansions, but it drew effectively from the series' mythology that I'd spent so much time with. It mined crucial relationships and elevated them to a place that, in the action game/film milieu, made sense for a world evolving beyond secret laboratories hidden underneath rustic mansions.
The story for 5 is silly and cheesy, but it creates instant emotional attachment by giving you a hero, an NPC who is in peril and in need of rescuing, and an old enemy come back to haunt him. This is basic storytelling 101, but because I've gotten invested in the series, the conflict means something to me.
Resident Evil 6's story has no emotional arc worth exploring and no build of tension or excitement to get me to care about how it turns out. This game STARTS with action equal to the gunship sequence in RE 4 and just...has no where to go.
Is the gameplay tight? Pretty tight, IMO. Is it engaging? Yes, but not in the campaign.
Just when the campaign starts to build some steam, it's time for another batch of QTEs or a cutscene. Or my personal favorite, walking for ten seconds before a QTE or a cutscene, followed by about 30 seconds of zombie killing and another QTE or cutscene. All of this would be fine if I actually cared about anything that's going on, but I don't.
Leon's campaign starts so abruptly, with the appearance of a mysterious new character who promises answers. But those answers only come to the player after a series of frustrating, linear environments that don't allow you to get a feel for the gameplay and leave you lost, bewildered and piecing the story together for yourself so that you can at least derive SOME satisfaction out of it. When you introduce new characters to an existing mythology, they need to be eased in, not just standing there at the start of the game next to one of the series' long running heroes. ESPECIALLY for a game that is so dedicated to being a story based game first and a gameplay based game second. Leon's campaign would have benefitted mush more strongly by a return to action beside Claire Redfield. Even though in the story, Claire's no longer a woman of action, there is no reason they couldn't have been thrust together into a situation that required her to run and gun all over again. It worked for Degeneration. It could have worked here, and would have been a nice tribute to older fans who like RE 2.
Chris's campaign has the same problems, but I am a bit more compelled by them initially because Chris seems to have lost his memory. I thought to myself 'oh, this is sort of like what happened to Jill in 5' and felt that the game was thematically drawing on events from previous games while not regurgitating the same sequence of events or dating its gameplay or structure. But lo and behold, rather than Jill coming back and returning the favor, we get a new character who does nothing but spout militaristic jingo about 'returning to duty' and 'doing the right thing.' How much more compelling might it have been if Jill had been the one beside Chris in this game, walking beside him and helping him back on the road to recovery just as he did for her in RE 5? Especially after all of Chris' vaunted talk about remembering your partners and helping them no matter what? I don't have any real beef with Piers, and it's all right thathe's there, but the narrative missed a real opportunity to make fans care about the story here, especially older fans.
Jake's campaign starts out very strong, with a really cool 'leading man' introduction, but then it's completely ruined by the sudden appearance of Sherry Birkin. Newer fans may not mind as much, and I'm okay with that, but older fans know who she is and their minds are probably filled with questions. 'Why is she here? Why does she have guns? Oh, she's a secret agent now? When did this happen?' And then, the reverse becomes true later on. When she starts talking about her past, older fans who played 2 will appreciate her revisiting those events, but now the newer fans will probably be confused and unable to suspend their disbelief, even for this game's storyline. 'Wait, who is this character again? Why does she hae to have all this baggage? What's really the point of giving her superpowers?' I understand that by giving Jake a partner that can relate to his unique status, it helps to crack the hardened shell of his existence, and I also understand that Jake represents the window for newer fans to peer into the backstory, but it all feels very clumsy, uneven and badly executed. One could argue that there is no way for Capcom to successfully introduce Sherry into the mix without angering some fans one way or another, but I disagree with this notion entirely.
This game feels like you had eight dfferent groups of people working on eight different parts of the game. And then they all shoehorned every element into it without:
A.) Ensuring the narrative flows properly
B.) Trimming any of the fat off what was developed
The game itself doesn't feel rushed, but it feels like the producer didn't take a good look at everything they put in this game to determine whether or not it met the thematic requirements to be a worthy sequel to a long running series. There was no one to hold the game's hand and walk it down a more straight and narrow path.
I think it's apt to say that this series has lost its way.
Not because 'it's not Resident Evil' anymore. People can criticize 4 and 5 for the same reason, but both of those games are good and, in their own way, fit into the larger tapestry of the series. But those don't have zombies and mansion.
Tension is gone. It's been replaced by spectacle, exploding helicoptors, exploding gas stations, exploding cars, exploding zombies, exploding...everything. There is no emotional arc in this game, nothing to make me care. It's just a zombie death simulator, and I just don't feel any resonance for this game.
Even when the characters cross over with one another, there is absolutely no payoff. Leon talks to Sherry, but there is nothing there to grab hold of. Jake talks to Chris about Wesker, but the outcome is unimpressive. Chris and Leon meet onscreen, anywhere, for the first time, and it's a colossal letdown.
I'm not knocking the gameplay at all here. It's fine. But I AM knocking the game.
People can say whatever they want about 'story' in a video game, but there is no getting around the fact that story, and the mythology of this series, have been the engine driving Resident Evil from the very beginning. It's such an integral part of what makes Resident Evil, well, RESIDENT EVIL. Even as cheesy as the story is, it resonates with the audience.
When I first played RE, I said 'This is the future of video games. Emotionally driven games.' If you remove that emotion, that tension, if you ramp it up to the point where it loses its scope and focus, you have a game with a broken progression that never quite gets its legs underneath it.
The gameplay's good, sure, but why even include a Campaign mode if it doesn't matter?
It DOES matter. It matters a lot to a series like Resident Evil.
You guys will still see me playing this game because I'm still going to unlock as much as possible. I'm OCD about RE in this way. And admittedly, I love the Mercenaries mode. But I doubt I'll ever revisit campaign once I've gotten all the seals and beaten all the difficulties. Campaign is just a chore, not fun at all.
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I think this is a great point, not even when related to RE. Games today are seriously lacking an arc. It all seems like an ADD explosion fest where the only lull in action is the loading screen. A game can't be just constant intense, mouth frothing action, and expect a reaction out of the player. There is no satisfaction when all you did was play 8-10 hours of explosions, it leaves with this sense of "What the fuck just happened?" Unless it is done in parody, it leaves for a confused gamer, unless you are part of the 80 iq call of duty orgy.
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You say you don't support the "because it's not RE anymore" argument...and then give the very argument.
I still agree with some stuff you've said. It's just funny how it almost always comes down to that with people.
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I think maybe the point I'm having trouble really articulating is that I am not opposed to changing the tone of the series. Most people that say 'it's not RE' say it because there is no mansion, there are no zombies, no fixed camera angles, etc.
I didn't mind the shift in 4 and 5. I really enjoyed those games.
But if you play, for example, RE: Revelations for the 3DS, the tone of that game is closer to 5 than to 1 or 2. And yet, it still feels connected to the franchise thematically. It has a lot of the traits that people dislike about the later games but it still feels like a natural chapter in the franchise. To me, anyway.
This game just doesn't feel like a part of the series to me. The characters are there, the voice actors, some of the history is present. But it seems like this could have been any game. They just chose to use things like Umbrella and Ada Wong and, suddenly, it's Resident Evil.
I guess I'm all right with the series being redefined. I've already accepted those changes that have come before, with 4 and 5 and Revelations. Each one is distinct and different from each other, but it feels like they still belong to the franchise. I feel like, as I play them, I'm playing a 'Resident Evil' game even though they are nothing like the earlier games that so many people hold up to a standard.
This game just doesn't feel the same to me. It's not that I want to hate it. I want to like it. But whenever I think about the narrative, nothing resonates. Nothing feels right to me. It feels very cynical, very much paint by numbers. I felt there was a point to the other storylines that rewarded me for staying invested in the franchise. This storyline, this series of arcs, doesn't feel very rewarding to complete. I don't feel like my loyalty to RE has paid off by slogging through these campaigns.
I didn't need Wesker back. I didn't need Umbrella. I didn't specifically NEED Jill or Claire back. This game just doesn't feel like it has roots in the franchise from which it takes its name.
I can't really put it any other way. If that doesn't make any sense, I'm sorry.
I don't hate this game, but thanks for the unnecessary trolling.
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I get it, dude. I'm more of a mindset of liking a game for what it is, rather than disliking it for what it isn't. I've never been one to gush over RE's story. It's always been "adequate" for me, and RE 6 is no different. Maybe that's where a lot of lines start being drawn when it comes to this game. I mean, when I look at a game like RE 4, why am I supposed to care about a kidnapped daughter of the president, who happens to be taken to the middle of nowhere? The further you get into it, the more you find out about the history of "las plagas," but I didn't care at all about it as I played.
I dunno, RE 6 had a nice atmosphere (multiple atmospheres), the game play was good, and I like the things that were tweaked. The game play seems like a natural evolution from 5, which also improved on 4. It feels like it fits in with the other games.
I dunno, RE 6 had a nice atmosphere (multiple atmospheres), the game play was good, and I like the things that were tweaked. The game play seems like a natural evolution from 5, which also improved on 4. It feels like it fits in with the other games.