[360] Game Review - Resident Evil 6

[Tomo2000 60]

Note: This is a spoiler-free review. I'm not going to tell you what happens, don't worry. Any spoilers will be in spoilers. xD

 

Firstly, to clear your minds, yeah, Resident Evil 6 isn't out for another 3 days. I recently broke my foot and got a certain someone who works at the EB Games Store, so, win some, lose some. Early RE6 is worth the broken foot.... xDD Anyway, review time.

 

There's a few things that I want to compare it to, firstly. One thing that I absolutely love about this game is that it has four campaigns, and that each campaign has your two partners, but you can choose which partner you play as. This hasn't been seen properly for a good long time... The option to play as either Jake or Sherry, or of all the other pairs, is just a great feeling. Each one has something unique, and that completely changes up gameplay. Leon has his legendary survival knife, where Jake, Wesker's son, has hand-to-hand combat, which I'll merit later.

 

Now, I've only played through Jake's campaign and most of Leon's so far. Taken me at least 12 hours so far... Which is a great thing. I hope the other campaigns take at least 6 hours each, also. But one thing I love is the new menu systems. Select activates your menu, and your character will hunch over and pull out a phone, touch screen, of some description. It's different per, and, in Jake's campaign, changes about half way through. This is also the same for your other menus; items and weapons. I think by giving each it's own seperate menu that you can easily access, even from the adjacent menu, is a really nice system. It's fast and effective. Resident Evil 5's menu system, however, was a bit clunky when it came to easily drawing out weapons and equipment. You had your D-Pad shortcuts, but other than that it was a bit time consuming. In addition to this nice little phone system, is a really easy way of healing yourself, along with a GPS system, which is just really good to use if you're stuck.

 

Now, with healing yourself, this is just a little bit of icing on the cake. You can mix your herbs, but instead of somehow herbs being magic healing spray (I don't even....), you turn the herbs you mix and combine into pills. This is pretty realistic, I guess, considering Asprin is just a derivative of Willow-tree bark. Anyway, once you've combined it to your hearts content, you can put it into what I assume is your pocket. Once pocketed, it leaves your inventory, freeing up space, and simply by pressing right-bumper in combat you take one of these pills to heal yourself. Really nice, really effective, really simple. Good job Resident Evil 6.

 

Another nice little feature to combat is moving and shooting. Yeah, go figure, years of stop and shoot suddenly becomes run and gun. Wrong. It's still pretty realistic. When aiming, you're slowed pretty severely, you can't go Call of Duty style in this game... This is just to assist aiming, and make it pretty realistic. You can't sprint and shoot with pretty good accuracy, that's just silly... You also got a little panic button, which uses up your combat gauge to prevent spamability. This is great for using snipers without aiming at close range, mind you. Pretty much, by pressing left and right trigger at the same time quickly you're character will fire a few quick shots in front of him/her from the hip, which usually results in stumbling the enemy (unless it's a boss). I really like this sytem, it adds a bit of depth to combat, which is really needed on the harder difficulties.

 

And, quickly on the topic of difficulty, I don't know if breaking my foot has dimmed my gaming ability, or if the game has been made a little harder. I found myself dying a more-than-average amount on the normal difficulty, and had to swap down to Amateur during my playthrough of the Jake and Sherry campaign.

 

Now, you'll notice this has 4-player co-op. There are a lot of events where two of each pair will meet at one stage or another, and this is just great. It's fun, and exciting, and I love it. An example of this is a meeting where Leon and Helena meet Jake and Sherry for a boss fight. I love these little encounters, and how that, regardless of campaign or character, it happens, but, with your unique equipment or weapon, it's a bit different. I thought it was really clever, and a good way to expand on the multiplayer part of the game.

 

Another thing I really like is the new maneuverability you have. If you've seen the E3 or IGN reviews, you'll know you can do some really cool stuff. You can sprint, and rather realistically, too, mind you, it takes a bit to get into it and the camera sways a bit. It takes a little to get used to, but it's rather nice and realistic. Anyway, mid-sprint (or just by holding left-trigger), you can slide and draw your gun, which is pretty nice and sexy. Then, from this position on your back, you can crawl backwards, forwards, and roll left and right to escape hits from enemies. This is just a really nice combat system. A lot of this game is based around new combat systems, and they're great.

 

Another of these systems is the counter system they have in place. If you press right trigger during a zombies attach, you can counter them. My most favoured one of these is during Leon's campaign, I had a zombie swing an axe at me, so Leon grabbed it and decapitated him with his own axe. I thought it was pretty damn nice. It's hard to achieve, though. You have maybe a quarter of a second to half a second to press right trigger to pull this off, and occasionally don't get a prompt.

 

Now, I just wanna talk about melee now... Remember in Resident Evil 5, where your machetes must have been blunter than Sheva's head, and it would take 7 or 8 hits to take down a zombie? Not any more, thankfully. A few stabs will normally take down a zombie. Leon has his survival knife, which, if you aim properly, you can decapitate zombies in one swing. By pressing right trigger, also, you can kick a zombie, or punch it, and go into a three-move combo, if used three times without miss. This three hit combo usually kills basic zombies, and looks pretty good, too. Now, Jake, oh man.... Being Wesker's son, he knows his hand-to-hand, and one of his weapons is just that; hand-to-hand. He has some really nice combos there, too. You have your basic right trigger combo, along with a three-move combo achieved by holding left trigger and using right trigger. Now, there are two things that really made my day.... If you hold onto left trigger, and then right, he "charges" up, I guess you could say. It takes a few seconds, and a red < O > appears above their heads, the < and > move closer to the middle O while charging until they combine. Now, this is a lock-on, pretty much. Once fully charged, and you let go, he sprints at his selected enemy, and palms him in the face, knocking them over. Usually a weakened average zombie goes down in about one of these. It's a good tactic to use if you're low on ammo. Additionally, if your zombie is a bit tough, by then keeping hold of left trigger and tapping right trigger does he fling himself into the air and executes the downed zombie by smashing both his fists into his face. It was just a really nice melee system that stands out from all the others, and I really liked it. Another thing about Resident Evil 6 that I'm liking is your lack of ammo. This isn't resident evil 5, you don't have ammo laying in an abundance for you. You have to pick your shots and not waste ammo. It's pretty good, gives me that old Resident Evil 4 feel back again.

 

Now, when it comes to the feel of the game, I really love Leon's campaign.. It feels desperate and dark, just like the old Resident Evil games. As Leon, you're constantly trying to help some survivors here and there, because you're the nice guy. As Jake, you're just trying to get through everything, pretty much. The zombies are all made pretty nicely, and the bosses are just... Awesome. I have two favourites so far, and they're just, really really nicely designed. And just cause I want to spill a little, I'll name them and a bit of a description below, if you're game for it. Open with caution.

 

 

So far, my favourite boss is the presidents assistant, and chief asshole, Derek Simmons, chief . When he gets injected with the virus, his entire body shatters, apparent by the massive red cracks in his skin, and he becomes a bio-organic transformer, capable of transforming from this big wolf thing and back to himself. I thought this was just so awesome, when I first saw the cracks and him transformed, I really wanted him to be able to transform back. I thought that's something unique, and something awesome. And, when he did, it just made my day.

 

Next up would have to be Mutated Deborah. I just really liked the concept of it, and how they kind of pushed the boundary with her look. She had just hatched out of a rebirthing coccoon, and just... Completely naked, minus the lowers and nipples, of course. I guess that helped it get its 16+ rating in the states and MA15+ here in Australia. She was just really nicely designed, and was able of bursting forth tentacles with spines from her back. I just really liked her as a boss, she wasn't tedious, she wasn't overpowered, she wasn't a cakewalk. Everything you want in a boss.

 

 

When it comes to weapons, there is a nice range of weapons. Each campaign has a few different ones, like, for example, Leon gets his survival Knife, his pistols and a AK with a bayonette for his assault rifle. Sherry gets a really nice pistol with a red-dot sight on it, and jake has his hand-to-hand and gets an assault rifle with a grenade launcher as his assault rifle. A few guns also have a function with the Y-button, which changes them. For example, with Jake and Sherry's assault rifles have a grenade launcher, so with the Y button it goes from assault to grenade. However, and I really liked this, Leon's pistols go from single-pistol to dual-wield with the Y button, and I really, really liked that. Because of having different weapons, however, they couldn't go about just giving you cash to upgrade them, like in Resident Evil 5. Instead of this, you can get skills, which increase certain traits. For example, there's a skill you can get (upgrades 3 times) which does more bullet penetration, another 3-tier upgrade that does firearm damage, another that does melee, and then a few single-tier upgrades such as J'Avo killer, which just increases how much damage you do against J'Avo's (basic zombies, pretty much).

 

Now, the entire system appears to be re-done. The prompts are different, every icon for every item is different. The menu system itself, accessing items. We aren't talking Raccoon City here.... Sadly. Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate Raccoon City, it was a good game, it just had more cons than pros. It has great multiplayer, but it's basically just a game made to focus on multiplayer and it's a DLC whore. Admit it, I looked on Steam during a Resident evil half-price event a week or so ago. There was at least a dozen DLCs which were just weapons, or an alternative set of costumes, which were just the originals but recoloured. It wasn't nice.... It was pretty much Resident Evil 5 with a short campaign, and different missions and characters when it came to the menu and the workings of the game (except with the infection thing, where you could get infected). However, with Resident Evil 6, everything is differnt. New sounds, new icons, new menus. I really like the entire menu system in general. It's sleak, easy to use. It's perfect.

 

Oh, and guys, here's something that'll blow your god-damn mind. Are you ready? The AI isn't as stupid!! Remember Sheva, how she'd go to, like, I don't know.... Shoot Jill in the chest to stun her, but accidentally kill her instead? This stupid AI Sheva used to drive me absolutely CRAZY!! At least, in Resident Evil 6, they've gotten smarter, and aren't just complete morons... Anyway, back to the review.

 

There are a few new things with zombies, too. Some of them, when they go down, will crawl at you, where you can stomp them to death. There's different zombies dependant on where you are. For example, at the start of Jake's campaign, where you are at an merc base where they were paid to inject themselves with the C-virus (either to see if they were immune, like Jake, or just for testing it. I don't know), they all had guns and such, as they were mercs. This was good, I like situational infected, not just the same drag everywhere. When you're in the city with Leon and Helena, there are a few infected that would probably be there if it actually happened. There were some fire-fighter infected that you could shoot the tanks of, and some army ones, some with helmets, some without, with heavy anti-melee gear, and just tanky-webbing in general. I really liked this gesture.

 

Then, of course, you have your "special infected", I guess. The tanky ones you hate but are like mini-bosses. You have a screaming one (everyone saw that coming....), and, of course, a chainsaw one. It wouldn't be Resident Evil without a chainsaw mini-boss. It looks pretty badass, too.

 

Now, when it comes to missions, there's some pros and cons. It has probably an equal amount of running around as Resident Evil 5, maybe more. Some were just a little bit tedious, especially when they didn't end at any real climax. However, they re-visited some puzzle maps, which I really liked, mostly with the Ustanak in Jakes and the Cathedral with Leon. There were more puzzles, some harder than average. I liked this. It wasn't just purely combat, or running around, it had a bit more depth. However, a few levels have quite a bit of running around with no real purpose, which I didn't really like too much... But, hey, so did Resident Evil 5.... Like that level with all the different coloured statues... grr....

 

A few things I like are the boss fights. As you should. Boss fights are what you should be looking forward to, I guess. The final boss fights of the game always have something to do with a gimmick of one of the main characters, something unique. I really liked this, and I mean really. Like, just wait for Jake's last boss fight... All that shit it gives you early game is paid off so well... It was so satisfying for me. If you aren't going to play the game, or just want to know, spoiler below. Open with caution.

 

 

The Ustanak, the stupid boss you'll get so pissed off with after it doesn't die about a dozen times, starts wrecking your day, and ends up seperating you and your partner. You drop your gun, and so it kicks it into the lava, and you have a massive hand-to-hand combat fight with it to defeat it. It was fucking great! :D

 

 

However, with all the tiny tedious levels behind us, the game is pretty great overall. You have, at some parts, mostly in Jake's so far, opportunities to use vehicles; Snowmobiles, motorbikes, you fly a plane at one stage. There's a lot of quick-time events that require button pushing, and it's made more in-depth by you having to look around for a few things (for example, buttons on the plane). I liked this, it was a little difficult in places, but good nonetheless.

 

Mercenaries is back, too, mind you. And, of course, everyone has a unique weapon, a few unlockable levels and, I believe, a few characters. It's just nice in general. Mercenaries was pretty good in Resident Evil 5, and Mercenaries Reunion for Resident Evil 5 gold, and, I think, DS or something..? They made a reunion for a completely different console, I remember that much. But, anyway, Mercenaries is great to play with friends if you aren't up for a campaign level or two. I've wasted so many hours on Mercenaries Reunion with Leerox4eva1 it's astonishing.

 

Agent Hunt is also a pretty nice little game to play. You get to play as an infected and hunt down people in their campaigns. Imagine Left 4 Dead Versus meets Resident Evil. Sounds good, eh? Unfortunately, I don't have xbox live nor anyone to play it with, yet, since it's still 3 days from its release.

 

But, overall, I really like Resident Evil 6. I love how it's more of an apocalypse than just a zombie outbreak. It's got a really nice system behind it, and it's just the little things that make a huge differance! Simple little things, like pulling out the phone for the menu, or right bumper for healing. It's just a really nice game, and, I suggest, if you're a Resident Evil fan, you should go ahead and get it. The only thing I don't really like, I guess, is the tediousness of a few levels, and tripping over bodies from time to time, that can get a little annoying... But it's just a good, long game. It isn't like Operation Raccoon City, with a six-mission campaign that lasts all of three hours... Each campaign is about six to seven hours, even longer depending on how unlucky you are, or the difficulty setting. The zombies are pretty great, I love the bosses, and the final battles are fantastic. It's got a good mix or combat and some puzzles scattered throughout, so you don't feel like you're just barraged with zombie killing all day long. So, yeah, if you're a Resident Evil fan, and you REALLY want this game, you still got 3 days to pre-order, so I reckon you should. I got the No Hope Left edition, came with this pretty awesome carry bag, which is perfect for laptops and such. So, yeah, there ya go. Hope you guys enjoyed reading it, and if you have any questions or queries, either just reply or shoot me a personal message. Keep it real, guys. :D

~Tomo2000.

Note: bad iPod camera is bad....

Edited September 29, 2012 by Tomo2000

[Wyzrd 12]

Just to get it out of way Apple is BAD! And sorry to hear about the foot! At least you got RE6 early!

 

 

Ok now back to the review. Man I was hyped for this game. Already got mine paid for. Just gotta wait til release date. But after reading your review I'm even more hyped for it. I was hoping they would do a good job with this. I haven't even played the demo yet because I want it to be a surprise. And no I didn't read any of the spoilers either. :-p

 

Can you pick any campaign? Or are they unlocked in a certain order or what?

[Tomo2000 60]

Hey Wyzrd :D

 

Yeah, you start with the three campaigns; Leon, Chris and Jake. After you complete all three of them, you unlock Ada Wong's campaign. And, yeah, I was so hyped for this game. I had a mate who had preordered with me (Leerox4eva1), so I've been giving him shit over the last week by reminding him how many days until it's released. Because, you know, you forget, and then the days go faster, so I wasn't ready to give him that liberty. So you can imagine my surprise when I get home and it's sitting on my desk 4 days early :D

 

So far, my favourite campaign is Leon's. It has this really nice, dark, helpless feel to it. Jake's was pretty good, but, I don't know, Leon's reminds me of Raccoon City, and it has my favourite bosses so far in it, so, yeah, Leon all the way, so far. Maybe Chris' or Ada's will beat it, I don't know yet. But I haven't won the game yet, so hopefully there's a really epic last boss waiting for me... :D

[Wyzrd 12]

Sounds good! I wanna play Chris's story haha. Chris has always been my favorite.

[Tomo2000 60]

I've liked Chris quite a bit, him being my favourite in Resident Evil 5, even out of all the Mercenaries Reuinion characters. I really liked Fairy Tale Sheva, though, if you ever got the chance to play as her. But I played Jake's campaign first purely out of curiosity, I think. I mean, Wesker's son has to be pretty badass. And then I just flipped a coin for Leon and Chris, they're both pretty awesome in my books, and Leon won the cointoss. xDD

[Wyzrd 12]

*DROOLS FAIRY TALE SHEVA* Of course I got all the trophies on RE5 minus DLC, I got some of them though. (AChievements in your case!) :-p

[rgangsta 43]

Hey, Tom! Sorry about your foot. :(

Nice review. I'm not particularly a RE fan but this review makes it sound exciting. I'll at some gameplay and see if I really like it.

[Tomo2000 60]

Wyzrd; I managed to pick up Resident Evil 5: Gold edition for $30 about a month ago for xbox 360 :D

 

RGangsta; You'll have to wait a day more, RG xDD Game's not out till the 2nd (1st for you guys, I believe).

[Wyzrd 12]

Nice! I played it when I lived with one of my best friends and he had it. I've never owned it myself. But I am getting the Anthology of 6 which does come with 5 Gold Edition! So I'll have it then.

 

 

And it technically comes out on the 2nd for us. We can pick it up tonight though at midnight. So it will be the second but be 12:01am. That's when I'm getting mine! But I won't be able to play much. Gotta work at 7 in the morn. Blah! Silly stupid work!

[Tomo2000 60]

Holy. Fucking. Crap..... Wyzrd, since you like Chris so much, you're going to have a blast with his last chapter! Seriously, best boss battle I've ever played in any Resident Evil game...

Edited October 2, 2012 by Tomo2000

[Wyzrd 12]

Man It was fun! Chris was the first story I beat. I haven't got around to any of the other ones yet but I will! I really did like Chris's story and it was a lot of fun to play.