Resident Evil 6: Complete disappointment
As you may or may not know, I also like gaming. Specifically, RPG and first and third person shooters. Well, at least some first and third person shooters, anyway. Whether I like it depends on how it’s done. In this case Resident Evil 6 is not done well at all.
Resident Evil Franchise
Even though this game series has turned into a fairly hefty cash cow for both Milla Jovovich (and hubby) in the celluloid format, the games have been relatively uninspired for the last several years. The last really good Resident Evil game was RE4 and that was years ago. Well, I’m sad to say that Resident Evil 6 is a complete and total disappointment in the gaming department. Capcom just can’t figure this out. For whatever reasons, the developers over at Capcom Japan just aren’t with the program.
The absolute best game of this franchise is still, bar none, Resident Evil 4. This game had all the makings of turning the franchise into a smash hit. Unfortunately, the game developers decided to try something new with whole tag-along partner thing in RE5 which failed miserably, by the way. That game was an unmitigated disaster. It had no depth, the story was boring, the fights were stupid and the fact that you had to keep your partner alive in the middle of the fights was asinine. There was no fun to be had with that game at all.
You’d think Capcom could have figured out that the reason Resident Evil 5 flopped so badly was that it was just so poorly done. Yet, here we are with Resident Evil 6 bringing in much of the boring and silly storylines from 5 even though Leon is heading this chapter up. It’s unfortunate, too. This could have been such a great addition if Capcom had even minimally listened to its fanbase. No, they did their own thing again and assumed this is what we wanted in a game. They could not have been more wrong.
Seriously, Resident Evil 6 doesn’t even have a pause button!?!? You can’t even pause the effing game. I mean, seriously? Why not? Every other game on the planet has figured out how to pause, why is Resident Evil 6 the exception? You can’t even step away to go take a pee without some zombies nailing you. What fun is there in that?
Worse, when you restart the game, it takes you back almost an entire chapter just to begin again. You can’t even start at the point where you left off. Seriously, this is one extremely badly designed game. On top of just these stupid design issues, the gameplay is sluggish, awkward and the collision detection is some of the worst I’ve seen in a game in a very long time.
No awards for this turd
As much as Capcom seems to think this is some award winning thing, it’s a festering piece of feces covered in flies. It has no redeeming value at all. This game is so bad, it’ll be in the bargain bin in 60 days. Less, I’d venture. If you really want this game, just wait about 30 days and pick it up on the cheap. Even then, why waste your time with this dreadful game? Go pick up Skyrim or Fallout 3 or Portal or some other much better game than this and spend some time with a quality game. If you really love Resident Evil, pick up Resident Evil 4. It’s still far far outshines anything Capcom has ever done to date in this series. RE4 is, in fact, so far ahead of every other RE game that I can’t even fathom that Capcom had a hand in writing it. In fact, they probably didn’t.
It’s unfortunate that Capcom doesn’t quite get the gaming landscape today. Resident Evil 6 had so much it could have been and the developers just squandered away that opportunity. This is and will be the last Resident Evil game I buy from Capcom. No more throwing good money after bad. Capcom get with the program. As they say, once bitten, twice shy. No more Capcom titles in my house.
[UPDATE 2012-10-24: Thanks Riko]
Apparently you can pause the game, but only if you turn off multiplayer (?) features. Note, however, that I didn’t ‘turn on’ any multiplayer features when I played. I just played the game with however the campaign started. If that enables multiplayer features, I didn’t know it. Worse, I wasn’t playing multiplayer at all, however. I was playing the game in as though it were a single person campaign. That this game apparently turns on multiplayer features even though you are not using it (and worse, blocking the pause feature) is just stupid game design. I have to agree with Riko. This game is one big turd named starting with an s and ending with a t.
Stars: 1/2 out of 5 (Capcom gets the 1/2 star for effort).
Random Thoughts - Randocity! 
Hi Sean,
I’ve debated about posting your comment and ‘review’. Unfortunately, I have a strict rule against posting comments that contain personal attacks. If you can reword your review so that it discusses the merits of your arguments without personal insults or attacks on the reviewer, I’ll be happy to post that one. However, because you had written so much, I will include some of your points and discuss them:
I’d call this one of the biggest game fails I’ve seen since I began playing games. You can’t pause the game and that’s a problem. It doesn’t matter whether it’s online or not, pause should ALWAYS work no matter what mode the game is in. If pause can’t work while online, that’s a severe programming bug.
And no, I didn’t see that it said ‘online’ before I started Campaign mode. I didn’t see it because it wasn’t expected. I also wouldn’t have even put the two concepts together (i.e., that being online prevents pause). Even had I noticed the game was online, I would still have expected pause to work. It should just pause any other players who may have been watching or participating in my game.
Worse, what game ever puts you in campaign mode in an online state without asking? No game has EVER done this. Why would RE6 do it? You only put the user online IF there’s an online component to the gameplay and you only do it WITH the player’s consent. With RE6 campaign, there isn’t any reason to put the user online. Additionally, if you are online, it should be clearly labeled on the screen in the HUD during game play. This is a huge RE6 fail, there is no question about that. Again, I’ve never seen a game before or since that has worked pause in the way RE6 worked. Nor have I ever seen a game that automatically puts you online in campaign mode without notifying you. Even as bad as RE5 was, it didn’t do this.
Compared to other shooters released around the same time as RE6, yes. Even RE5’s controls weren’t as sluggish as RE6. There is something seriously wrong with this game. And there’s a huge difference between hampering the control because the player character is injured, drugged or in any other way semi-incapacitated. There is no reason to intentionally hamper the controls when the player character is otherwise in good health. In fact, if you were placed into the situation of Resident Evil, you’d not only be sharper than average trying to keep your butt alive, you’d likely have so much adrenaline your body would be in overdrive. Meaning, the controls should be actually be a lot more sensitive than sluggish.
No, actually, I’m arguing to at least use a standard approach to gaming. Every new Capcom game seems to find the need to reinvent the wheel. That is, put in checkpoints, take them out, use manual saves, use automatic saves, don’t use saves at all, etc. This is gaming at its most ridiculous. A franchise needs to stick by its formula and enhance the formula that works. At least follow a convention that other games (even in the same franchise) have followed. It’s called being ‘standard’. Read about it. Being standard is the way to make gaming work. Being non-standard is the way to make your game suck really hard really fast. Go ahead, write a game and put jump, crouch, attack and dodge on the D-Pad. See how fast everyone says your game sucks.
Actually, it shows your ignorance. The Resident Evil game series started as rail shooters. It wasn’t until RE4 that it became free-roaming shooter. It’s just that since RE4, Capcom has taken successive steps backwards reducing the franchise to poor RE4 wannabee games. If you’re not going to keep the same format as what was arguably the most successful game in the RE game franchise, then you might as well go all the way back to being a rail shooter. At least that’s a known quantity and it also means I can completely steer clear of it. Turning the sequels into something halfway between a free-roaming shooter and a rail shooter is just not something I expected nor did I want to play.
Dimming the screen doesn’t make the game more scary, but it does make it hard to see what you’re doing. If you do this with ANY game, you can make the game more challenging, but not in a good way. In other words, there’s no point in dimming the screen for any reason other than making the game harder than it needs to be. And no, it wouldn’t make me have an anxiety attack, but it might make me want to throw the controller at my screen. However, I value my flat screen a whole lot more than I value crappy games.
Sorry, but no. RE5 and RE6 were both no fun mercenaries or not. I don’t consider having to constantly restart the game as fun or challenging. But, I do consider it a tremendous waste of time. When you’re in your 20s and 30s, you feel like you have all the time in the world. As you age, that perception changes and you realize that you don’t have all the time in the world. Wasting my time on game programmers who can’t program ‘Hello World’ is just not my idea of fun gaming nor a productive use of my free time.
And here’s something that needs some enlightening on your part. There’s a huge difference between game mechanics and game story. While the RE5 and RE6 game mechanics leave a lot to be desired, if I had been able to get through the game I might have actually enjoyed the story. Unfortunately, the game mechanics and design were so poorly devised, there was no hope in ever seeing the end of that story. So, what you mention above is entirely story, not game. The best story can be completely buried in the crappiest game mechanics. If you can’t get past the game mechanics, then you can’t exactly see the story unfold. I call that a fail. And no, I have no intention of wading through mounds of frustration and crappy gameplay just to get the story payoff. It’s not worth it. Both the story and the game mechanics have to marry into a cohesive whole for the entire game to work. When one or the other doesn’t work, the game failed. Though, I will admit that I am a little more forgiving about crappy storytelling than I am about bad game mechanics.
To summarize some additional pieces you discussed in your commentary. If you really think that RE5 and RE6 games are really _that_ good, then you really are a novice game player. How long have you been playing games then? 2 years? Less? I’ve been playing games since the Atari 2600 and I’ve seen both very good and very bad games in that time. Game mechanics are a huge part of what makes or breaks a game. In this case, RE6 is exceedingly broken in that regard.
However, since you ranted so hard about how good RE6 and RE5 are, you sound like you may have been a software engineer on the Capcom RE projects. Perhaps you were one of the people who actually may have written critical parts of the game? With that said, I apologize if the review offended you. On the other hand, I don’t apologize for what was said in the review. It’s a fair and honest review of the game as I played it. That you don’t like what’s in the review, that’s your opinion. And, I respect your opinion. See, no personal attacks necessary. Suffice it to say, there is no place in the gaming market for crappy games. Consumers will bear that out. If Capcom manages to release an RE7, it’ll be a small wonder if it even manages break even in profits. However, I certainly have no plans buying it.
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To summarize one more point, both RE5 and, to a bigger degree, RE6 alienated their entire core fan base. The general consensus for both of these games is that they were poor quality games. For the early rail shooter fans, there was nothing in RE4, RE5 or RE6 to be had. The rail shooter pieces were completely gone by RE4. On the other hand, RE4 picked up a lot of CoD and FPS game fans as a result of the real-time shooter action. So, the rail-shooter RE fans that were lost as a result of RE4 were replaced by the real-time FPS/TPS fans. And because RE4 was executed so perfectly, it was one of the best shooters released that year.
Unfortunately, RE5 comes along and tries to recapture the lost rail shooter fans (those who heavily criticized RE4) due to its CoD gamer appeal. Instead of Capcom embracing the new fan base they had just picked up and who helped make RE4 a huge success, they tried to be all things to all people in RE5. That left RE5 in a precarious situation. It didn’t appeal to the FPS/TPS crowd because of the limited rail shooter aspects that were re-introduced (and that just didn’t work), the introduction of an AI co-op companion and because of some of the other stupid additions like having to shoot and shoot and shoot some more and still not kill the enemies. It didn’t appeal to the rail shooter fans because it STILL wasn’t a rail shooter. It didn’t appeal to the FPS fans because it was no longer an FPS. In effect, the fans they had picked up in RE4 dropped RE5 like a hot potato leaving the franchise in a tailspin.
RE6 comes along still sporting the co-op user, adding even more rail shooter aspects and toning down the FPS/TPS aspects making it less and less like RE4. Again, RE6 didn’t appeal to the rail shooter fans because it STILL wasn’t a rail shooter. It didn’t appeal to the FPS/TPS fans because it kept too much of the rail shooter camera without much free-roaming aspects. In other words, they lost both of their fan bases by these two releases. Critically, both RE5 and RE6 games really don’t have a core fan base audience to buy these games anymore. Capcom made the huge mistake of trying to be all things to all people, and instead ended up having limited appeal to most gamers. Sean, that these games appealed to you, you are really not the core fanbase that Capcom is targeting.
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Resident evil first appear was in the gaming console, later than they make the movie series..
but do you know all the resident evil movie series?
you can read more about it in this article:
Resident Evil: The Movie Series
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While I agree with everything you said, I have to tell you you can pause in RE6…you just have to switch off any multiplayer elements before playing (I know…that’s really stupid). I didn’t think you could, either, but I looked online, and discovered otherwise. I almost played Leon’s entire campaign without knowing you could pause…it nearly drove me bat shit insane. On another note, ALL modern Japanese games are shit…in fact, I now think the old ones were awful, too, but being practically the only game in town, there was nothing else with which to make a comparison. If the blockbuster titles of the Rising Sun’s past were to be remade via strictly a graphical makeover (Halo Anniversary style), I think many would draw the conclusion that they were terrible in comparison to the content coming out of America and Canada today; if those people were able to look past the nostalgia factor. The plots of Japanese games are weak and poorly written, the dialogue is stilted and hackney, the menus and HUD’s are often indecipherable gibberish, the code is lousy with bugs, the character models are stupid looking, the characters themselves are never engaging (nor do they have any sort of story arc), the action is cheesy and way too over the top, when they do try to copy the west and do something cool, they absolutely ruin it (i.e. the snow mobile scene in RE6 compared to the snowmobile scene in Modern Warfare, which Capcom obviously ripped off…ripped off poorly)…I’m going to stop there, to be polite. Resident Evil was THE last Japanese franchise on which I was willing to spend money. Now, there are NONE
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Thanks for the comment, Riko. You are very articulate and have a great writing style. While I have not played every Japanese title out there, I have played some from the distant past which I liked (at least, at the time I liked them). Specifically, Shenmue and Blue Stinger (on Dreamcast). Of course, by comparison today, these wouldn’t really compare to something like Skyrim or Oblivion. But, these games had their own unique quality and were still quite engaging. However, most Japanese titles I’ve played since those games have been of far lesser quality.
I’m also not a fan of rail shooters at all (i.e., Umbrella Chronicles.. bleah). I’m also not much a fan of turn based games like Final Fantasy or Persona. Pseudo-random encounters about every two steps just doesn’t do it for me. Give me real time level based fighting any day. Although, I did find the Wii’s Red Steel enjoyable because of its bizarre carnival quality. The story was not bad either.
I agree that most Japanese titles, but I’d even go so far as to name EA titles in this, as having bad storylines. For example, Mass Effect started out with a very compelling story before EA took over Bioware. After the takeover, Bioware/EA introduced that omnipotent Star Child out of nowhere that just ruined the whole plot and all of the time invested in that franchise by the gamers. For me, that was the kiss of death for Bioware and EA titles. I simply have no more patience to invest money or time in crappy EA titles. Bioware was a far better developer on their own. Folded into EA, they’re just another game churn factory. I’m surprised they haven’t yet turned Mass Effect into a zombie shooter.
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