I hadn’t given Resident Evil 6 much attention while it was being previewed at various gaming conventions, but I had the October 2nd release date marked on my calendar ever since it was announced. I've completed several entries of Capcom’s flagship series but skipped over all of the side stories and on-rails shooters that weren't part of the main tale of Umbrella Corporations and Z-Viruses. I'm not the hardcore fan that could recall every intricate detail of the storyline or one that spends his free time shipping various characters like they were Barbie and Ken dolls (which apparently is THE thing, according to things I found in RE forums that cannot be unseen), but I've always liked playing through a RE game.

That all being said, it's sad to say that any bit of excitement that I actually had for a new Resident Evil was completely squashed by the end of the Monday morning, one day before the release date. Apparently, every site that I trust for reviews had several issues with the game and gave it poor marks all around. Giant Bomb, NeoGAF, GameSpot; they were all in unison with their take – it's just plain bad.
Needless to say, I was completely caught off guard with this response, but I still wanted to give it a good honest try. This is where I’m at after spending one day with Resident Evil 6.



Right from the start, the game throws you into a grim situation with a beat up Leon and a new-face named Helena attempting to get away from a chopper trying to kill them (kinda like the beginning of Code Veronica). This tutorial prologue shows you some of the basic gameplay features in-between the KICK ASS cutscenes complete with the world exploding all around you and QTE’s thrown in to keep your attention. I didn’t have too much of an issue with this until reaching a cliffhanger that transitions into the game's start menu and allows you to start your game officially with with three campaigns to choose from. Naturally, I chose Leon because I thought that the game was directing me to his story first due to how the prologue ended. As it turns out, his campaign starts off with you killing the zombiepresident (with the hilarious line “I JUST SHOT THE PRESIDENT!"), an event that had absolutely nothing to do with where you left Leon at two minutes prior.


Bad taste so far, but I kept on. I changed the aiming reticule to the Resident Evil 4 laser-dot (sidenote: the game doesn’t pause while fiddling around with settings – weird) and started killing every zombie in sight while making my way through the level with my partner. My first real sign of difficulty occurred whenever I tripped an alarm that started a timed sequence where I had to survive an endless wave of zombies. Walking through the building earlier and taking on small clusters of the walking dead wasn’t an issue; however, facing seven or eight of them at once proved tough as the enemies just soaked up bullets.

Every now and then, one would grab me and start the joystick-waggle QTE that would ALWAYS take two blocks of health away regardless of how fast I was in filling up the meter. Kinda dumb considering how rare herbs were at that point, but that’s just how the game works. Get used to dealing with frustratingly cheap traps.

Speaking of which, you’ll find these zombie corpses lying about that are obvious cheap-scare traps that’ll attack as soon as you get near. Shooting the corpses before walking up to them does nothing as the game treats it like there's nothing there, and in some cases, the only way to your objective is by walking next to them. Every single time, even when I’m careful, even when I try to run past, even when I quickshoot at the zombie, I get caught by the damn thing and lose a full quarter of health due to it. Dumb AND annoying.

If you think that sounded bad, what about an unavoidable instant death that happens whenever your back is turned? During a sequence at a gas station that has Leon trying to protect survivors, a cutscene of a Shrieker zombie screaming on top of a truck is triggered once you kill around five enemies. This warns the player that this stronger baddie is now in the mix and that you have to watch out for him. Unfortunately, he’s not the real danger as five seconds later an out-of-control EMS truck crashes directly into the spot where your fight starts at.

The first time I died, I was facing away from the truck as I was dealing with that Shrieker zombie, and the vehicle clipped me, immediately taking me out. The second time I died, I knew well enough to avoid the blasted thing except a zombie grabbed me and I watched as the truck ran us both the over. The THIRD time I died was a suicide due to the fact that I felt like I didn’t get as many skill points as I did on my first run, but the FOURTH time I died was total bullshit! I avoided the trap, killed all the zombies, and successfully moved out of the path of the vehicle but ended up getting shot in the face as the back of truck housed some kind of SWAT guys with AK-47’s.

WHAT!?

After this, I ended up in a gun shop, facing several waves of zombie that can be either incredibly annoying or a breeze depending on how lucky you are. Once your character's health is depleted, your partner can revive you to get you back in action, but you’ll need to heal immediately as you’re left with a sliver of health. This puts you in a one-hit situation, and I had several occasions where I died as soon as I regained controls of Leon.

I could only feel a bit helpless after watching the reviving cutscene and getting killed instantaneously because I was hit by a zombie who shuffled up to me when I was being helped to my feet. Then, there was that one time where I watched as Leon collapsed right after standing back up due to a Shrieker zombie screaming a couple of steps away. As it turns out, I was brought back in the middle of his scream, which registers as an attack, which instantly kills you after a revival.

I never really had any problems with Resident Evil 5. I’ve never been the person that feels like he’s been betrayed due to Capcom turning the series away from it’s original survival-horror roots. I don’t care that this game is trying to reach a broader market, trying to pull in people who play games like Call of Duty or Gears of War. My main issue with Resident Evil 6 is that (after the first day) it seems like this will be nothing more than trail-and-error sequences over and over. To give the game credit, it actually looks pretty spectacular and getting killed was made a little sweeter due to each individual unique Leon death animations (my favorite was getting beat by the baseball bat across the face), but the game feels like some of the mechanics are slightly broken.

I mean, I always felt completely underpowered when fighting through the aforementioned waves and waves of zombies. For example, I faced this fat zombie (similar to a Left 4 Dead Boomer) about three times and never really figured out a good method to kill him. Every single bullet from my pistol and shotgun were just seemingly absorbed by his fat but explosives would just stagger him around a bit, almost like he was knocked off balance. I thought that this would lead to some sort of enemy-specific melee attack, but the fat guy usually went back into his attack stance after a second or so. Eventually, I'd put enough bullets into him, and he’d just fall over and croak while I stood over him, wondering which one of my weapons hurt him the most.

Even when I had large amounts of ammo, I always felt like I was ridiculously out-classed by my enemies. In fact, I had the most success by gaming the system with the context-sensitive melee attacks that could kill an enemy almost instantaneously. There's a lot of weird systems in place with Resident Evil 6, and I don't think that I'll be spending that much more time trying to learn them all. In fact, I think I'll just send it back into GameFly and hold out for the inevitable price-drop. I mean, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City hit $20 in three months, why couldn't this one do the same?



This was the game that first got me on-board with the Resident Evil franchise. My PlayStation was a piece of junk that refused to read memory cards, so I had to do with this version, and it wasn’t as terrible of a port that you’d think it would be. Granted, I never played both versions side-by-side, but I still managed to get through the Nintendo 64 version without feeling cheapened at all due to the quality.


A fantastic cover that helped sell a great piece covering everything about Resident Evil from a history of the characters to upcoming titles. Great art.


Here’s a fun look at four different takes on what I consider to be the most memorable moment of all the Resident Evil games (second place goes to that zombie dog jumping through the window).

From left to right starting at the top, we have:

• Resident Evil [Playstation 1996]
• Resident Evil [Gamecube Remake 2002]
• Resident Evil: Deadly Silence [Nintendo DS 2006]
• Resident Evil [Unreleased Game Boy Color port]

For those of you who are wondering, a ROM of the Game Boy Color version has made its way online earlier this year. A person who owned an original prototype cart dumped the files after an online community fundraiser raised $2,000 to “purchase” the game.

*For other bite-sized posts about video games, visit Player's Pulse!