Resident Evil 6
PlayStation 3
Nostalgia Factor:
I remember very little about Resident Evil 6. I've only played through it one time in my life prior to playing it for this review. I remember disliking how it was such an action oriented explosion fest. It didn't even try to be scary, like prior Resident Evils. The series had taken a turn away from the scary with 4, continuing the trend with 5. But this game was on a whole different level. It seemed to have no interest in being scary, or to have any tense, frightening moments. It was all bang bang shoot the enemies and boom duck under the explosion, and quick! - run across this crumbling bridge, jump onto a helicopter!! Flashy graphics, cinematic cutscenes. All action, all the time. To me, this is where the series truly stopped being Resident Evil as I know it.
Because I was so disgusted with the game, I never bothered to play it a second time. Looking back through my trophy info, it seems the time of my initial playthrough was 2013, which was 12 years ago. I think enough time has passed for me to cool off and look at things objectively. I keep seeing discourse online that this game isn't as bad as people remember it. And maybe that will be true. This time, I'll know what to expect coming in. This time, I'll be able to put aside those lofty expectations I had for this coming in, and just be able to sit back, have fun, and enjoy the game as its intended to be enjoyed. At least I hope I am able to enjoy it. I'm able to be open minded in my old age.
So let's do it. Resident Evil 6: good game, or just as bad as I remember it to be? Time to find out.
Story:
I just finished playing through this game with all four available characters, and I still couldn't tell you what the heck just happened. The story is complete nonsense. There's a plague. You're racing around the world trying to stop it. You fight the bad guys who are pulling the strings. That's really all I can tell you. I don't know. Like I said, it's a mess. Nothing is explained in the game's opening scenes. I don't have a manual, so I don't know if anything is explained in there either. The game just kind of throws you into the action and expects you to keep up.
It's all so ridiculous. Clearly, the game is more about moving from giant set piece to giant set piece than telling an actual coherent story. You'll go from shooting enemies in a cave, to getting on a boat that crashes into the coast, to fighting through hordes of zombies in the street, to getting on a plane and fighting monsters on the plane, to crashing the plane into a city, to wandering a cemetery, to finding an underground lab, to riding a mine cart and blasting away at Ada Wong's clone (?). I think there's a plot about the game's fictional president getting ass @ssinated (don't want my blog to get shut down). And Wesker has a son, but he's a good guy - apparently?
*sigh*
To be honest with you, I stopped paying attention an hour or two in the game. It's complete rubbish. What happened to the Resident Evil I used to love? Just out of curiousity, here is the Wikipedia summary for the game's story:
"On 24 December 2012, Jake Muller, son of late bio-terrorist Albert Wesker, flees local authorities during a bio-terrorist attack in Edonia. He partners with Division of Security Operations (DSO) agent and Raccoon City survivor Sherry Birkin and learns that she is to extract him from the country to create a vaccine for the newly emerged C-virus. However, they are relentlessly hunted by Ustanak, a hulking bio-weapon. Meanwhile, a Bio-terrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA) strike team, led by Chris Redfield and Piers Nivans, is deployed to eliminate the infected local populace. They are attacked by the leader of Neo-Umbrella, who claims to be Ada Wong; she kills the entire team, except Chris and Piers, using a device that injects them with the C-virus, turning them into monsters. Chris goes into a self-imposed exile, afflicted with post-traumatic amnesia. Meanwhile, Sherry and Jake's extraction by the BSAA is sabotaged, forcing them to crash land into the mountains where they are captured by "Ada" for six months.
On 29 June 2013, US President Adam Benford plans to publicly disclose the truth behind the 1998 Raccoon City incident and the government's dealings with Umbrella to prevent further bio-terrorism. However, the venue, located in the American town of Tall Oaks, is hit by another attack, infecting the President. The only survivors, DSO agent and Raccoon City survivor Leon S. Kennedy and Secret Service agent Helena Harper, are forced to kill him. The pair encounters the real Ada Wong (also Taylor), and Leon learns that National Security Advisor Derek Simmons is affiliated with Neo-Umbrella and orchestrated the attack. Leon and Helena fake their deaths and pursue Simmons to Lanshiang, China, where Jake and Sherry escape from their captivity.
Chris returns to duty in the BSAA with Piers and a new team in a besieged Lanshiang. He recovers from his amnesia and recklessly pursues "Ada", resulting in casualties among his unit. Chris and Piers track her down until Leon intervenes. After being informed by Leon, Chris and Piers pursue "Ada" to an aircraft carrier, where they destroy cruise missiles laden with the C-virus. Meanwhile, Leon, Helena, Sherry, and Jake confront Simmons over his involvement with the outbreaks, during which Sherry covertly hands Jake's medical data to Leon in case of their capture. Simmons, infected by a J'avo, admits to assassinating the President to maintain national security. Leon and Helena defeat the mutated Simmons, while Sherry and Jake are captured again. After a C-virus detonates and causes an outbreak in the city, Leon informs Chris of Jake's true identity and has him rescue Jake and Sherry in a remote oil platform. With Ada's assistance, Leon and Helena kill a further mutated Simmons for good.
Chris and Piers head into an underwater facility beneath the oil platform, where they free Jake and Sherry from captivity before encountering a massive bio-weapon called Haos. Severely injured, Piers injects himself with the C-virus to turn the tide of the battle, allowing them to defeat Haos. However, aware of his inevitable mutation, Piers sacrifices himself by forcing Chris into an escape pod and using his mutated abilities to destroy the facility. Jake and Sherry also escape the facility and kill Ustanak as they ride a rocket-powered lift to the surface.
Ada's imposter is revealed to be Carla Radames, a scientist who was forced to transform into an Ada clone by Simmons. Although presumed dead after being shot by one of Simmons' soldiers, Carla attempts a final attack against Ada after injecting herself with a powerful dose of the C-virus, but is killed. Ada then helps Leon and Helena in their fight against Simmons, and later destroys the laboratory where Carla was developed before accepting a new assignment. Leon and Helena are cleared for duty; Chris remains with the BSAA in command of a new squad after overcoming his guilt; Sherry continues her work as a DSO agent; and Jake begins a new life combating bioterrorism in a developing country, with his identity concealed by the BSAA."
Props to you if you were able to read that without your eyes completely glazing over.
Gameplay:
Since I didn't care about the story of Resident Evil 6, my main focus was on its gameplay. This is a behind the back shooter, expanding upon the formula introduced in Resident Evil 4 and 5. I always thought RE4 was a worthy entry in the Resident Evil series, despite the more pronounced shift from horror to action. RE5 put an even greater emphasis on action. As a result, this was where the series started to go off the rails for me. RE6 pushes things even further. This has always been where the series stopped being Resident Evil for me.
Looking at it strictly from the perspective of a shooting game, it is alright. Looking at it from the perspective of a Resident Evil game, it is terrible. But let's put that aside and focus on the basics. Is the game any fun?
Yes and no. I'm not going to lie and say this game is garbage or anything. It is a perfectly serviceable action title. The combat is fun. The giant set pieces can be thrilling. The game can be challenging, but never unfairly so. Well, except for a few parts maybe. But we'll get to that later.
It is fun going through the game's stages and experimenting with your different weapons. Seeing what weapons are effective against which enemies - and where to shoot them. But to be honest, the weapon selection doesn't really give you anything you haven't seen before in the last few Resident Evil games. But this game places a bigger emphasis on melee mechanics than the series ever has in the past. You can also take a lot of damage. You feel more like a superhero than ever before. Blasting, stabbing, kicking, taking a ton of hits. The game clicks when it is moving along quickly from battle to battle. Blast some zombies, move on to the next area, where maybe a few new monsters are introduced, and move on some more. At its best, this is a very well-paced action game.
At its worst, it is a repetitive, ridiculously over the top cheese fest. There's no self-awareness here. Everything is super serious, all the time. The other games had a B movie quality, often smirking at you or giving you a reverential nod from off camera. But this game throws all that charm out the window. It feels like it is going for the look and feel of a Michael Bay movie. And the effort falls flat. It's all explosions and shooting enemies and running from action sequence to action sequence. It felt heartless to me. I never really cared what was going on from moment to moment.
I say it is repetitive because you often end up fighting through the same areas and same bosses, due to how the game is broken up by characters. Let me talk about that. So when the game opens up, you are given the choice of the Leon, Chris, or Jack campaign. These campaigns intertwine with one another, telling you the story of events from the perspective of each of these characters. As a result, you often find yourself fighting through the same set pieces and same boss battles you have before. I don't like this. Show us something new! It worked in past games like Resident Evil 2. In part because I actually cared about the story, the characters, and what was going on in the game. But that didn't apply here.
When you finish all three campaigns, the fourth and final campaign opens: the Ada Wong campaign. But don't get too excited. It's just more areas you've already seen before. Who was excited to do the mine cart section for a second time? Not me.
I hate how the game is constantly trying to cram the multiplayer aspect down your throat. When you turn on the game and try to continue from your last save, you have to navigate through about 9033430430403403 menu choices before you are allowed to continue. It's like, no. I don't want to play the freaking game online or with a partner. It came out 13 years ago. Is anyone even still playing it online anymore? They don't need to push it so hard.
What else can I complain about? How about the herb system? In every RE game leading up to this one, you can combine herbs and directly use them from your menu. In this game, you can combine herbs, but there is no option to "use" them. I was so freaking lost when I was in a tough battle, I needed to heal, and I couldn't figure out how to use a green/red combined herb. Heal me already! But no. In this game, you use your herbs to create health capsules, which you must eat with the game unpaused by pressing the R2 button. Never at any point in the game was this ever explained, and it took me forever to figure it out. Why fix what isn't broken? I hated it.
Partner AI is dumb. But I do like how they can revive you when you run out of health. It saved my butt a number of times. But other than that, there is no real advantage to having a partner in this game. Sometimes the partner can even be a hindrance, like when you need to wait for them before you can enter a door. This leads to a complaint I mentioned earlier in the review. There is an area in the game when you are outside a church and enemies are swarming you. You have to fight several waves of them before the front door unlocks and you can run inside. But I died twice here because my partner couldn't get to the door in time without me getting killed. And I had to do that entire, long action sequence that precedes this all over again. Twice. Drove me nuts. And I remember getting frustrated by this same segment when I last played the game in 2013. It's pretty much the only thing I remembered about the game, aside from the Asian market boss battle, the fight with the giant Godzilla thing among the crumbling buildings, and the infested city area full of purple gas.
Graphics:
I suppose if there is one area you can't criticize the game too much, it is the graphics. It all looks pretty good. The characters, the bosses, the mutated enemies, the gore, the environments, the giant explosions and set pieces: everything. No, maybe it doesn't look as good as something designed for the PS4, but that doesn't matter to me. It looks perfectly fine and at no point ever are the graphics a hindrance. Well, I take that back. It can be too dark sometimes.
Sound:
I have no major complaints here, either. It would be hypocritical of me to complain about the voice acting, when admittedly I didn't care about the story. That aspect of the game means nothing to me. I'm here for the gameplay. As long as the in-game conversations weren't too disruptive, which they weren't. The music and sound effects are good. The game is quiet and ambient when it needs to be, and loud and chaotic when the action gets going.
All that being said, there is nothing memorable about the music of the game. You could blindfold me and make me listen to the soundtrack for this game, and I probably wouldn't be able to identify it even though I just finished this game a few days ago.
Overall:
Let's circle back to where we started. How do I feel about Resident Evil 6 after 12 years since I played it last? I'll be honest and I will say that I liked it a little bit more this time around. The gameplay is fun. I enjoyed battling my way from area to area. If I can set aside my feelings about the original Resident Evil games and look at this on its own merit, it's an alright game. But that's as far as I'm willing to go. An alright game.
I can't muster up the excitement to give it much more praise than that. It's okay. It's nothing earth shattering. It's just a shooter. Maybe if the name Resident Evil wasn't attached to this, I might be more willing to cut it some slack. But I just can't. It's a fine game. An alright game. But nothing that really stirs any strong feelings within me. And certainly nothing I'll ever play through again in my life.
I'll be generous and say that this game is above average. Because it is. But I'm not going any further than that.
THE GRADE:
C+
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