Resident Evil 6 Review

I've had it with these motherlovin' snakes in this motherlovin' game!

That Escalated Pretty Quickly!
Unfortunately, it doesn't. A fair bit into the Leon campaign, a barrel explodes, followed by a car, then a school bus, a plane, and a helicopter that crashes into a building, which in turn explodes in a bag-ass flame. If you haven't clued in on it yet, the game transforms into a pyrotechnic orgy involving pointless set pieces shoehorned in without much consideration, and relentless hordes of enemies that makes even the updated controls seem clunky.

The Jake/Sherry campaign is the best way to illustrate where this instalment goes wrong. While RE 4 had elaborate set pieces and frenetic combat, it had got the pacing right down to a T. The action would crescendo as it moved from the eerily quiet moments that unexpectedly fulminated in carefully choreographed and fun set pieces. All this fit in well with the storyline. RE 6, on the contrary, gives an impression that the development team merely wanted to saturate gamers with high-adrenaline action sequences, by focusing on sheer numbers rather than on quality.

In a way, all this action is sort of like porn—gratuitous and not very cleverly done. The only difference is that unlike porn, none of these set pieces are really enjoyable. No, that isn't just because they are trite, unimaginative and repetitive—which they indeed are—but because you have to endure an endless barrage of finger-busting Quick Time Events (QTE) to survive them. No sir, these aren't the press-a-few-buttons-to-unleash-pretty-cinematics kind, but they are Carpal Tunnel Syndrome-inducing exercises that force you to wiggle thumbsticks and tap buttons till your finger muscles throb with pain.

The Ustanak has more hitpoints than Vijay Mallya has debt

If you think this was bad, the Chris/Piers campaign takes this brand of mindless action and dials it all the way to 11. There's hardly a moment of respite, with a relentlessly boring onslaught of pointless chases and annoying boss fights garnished with the drudgery of repetitive QTEs. This campaign underscores the poor cover-based combat, dodging mechanics, and the general travails of re-purposing controls meant for a Survival-Horror game in an action-packed Third-Person Shooter.

I can't think of many things that can compare to the agony of taking down an infuriatingly tough and abundant new enemy class dubbed as J'avo, which mutate into tougher and grotesque new abominations, even as you run low on ammo. This is a textbook example of how sexing up the Survival-Horror zombie world with action straight out of a Call of Duty game can screw up a formula that seemed to be working for the quiet bits of the Leon campaign.

A Wasted Opportunity
The game does have its moments of brilliance, but they aren't significant enough to make up for its transgressions. Unlike RE 5, the single player partner AI works well for a change. The graphics are sharp and fluid (for PS3 of course), while some levels display impressive art direction. Co-op junkies will love the split-screen co-op system, which is quite satisfying if you don't mind the loss of TV real estate. Online co-op works equally well and it's more fun playing with a real human being. However, none of the game has any puzzle or gameplay tweaks that leverage the co-op elements beyond the point of having an extra gun by your side. The Agent Hunt mode lets you join others' campaigns and play as a random enemy, which is cute for the first few times, but the novelty soon wears off.

Whoa, dude, at least buy her dinner first!

Resident Evil 6 comes across as a wasted opportunity when I look at the delightfully old-school, atmospheric build-up to the Leon campaign and its subsequent descent into an incompetent action affair, shoehorned with repetitive set pieces and annoyingly long boss battles. Capcom has strayed from the Survival-Horror roots of the original franchise and left it with a serious case of an identity crisis. It tries too hard to evolve with the times and mimic gameplay elements from popular games, presumably to rope in a wider audience.

What you are left with is a tasteless pastiche of video game cliches that betrays the veterans of the franchise. Even in its quest to achieve popular approval, it isn't remotely competent enough to win over any newbies either. This game, then, is a failure on most counts and will only please the sort of die-hard fans who tend to buy anything with the Resident Evil sticker on it.