Resident Evil 6

I’ve been putting this review off for a while, I’m not exactly sure why and now I’m showing up so late to the party that everyone’s already gone home, had enough time to recuperate and are now at another party. But I really don’t give a damn, I have to write this, not so much to get my opinion out, lord knows it’s not much different than a lot of others. Jim Sterling’s review (seen here: http://www.destructoid.com/review-resident-evil-6-235326.phtml) pretty much sums up majority of my complaints. I have to write this because I need to get it off my chest, little discussions where I vent my frustrations with this game just aren’t cutting it, I gotta rip it another asshole, or at least open the wound Mr. Sterling already gave it a little wider than it already is. Never have I been more disappointed in anything. (at least until I watched “Silent Hill: Revelation”) When I went into this game I was expecting a fun old time, but what I got was nothing but pain and frustration.

I’m going to put this out there right now; I never even finished the game. I played through Leon’s campaign, got to the end boss and didn’t even finish with that. It’s tedious, frustrating and terribly designed. Worse still this was apparently the best the game had to offer. If this is the best the game has to offer than something is seriously wrong. I’m honestly happy I never decided to trudge through the other two campaigns, or the secret fourth campaign.

The list of problems and terrible design decisions are near endless. The new inventory menu attempts ease of access but it’s still not as intuitive as the attaché case in “RE4” and still not as trusty and reliable as the series’ staple menu system. Herbs are now turned into Wintergreen Tic-Tac tablets and each Tic-Tac fills a bar of health. Rather than using the health system that worked so well in “RE4 & 5” or the heartbeat status from previous games “Resident Evil 6” opts for a bar system and each breath freshening herb fills a single bar of health. I’ll give the game this, you can now use herbs on the fly rather than having to navigate the menus or hotkey them in advance. Only problem is rather than automatically making them Tic-Tacs and storing them in your trusty Tic-Tac container the player instead has to go through this process themselves. So they took a step forward and immediately took a step back. Well done Capcom, well done! Weapons are kindly hot keyed for us this time around, so at least there’s that.

The worst offender of the “new and improved” real time menu system is the actual pause menu itself. Rather than actually pausing the game Leon pulls out his iPhone and takes a knee. Here you can set the brightness, subtitles, controls etc. While not all that frustrating, because you can at least change the settings to your liking during a quiet moment, the biggest design flaw is the fact that if your controller is disconnected the game doesn’t actually pause itself. Instead Leon takes that knee of his and the player is left scrambling to put new batteries into the controller in the hope that they power it back up in time. When this happened to me I was not so lucky, instead I found myself welcomed back by the “You Are Dead” screen. What irks me the most about this isn’t just the fact that it’s bad design, no it’s the fact that there is an actual pause screen! You’d swear Capcom did this just to piss people off. It’s common knowledge that the game pause itself in the event that the controller is disconnected, the whole reason this system was even put in place was to avoid incidents like this from happening.

When it comes to the actual shooting –the main focus of gameplay- “RE6” seems to have taken a step back from the fourth and fifth installments. Leon appears to have tremors that cause him to shake his gun all over the place. No longer does he have the steady aim of a well-trained government agent. I can only assume this was done for sake of “realism” but it just makes Leon look like an incompetent moron who’s probably never used a gun before in his life. Both the fourth and fifth games had a slight shake when aiming but it was subtle and not entirely noticeable. Weapons also kick to the sky now, as characters can’t seem to handle the kick of any weapon they’re using, including 9mm pistols. It just doesn’t enhance gameplay in the least –it just makes it feel broken- and whoever thought it did should be slapped upside the head for being such a moron.

Capcom also seems convinced that this series is still Survival Horror rather than Action Horror so you’ll often find yourself low on ammunition. This system would have worked in “RE4” and worked in the Professional mode in “RE5” but it doesn’t work here. The forced skirmishes in the fourth and fifth installments were the exception rather than the rule. “RE6” however is a straight up modern action game where forced skirmishes ARE the rule. In that case Capcom should have been wise enough to know that if the player is forced to expend large amounts of ammunition at nearly every turn than ammunition should at least be plentiful. Instead the player often has to resort to the broken melee system. Melee is actually worth a damn for once but, like “Operation Raccoon City”, the melee is floaty and inaccurate. It also doesn’t help that the character has a very limited stamina, meaning that if the player runs out you’re forced to walk around lazily, avoiding enemy attacks, until your stamina bar recharges.

The camera and movement system is completely broken, yet another step back from the previous two games in the franchise. Taking cover is an annoyingly convoluted process where you have to aim, press another button, and then push the thumbstick up, left or right in order to pop out of cover. This is a big name game by one of the biggest developers in the world, how in the hell do they make this kind of rookie mistake? I’ve played shitty Xbox Live Arcade games that implement cover better than this. It’s not hard to just have the player click a button, stick to cover and then press the aim button to pop out. Again whoever thought this was a good idea should be slapped across the back of the head.

The game even manages to devalue the “surprise he’s not dead” twist with the final boss. First he transforms into a giant tiger thing, which you kill. Then he comes back again as a fucking T-Rex, for some ungodly reason, which you also kill. Then he comes back again as the tiger thing, which you kill again. Hell we’re even treated to a very cliché death scene. Then the fucker comes back one more time as a GIANT FUCKING FLY! It wasn’t enough that Cartoon Villain Man turns into a T-Rex but they had to make his final form a fly? A fly? Words cannot express how utterly stupid this is.

Honestly I don’t even want to write anymore, I’m done. Everything about this game is fail, in every possible way. The writing is just sad, even sadder considering that this is the worst writing in the series, and this is a series that has never had really good writing. The characters are bland action clichés that lack any development whatsoever, the action is so epic in scale that it lacks actual impact, desensitizing the player to its visual noise in the first few minutes. It’s also not helped by the jump cuts, close ups and shaky camera work. It’s just done, this entire series is done! Fuck Capcom and fuck this game!