I’m not a fan of Capcom trying to make Resident Evil “more accessible” to Western audiences. I think it is a completely misguided move inspired by silly corporate emphasis on profits than on creativity and building a better product.

It’s not like this is a new thing, though. Even though everyone loved Resident Evil 4, it was clearly Capcom’s first step into “Westernizing” one of their core franchises. They started to ditch the puzzles, made the world “more linear” (even though the mansion in the first game is quite linear, what with all of those locked doors and all) and focusing on a more action-oriented experience. Earlier efforts of the next-generation, such as Dead Rising, Bionic Commando and Dark Void, also made their insistence in appealing to a broader Western market pretty obvious.

So it should really be no surprise that Capcom staffers would say they want Resident Evil to have a piece of that multi-million selling pie that Call of Duty is hoarding. Step two into that goal (with Resident Evil 4 being step one) would be Resident Evil 5 and its insistence on online play. Now we have Resident Evil 6 taking it a step further… sort of.

In truth, I’m not completely certain what Capcom is trying to do with this game. It reminds me of all the early talk of Dungeons & Dragons Next (or 5th edition to the rest of you), where it sounded as if Wizards of the Coast were trying desperately to please everyone. When you try to please everyone, no one is completely satisfied.

I think that’s what is going to happen with Resident Evil 6. You have three separate character campaigns going for different styles of gameplay. Leon’s campaign is a slower-paced, zombie infested creep through indoor locations. It clearly wants to appeal to fans of the original games. Chris Redfield’s campaign is much more fast-paced and action-oriented, focusing on diving behind cover and shooting at enemies from afar. This is the level for the Call of Duty crowd. Then there’s Jake’s campaign, which… well, I’ll get to that later.

To me, each character having a different play style could actually strengthen the game. It keeps each segment unique and puts some variety into things, keeping the game from getting too monotonous. As I discovered with Deadly Creatures (dear Lord, is that really how I wrote back then?), this attempt at varying gameplay can also result in a game that’s not just good enough to buy. If one of the campaigns is weak and becomes a slog, then even the good campaign(s) won’t make it worthwhile. Resident Evil 6 is now at risk for being a game that’s partially good and partially terrible.

The Controls

The one thing shared across each campaign are the controls. Capcom had a perfectly fine system with Resident Evil 4 and 5 that just needed a little bit of tweaking to truly work. Basically, take what polish and additions were made in Dead Space, stick a cover mechanic on for Redfield’s campaign, and you’re good to go.

Only they had to try and reinvent the wheel again. This isn’t like Resident Evil 4, either, where they looked at the previous wheel and shouted “That’s not a wheel, that’s a square!” and proceeded to fix it. They’re taking a perfectly functioning tire and trying to change the tread just so it will look like a new tire, and ultimately you get something that’s just weird and not quite as functional.

Movement, for starters. It’s more of a problem in Leon’s campaign, where you might not want to be running full speed ahead at all times. Moving the analogue stick just barely allows him to walk at a slow pace, but once you attempt to speed up just a little he breaks out into a full-on run. You go from 0 to 10 to 60 with nothing in between. In a slower paced campaign this is a problem, as you don’t want to just run around every corner. You want to creep around tightly knit spaces and be prepared for anything coming around the corner, but there is no variation to that speed. At times it feels too slow, but the only other option is too fast.

Walking around itself feels a bit clunky. The character reacts to the environment as a person really would, slowing down the second they begin to scrape along any surface or stumbling over objects (usually bodies) on the floor. I understand a third person perspective allows the player to see more of their surroundings, but not enough so that moving around begins to feel clunky, bumpy and at times awkward.

Then comes the new crosshairs system. The previous two games implemented a laser sight that acted as it might in a real person’s hand. Aim was not steady, so the laser kept moving slightly. Most enemies were slow enough that it still allowed the player time to properly line up a shot, however, and the shaking laser was minute enough when targeting larger creatures. It’s still a bit of a pain, and the fact that you don’t have to deal with it in the Wii version of Resident Evil 4 is part of the reason why that is the superior version of the game (and I imagine the Playstation 3 Move version of Resident Evil 5 the superior version of that as well).

Resident Evil 6 found it necessary to try and implement a similar system with a more traditional crosshair. In the middle of your reticule is a laser dot that never seems to stay centered. However, it doesn’t move in a more “orderly chaotic” manner that the laser sight does in the previous two entries. In fact, it seems to just sort of float between the crosshairs at random. This makes aiming for headshots more of a challenge, and targeting distant foes a pain in the ass. It’s not as troublesome in Leon’s campaign, where you have enough time to sit and wait to line up the perfect head shot, but when you’re playing Redfield’s campaign it can become a nuisance. Is there a guy with a rocket launcher up on the balcony you need to take out? Well, even if your crosshairs are on him, you need that laser dot to be as well. Often enough you may find yourself shooting over the guy’s shoulder.

I cannot understand why this was chosen. Western game developers already figured out how to handle kickback and other issues from a gun. It’s called the cone-of-fire and, if you choose to implement it, muzzle rise. These make sense logically and mechanically. Hell, even Resident Evil 4 and 5 managed to implement muzzle rise well enough. Yet for some reason Capcom insisted on some floating laser dot that moved in random directions in no way correlating to how the hands holding the gun may be shaking.

Basically, the new controls to Resident Evil 6 are like Capcom reinventing the wheel by putting holes in the tire to increase air flow.

Leon’s Campaign

When I finished Leon’s campaign I sat back and said “Y’know, that was actually pretty fun…

“...but I don’t know why.”

I really can’t piece together what worked in Leon’s campaign because what failed was so obvious. It was supposed to be slow-paced and scary, but nothing scary ever happened. You could see the “suspenseful” or “frightening” moments coming ahead of time. Oh, there’s a body on the floor? Let me shoot it right now. Oh, nothing happened? Guess it’s not going to-WHAT THE HELL WHY IS IT A ZOMBIE?

Yep, my first complaint is forced jump scares. Of course, it would only be a jump scare if you didn’t see it coming. In the Resident Evil remake on the GameCube you could shoot at a zombie on the floor and it would come to life. In Dead Space you can shoot a corpse on the ground and, if it’s a necromorph, it will come to life. Resident Evil 6 doesn’t give a damn. It wants to make you jump, so even if you have the foresight to trigger that damn zombie it will sit there and wait until you approach so it can try to make you jump.

This is like the worst sort of rail-roading you can possibly face in a Dungeons and Dragons game. This is a game where I told the dungeon master that I carefully open the door, and he said “there is no way to open this door that doesn’t put you right in front of the doorway”. You know why he did this? Because he couldn’t hurt my character. I knew how to play a Fighter, I knew how to maximize my Armor Class, and I knew how to avoid trouble. He forced me into a situation that would hurt my character just because he was tired that I never got hurt.

That is what Resident Evil 6 is doing by not allowing the zombies on the ground to react when you shoot them. This is bad game design, just as my dungeon master was being a bad dungeon master by punishing me for being a skillful player.

It doesn’t end there, either. Remember in Left 4 Dead when you can set off the metal detector by stepping through and summoning a hoard of zombies? Yeah, Resident Evil 6 does that as well. Only Capcom didn’t allow players a way to avoid it like Valve did. Even though there’s a hip-high desk perfectly capable of being slid over, just like all the other hip-high desks throughout the level, Capcom is going to force you through that metal detector just so they can have that hoard of zombies trigger and Leon can say “I should have known better!”

You did, Leon. You knew better because I knew better, and you are my avatar within the game. Capcom didn’t care, though. They wanted to force the player into an adrenaline fueled situation, and they were going to do it no matter what the player wanted.

Leon’s campaign isn’t really scary. At first it may be, if you happen to be in that mindset, but it quickly becomes just another action game. Resident Evil: Revelations on the 3DS managed to maintain a much more tense atmosphere because the player is actually at risk and enemies could come from anywhere. Yet Resident Evil 6 telegraphs their scares from a mile away and then has the audacity to tell the player that they can’t avoid them.

Chris Redfield’s Campaign

Oddly enough, I think I enjoyed Redfield’s campaign the most. Despite the issues with controls it seemed to hit its goal the most effectively. You get into cover simply by standing next to a wall and holding down the trigger to aim, which makes it easy to move from cover to cover shooting at enemies.

The environment was open enough to allow a co-op partner to flank from multiple directions, enemies had interesting mutations that provided them with mobile cover, and while ammunition wasn’t exactly plentiful I never had many issues keeping stocked either.

The only real detriment to Redfield’s action-oriented campaign was the stupid laser dot. As such, I cannot really tell how his campaign will play throughout, if it will eventually become too frustrating to deal with over the course of the game. Yet this is the one campaign level in the demo that Capcom managed to nail. It feels like an action game with the twist of some mutated enemies, and I enjoyed it.

Of course, I’ve also given up on Resident Evil going back to “its roots”, so that could possibly be one of the reasons I’m so positive about it this time around.

Jake’s Campaign

I’m not sure what niche Jake’s campaign is supposed to fill. The action is slower paced than Redfield’s, yet it has too much action to be like Leon’s. The best way I can really describe it is a slog.

The demo gave Jake every weapon they could except for what would have been most valuable: a shotgun. A lot of enemies came in close, and a lot of them needed to be killed quick. Yet Jake was not really equipped to deal with it. He had every weapon but the best for his situation, and it makes it more troublesome for the player to be swapping between several different weapons, none of which are ideal.

The level was just one long alleyway with boxes or booths littering the environment for cover. It was the most repetitive map in the demo and gave no sense of progress to the player. Shoot some guys in an alleyway, open a door, enter the next alleyway to shoot more guys. It’s more monotonous than the Western games that Redfield’s campaign is supposed to be imitating.

Yet what made it the most frustrating were the enemies. Many of them transformed into some long-armed monstrosity with no detectable weakness, and if you kill them they develop a hardened shell that has a good chance of turning into some twisted boar-like creature that just absorbs bullets. The game indicated no way to avoid this situation, to kill the enemy in a different manner so you weren’t forced to tackle this huge monstrosity.

As a result, it is easy to start running out of ammunition in Jake’s campaign. In Leon’s it is part of the tension, as it is easy to avoid the zombies or find alternate methods of defeating them. Jake’s is too action-oriented, however. You have to shoot enemies in order to progress, and yet they weren’t providing the right weapons or ammunition for the situation.

Problematic, but Fun

With the exception of Jake’s campaign, I still managed to have fun with the Resident Evil 6 demo. I can’t really place why other than “I had fun”. However, I cannot see myself risking sixty bucks on it. Jake’s campaign could be enough to ruin the whole experience if the demo is any indication, and while I enjoyed Leon’s campaign well enough I’d be better off playing Resident Evil 4 or Resident Evil Remake for my slow-paced scares (or even Resident Evil: Revelations).

To speak truthfully, though, I honestly hope this is the last major Resident Evil game for a while. They’ve reached the global apocalypse scenario. They can’t easily go back to the isolated incidents of Resident Evil and Resident Evil 4, the best in the franchise. Not so soon, at least.

Yet I really want Capcom to sit down and think about what it is they really ought to be doing with the franchise. It has lost its sense of identity. They are trying to turn it into something it was never meant to be in order to sell more copies. Capcom needs to learn that what made them so big Stateside in the first place was their Japanese nature. Their original ideas are what sold, and they should embrace that instead of shunning it.

They may never have the same presence they had long ago, but do they really need to?

And next time, fix your logo.