So, my LE and metal sign showed up today, and I've put about 2 hours into the game so far. That two hours was comprised of the first two campaign levels, which clocked in at about 30 and 50 minutes, respectively. I haven't touched multiplayer yet, nor have I finished the campaign, but I figured I'd toss some initial impressions.
First, what arrived. If nothing else, the LE packaging is nice. It has an embossed slipcover and a real steelbook. The patches are also pretty nifty, if fairly useless. As a bonus, I got the metal 'Welcome to Raccoon City' sign, which is surprisingly cool. It's predictably thin, but it does have some punched out bullet holes and raised lettering. Shipping was a bitch from the Capcom Store, price-wise, but I would be significantly less pleased right now if I hadn't gotten the sign.
Did you catch the foreshadowing there? Yeah, honestly, my initial gameplay impressions aren't great. Thus far, I've been playing 'Resident Evil: Operation Fighting Against the Goddamn Controls'. I've never played SOCOM, so I can't comment on the similarities, but I'll say this... playing this right after two playthroughs of Mass Effect 3 was a very, very bad idea. To me, ME3 got third person shooting right. The cover system, the speeds, the movement options... RE has none of it. First and foremost, even with the sensitivity to max, I feel like I'm moving through water the entire time. Very sluggish, both in movement and aiming. The cover system is, in my opinion,
ed. There's no button press, it's a 'stick to whatever you hit against' system, which is horrendous. To top that off, it's also very finicky... for something like a crate, you can pop up, but only if you're dead center. If you're in the standard Mass Effect side-of-the-crate stance, you'll pull the left trigger and... well, you'll just not do anything. It's infuriating and detrimental. My last movement quibble has to do with grenades. A grenade lands, so you want to get the
out of the way, right? Well, let's say you're in cover behind a crate. You can't jump over objects, so that's out. You can't run backwards, so that's not an option. Your only means of getting the
out of there is a bizarre 'click the left stick while pressing a direction and A' bellyflop thing. Dive and roll? Not here. Dive and awkwardly smack the ground. It works, but it's way to many buttons and inelegant as all hell.
The controls become an issue because, well... let's tie this into a larger issue. If you wanted Left 4 Dead meets Resident Evil, this isn't it. I've spent my time moving from room to room, stumbling onto enemy soldiers with guns, followed by zombies hordes, rinse and repeat. They eventually started blending together, but it's still not quite clicking. The guys with guns vs. guys with guns thing is predictable and seems really out of place, but the zombie fighting isn't bad. In fact, it's pretty much the best part of this so far. They come out of nowhere, act like RE zombies, and go down pretty easily. Remember the control sluggishness? Zombies and guys who hide behind cover are fine. When I stopped, the game had just thrown a roomful of Lickers at me. That was... well, I wouldn't use the word fun. The sluggish controls prevented me from feeling like I could take them on, which was compounded by the fact that nearly every enemy seems to suffer from the 'seriously, how many bullets is this going to
ing take?' syndrome.
Speaking of bullet sponges, your team will die. Constantly. That'd be a problem, though, if there weren't ABSOLUTELY NO CONSEQUENCES FOR IT. Get gunned down? Team mate holds A to revive. Got turned into a zombie at start attacking everyone? Team kills you, then they hold A to revive. It's a strange design choice. I assume it'll have some detriment in multiplayer, but it does take some suspense out of it. Of course, if you die in single player, it reloads, so get used to that.
I... I don't know. Look, it's not the worst game I've played. I just know that, thus far, I wouldn't have spent $60 (or $70 for the LE) if I had played a demo. Even the RE fan service hasn't been great so far, which I find baffling. I would've thought that being on the raid to get the G-Virus sample from Birkin would be cool. It, uh, wasn't. The environments don't feel like RE, either, but I also haven't been to an RE2 location yet, so maybe that will help.
Like I said, I'm not very far into it, nor have I played multiplayer. I only know two things... One, I'm not really having fun with it. In fact, I was playing and realized I just wanted the level to end, which isn't a good sign... and Two, most of the negative impressions posted by gaming websites? I'm not really able to refute them. Most of the complaints I've seen have been pretty spot on so far.
I'll update this with more impressions later, and I apologize if anyone cancels a pre-order because of my opinions. If it helps, I'm a huge RE fanboy (Operation Raccoon City is the 30th RE game in my collection, both regular series and spin-off), so it's not like I want this to be bad. I wanted a good squad-based zombie shooter with some RE fan service, but the two hours I've played have utterly unimpressed me. And that, seriously, is from a guy who played Resident Evil: Survivor over the past weekend.
