![]() The US President is finally about to reveal the truth about Umbrella's bioweapons when he is infected and all hell breaks loose. Now a few loosely connected pairs of partners have to try and solve the problem and save the world from a biological apocalypse.
1. Gameplay
The Resident Evil series ran into a problem. It grew tired of attempting the survival horror genre and, after the success of Resident Evil 4, decided to go head-first into the action genre. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, except the developers of the game don’t seem to understand “just because you can doesn’t mean you should”. Resident Evil 6 is the worst action movie I have ever played. There were so many times that I said to myself “this is the stupidest thing I have ever seen”, only to say it again a few minutes later. Resident Evil 6 found a way to enter the uncanny valley of action sequences time and time again, removing all sense of science, logic, and physics from situations yet keeping just far enough into reality to make me want to scream “MOTORCYCLES DON’T FALL FROM THE TOPS OF SKYSCRAPERS WITHOUT TAKING DAMAGE!” I will confess that I am the kind of guy that likes to say “it doesn’t work like that” at movies or TV shows even when I know that “magic” is involved, but the sequences in Resident Evil 6 are like having Michael Bay direct The Bourne Identity. The subtlety necessary to make all of the plot elements come together seamlessly is lost in the nonsensical explosions and situations. Successfully land a 747 on a busy street in China? Check. Gunfight on top of a derailing high speed commuter train? Check. Running away from a tank as it rolls down an extremely narrow hallway trying to run you over? Check. Run away from an avalanche on foot? Check. Drive a snowmobile across a glacier that looks like it’s attempting to emulate a Windows Media Player visualization? Check. Underwater hand-to-hand combat with a giant mutant shark? Check. There was a scene in Mission Impossible 3 where Tom Cruise’s love interest manages to bring him back from the dead by punching him in the chest after he electrocuted himself with massive power cables to deactivate a bomb that was planted in his brain. Because of that scene I swore off Mission Impossible movies forever. Yet that scene is more logical and closer to reality than most of Resident Evil 6, even excluding the zombies and monsters. If you can get past all that, the game still isn’t fun. The Resident Evil games were designed to be survival horror puzzle-based games. The combat system was always terrible, but that was acceptable since combat was meant to be quick, dirty, and used sparingly. Resident Evil 6 puts way too much emphasis on combat and attempts to include an absolutely horrific cover system that lead to my death much more often than it saved me. Resident Evil needs to go back to the survival horror genre. There are enough third person action-based cover shooters that are much better games than this, but there are very few survival horror games worth mentioning. I hope that Capcom learns from this mistake and makes major corrections in the future.
The game consists of four campaigns which combine to a good 20 hours of straight gameplay. This may be shortened depending on how quickly a player moves, the difficulty level, how efficiently the player uses ammunition, and if the player has a human partner. The game does have a decent amount of replayability for collectibles and in order to use the unlocked abilities, especially with friends. Cooperatively, as with most coop games, this game has a significantly longer lifespan. There are also a number of other extra modes that the player can attempt. These mostly boil down to challenge modes, many of which have been present in previous Resident Evil titles. However, unless a player is specifically trying to compete against other players or friends, the draw to attempt these modes is minimal.
There were two specific issues that I had throughout all campaigns in this game. The first, and most frustrating by far, was the lack of ammunition in key sections. Players on their first playthrough of the campaign will find themselves constantly lacking ammunition, especially in key boss battles. In one final boss battle I ran out of all ammunition and ended up having to kill the boss with a knife. Before Resident Evil 4, this series was all about item conservation and carefully knowing when to fight and when to run. Resident Evil 6 requires the player to kill almost every enemy but often neglects to provide enough ammunition to do so. Once the player earns upgrades to damage, the amount of rounds necessary to complete a level decreases significantly. Until this point, though, the player will be woefully unprepared for all major engagements. The other frustrating element has to do with the way that certain scenes are designed. The developers of Resident Evil 6 put a lot of time and effort into creating visually impressive action-packed sequences, most of which require the player to look in a specific direction to see. So instead of turning these sequences into cutscenes, the developers give the player control but force the camera to face a certain direction. This means that the player is moving the character in an unnatural way and frequently has difficulty judging the distance between objects. There were plenty of times when I died simply because I couldn’t figure out where to go because the camera was facing an odd angle. 2. Parental Notices
Violence is a major factor throughout all four campaigns of this game. The player will use a variety of weapons and equipment to shoot, stab, burn, explode, and otherwise maul enemies. While individual shots from weapons may deal differing amounts of damage, eventually the effect is always the same. The J’avo, the most human-like enemies will spill some blood but will remain relatively unaffected unless the player deals heavy damage to a particular limb. Zombies, prominently featured in the first campaign, will be more significantly affected by random gunfire. Shots to the torso or limbs will cause those limbs or chunks of torso to be blown away, leaving ragged bits of flesh. These are more obvious with “fresh” zombies, since those that are mummified seem to lose much less when hit. But the most effective means of making sure an enemy stays dead is to remove its head. All standard enemies can have their heads shot off or crushed. This leaves a bloody stump for a neck and a small amount of blood shooting everywhere. The bits of skull and brain matter are clearly visible for a few seconds during and after the destruction animation. But bodies all enemies except bosses do not stay on the battlefield for very long. Within seconds after death, the enemy begins to burn up and dissolve into nothing. Only the blood of the enemy remains, and even that disappears soon afterward. The player can also use a variety of equipment against enemies. Hand grenades and C4 packs will blow standard enemies into bloody chunks. Incendiary grenades will light a group of enemies on fire. The player will have to use these weapons numerous times to deal high amounts of damage to boss enemies or quickly eliminate crowds of zombies. The monsters in the campaign have equally brutal tactics for killing the player. One enemy type uses some sort of extendable mouth to suck the face and brains out of human enemies. If the player fails a quicktime event, he too can have his brains sucked out by this enemy type. This same enemy, in a different section, can jump and push a player into the spinning blades of what is either a meat grinder or a poorly designed air conditioning unit. Either way, blood and chunks go flying as a result. Boss enemies are extremely strong and have devastating attacks. The most brutal that I encountered was an enemy with a chainsaw for a hand. If the player got caught by this enemy, she would have the chainsaw run straight through her abdomen. There was no gore with this animation. There are numerous other examples of violence as brutal as these over the course of the campaign, but these are what I consider to be the best example of what the player will see on a regular basis.
For the most part, sexuality is absent from the game. There are a few characters that are portrayed more sexually than others, but this is usually not overt. For example, the two different version of the character Ada Wong both show a somewhat significant amount of cleavage. There are other scenes where bare breasts come into play. Nipple is never shown, but the female characters are clearly nude or designed to look nude. For example, one of the female characters has to put on a hospital gown that does little to cover her chest area even though it somehow covers her lower region. There are a number of scenes where female characters have even less clothing. Ada Wong in particular has trouble wearing clothes in certain situations. Some of these are somewhat excusable, like when a monstrous doppelganger of her comes out of a chrysalis. It makes sense that she wouldn’t be “created” wearing clothes. Except that when the same exact process happens to a male character he’s conveniently wearing pants and boots. But then there are also situations where Ada comes out of things naked for no reason. Like when she emerges from a submersible completely naked for no reason. Most of these images are taken from odd angles or are cut so that, while the nudity is clearly present, it’s only on the screen for a few seconds. But one female creature is completely naked and is involved in an intricate boss battle that can last over 30 minutes depending on how quickly the player beats the battle. This character is completely naked, but is missing nipples and lower privates. There are also a few signs with Chinese text that portray women in bikinis. These are difficult to find and are only in certain levels.
The most common substances in this game have been staples for Resident Evil from the very beginning. There are two different types of herbs that can be turned into healing items. Green herbs are the base for all healing items but can be made more potent by combining them either with more green herbs or with a single red herb. Both green herbs and red herbs are simply potted plants of the indicated color, which are ground up and possibly put into a pill form. Taking the pill instantly heals the player. The player can occasionally find “first aid sprays”, which will instantly heal the player of all wounds. The character uses one of these relatively uncommon bottles by quickly spraying its contents onto his face. It’s a very fast process that would not work in real life. The only other substance that comes up in the game is the virus. Occasionally a character will willingly or unwillingly have the virus injected into his system. The most obvious of these times is when Jake, one of the main characters, injects himself with the virus (which has no effect on him).
Gambling is not a factor in this game. 3. Other Factors
There are no modding tools available for this game.
There is one chapter that will take place in a church. This church has religious icons and symbols, the most obvious of which are small statues of what is presumably Mary. These statues are keys that the player has to use to progress. Other than this, religion is not a factor in this game.
While international laws may have been violated, the main antagonists in the game are working against the interests of governments around the world. Whatever laws they have broken, of which there would probably be a very lengthy list, are not discussed in any detail. Therefore, anti-law is not a factor in this game.
The game does include multiplayer elements within the campaign. Each campaign is fully cooperative via split screen or online play. Other players can supposedly jump in as enemies and try to hinder your progress, but I never got to test this out first-hand. The limited time that I spend playing online with real people was simple, fun, and uneventful. However, the lack of many players online, including the complete lack of players within the US, significantly reduces the chances of anyone playing this game online with someone they don’t know.
The extreme sports parts of this game must be divided into two sections, the “mostly unrealistic but parts might be pulled off in real life” and the “so insanely dangerous that it’s laughably unrealistic”. There were plenty of both throughout the entire game. I could write pages upon pages about all of the stupid and dangerous stunts that the characters performed over the course of their campaigns, but for my own sanity I will only discuss the most blatantly obvious examples. For example, early in the game one of the characters must jump into a flying helicopter in order to escape an action movie style explosion. Unfortunately, because the helicopter pilot somehow turned into a zombie, the character must fly the out of control helicopter as best as is possible. Instead of ascending and getting the helicopter under control, Leon decides to try and hit every building possible. He even scrapes along the side of a metro train. Despite all this, he and his partner manage to survive with relatively little damage. In a later section, Leon and his partner get into an underwater battle with a mutated shark. They manage to hold their breath for a few minutes while actively fighting the shark without drowning. They also get involved in a major battle in and on a commuter train which is moving at high speed. After running over one enemy, the train derails. Leon and his partner jump from the train through the support lines of a suspension bridge into the cold water hundreds of feet below. They manage to swim to shore without any serious injury, ready to continue the fight. In a different campaign, two other characters get involved in a high speed chase through a Chinese city. This chase involves high speeds, tight turns, and lots of gunfire. A separate section with different characters involves one character pushing his partner out of a helicopter, jumping out of the same helicopter, grabbing a parachute, wrapping his arms to tightly hug his partner, then opening the parachute. He somehow manages to keep his grip on his partner throughout the whole ordeal. This would have been implausible enough, except that a burning piece of wreckage comes and tears a huge hole into the parachute, turning the slow descent into a deadly freefall. They survive uninjured. These same characters get involved in a high speed motorcycle chase. In one part they end up falling hundreds of feet off a cliff to a street below. They actually start above massive skyscrapers and land on the ground without damaging themselves and their motorcycle. That same chase involves them jumping over a helicopter and eventually stopping by crashing the motorcycle (again, without any injury to themselves). They do not wear helmets or any other protective gear while performing these “stunts”. Ada Wong’s campaign is surprisingly mild in comparison. She performs acrobatic tricks and flips on a relatively regular basis, but her most dangerous stunts involve her grappling hook. She uses it to reach high locations and swing around the area in the same way that Spiderman uses his web ropes.
Magic is not a factor in this game.
Human Disfigurement Human disfigurement is a major factor in this game. Almost every enemy will either be a zombie, monster that evolved from a human, or monster that looks vaguely human until you shoot it a few times. A number of the boss enemies are also grossly disfigured humans or things that look like humans. Kidnapping Kidnapping comes up a couple of times over the course of the campaign. The first example comes when one of the main character’s sister is kidnapped and eventually injected with the virus. A cutscene detailing the events of her kidnapping is shown, but it does little to forward the plotline or make the relationship between the sister and the main character more believable. In another campaign, two of the main characters are kidnapped and taken to a laboratory for experimentation. The actual kidnapping and experimentation are never shown.
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