Zombies, a vast array of weapons, Leon and Chris in the same game, the ability to move and shoot at the same time and 6 different campaigns. How could this possibly be disappointing I hear you ask, well, let me tell you…

When you first put that shiny new disk into your PS3 or Xbox 360, you are thrown straight into a tutorial at the hands of Leon and Helena, the tutorial itself is fairly self explanatory; walk like this, shoot like this, heal like this etc etc but the problem is that it quite literally plays itself. If you try to move out of the path that’s been set, nothing happens, if you fail at killing a zombie, a quick time event pops up that is impossible to fail and therefore has no challenge to it. Admittedly yes, this is a tutorial but straight away, the essence of Resident Evil is lessened. In Leon; Scenario B back in Resident Evil 2, the opening provided one of the most challenging parts of the entire game and if you died, there was no second chance and thats what these games have always been about.

Tutorial done, now we get the option to choose a campaign, and like stated previously, there are 6 to choose from, making this the biggest (well, longest) Resident Evil game to date and that is a really rather good thing. One of the first things that I noticed about the character select screen is that when you have chosen and go on to choose your difficulty settings etc, you, without ever having played the game before, have the option to play with unlimited ammo. This, for me, is rather peculiar as surely that should be something reserved for when you’ve completed the game? And that is yet another thing that lessens this game from it’s counterparts as ammunition has always been important in this series of games, the fact that it is generally rather difficult to find means that you have to be smart with your usage but this option completely eradicates any sense of ‘Survival’ in this ‘Survival Horror’.

Okay, there was one thing that I like about this game… Near the beginning of the second act whilst playing as Leon, you run into a policeman who complains about it being it being his first day on the job and how he’s ‘already in a shootout’. For a Resident Evil fanboy, this is an absolutely beautiful moment as it’s quite clearly a reference to Leon’s first day back in Resident Evil 2 and although the franchise is slowly being torn apart to move into the realms of ‘Action Horror’, this is a great call back.

Basically, my experience with Resident Evil 6 has been a good one but it hasn’t been overly fantastic like the times when I played through Resident Evil’s 2 and 4. The main problem that I’ve faced is the fact that if this was any other game whatsoever or even a stand alone title, it would be pretty fantastic but the fact that it’s Resident Evil is what hinders it and that’s what worries me about the future of the franchise. After Resi 5 (a sub par game that isn’t worthy of a 5/10 rating) and now this, I’m a little concerned with the direction that these games could now take. I just don’t want the developers to developers to end up creating a game that no-one will ever play again in the same way that Sega have ruined the image of Sonic for all of it’s hardcore fans.

Oh and when you’ve beaten the game 6 times, you can play a 7th campaign as Ada Wong! So that means that you can play this game 21 times (on different difficulty settings) and always have a different experience. Isn’t that a bit too much, Capcom?

 

7 Biohazards out of 10.