(I cannot stress enough that Resident Evil 6 IS A GOOD GAME. This review specifically targets the one part of the game that was not enjoyable. There are more reviews forthcoming which discuss the good parts. Please don't let this review be what makes you decide not to buy this game until you've seen what else I have to say about the rest of the game.)
I'm going to preface this whole thing by saying that I am not a Resident Evil fan. This is not to say that I have disliked previous Resident Evil titles, I simply haven't been interested in them. I only played 5 recently, and while it was a fairly enjoyable experience, it's nothing I'm dying to get back into. I have not played any releases earlier than 5, though I have seen them played substantially so I do know what they're about, what they are like, and what kind of atmosphere we're talking about. So Resident Evil 6 was sort of a weird "this looks kind of interesting, whatever" purchase for me. Driven largely by the wealth of content I understood was present in the release, I picked it up. (I hope everyone's pumped for free use licensed images because this was played on my xbox!)
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| This is obviously Leon. |
I had originally been a bit leery just because I had seen some of the critical reception, but then I remembered how scathing fans had been about the 5th game, which I kind of liked. And this brings me to my first discussion point. Resident Evil fan boys, are worse than CoD and Halo 3 fan boys combined. They've all been completely sucked in by nostalgia and have lost all concept of what the early games in the series actually were. These games came out when the majority of us still playing them today, were kids. The Wizard of fucking Oz was terrifying when I was a kid. So I can see where you might have been scared by them as children, but I challenge you to go back, play them again today, and actually be even remotely creeped out by them. It won't happen. The voice acting alone was some of the funniest stuff you'd ever get out of a game, even games trying to be funny. The graphics of course were terrible, product of the time I know, but it's pretty tough to be scared by the simple presentation of these old games. The reason we were scared of them and others like them was our own imaginations. We were kids, our brains could fill in the gaps like lightning, especially when those gaps represented something like a zombie that our child minds should be afraid of. And that is why these fan boys are so frustrating. The new games are just that, new. They aren't substantially different in content or narrative, these guys just CAN'T see through the fog of nostalgia to the truth. The only complaint that I find acceptable, is the lack of real zombies. That I'll grant you, Resident Evil should have zombies in it, not... plagas... And before anyone gets all "well you didn't play them so you don't know!". No I didnt. However, I played the F.E.A.R. games. And you know what, when I played the original F.E.A.R. I won't lie to you, I got pretty damn creeped out. Then 2 and 3 just weren't scary. At first I thought it was a change in the games, it wasn't, it was a change in my perception. Buy anyways.
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| This represents my.... change in... thought processes... from growing up? |
So I didn't go into this determined to hate it like the so called fans of the series, I went in just hoping for a good time. And to be honest, for the most part that's what I got. The ability to move while shooting is HUGE, dodge maneuvers are cool, shooting mechanics for the most part worked fine, and there is a good variety of weapons, even if they aren't always superbly fun to shoot. The voice acting is generally terrific, far cry from the first games which I swear had to be trying really hard to make it sound that bad, I mean shit. It's like house of the dead except worse, "I think you! The master of unlocking! Should take it with you!" stellar stuff you guys swear by isn't it?
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| None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. I'm an apple. |
The biggest, best thing I can say about this game is that it is LONG. There is so much content here it's almost ridiculous. There are 4 separate campaigns. One each for Leon, Chris, Jake, and Ada. I enjoyed all of them but Ada's. Ada Wong is just terrible and I'm going to explain why. In this, part 1 of my review of Resident Evil 6.
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| Hey! Hey look! This one's actually from a Resident Evil game! Don't get used to it. It won't be happening again. |
Now, this is a little bit out of sequence admittedly. You actually can't even play Ada's campaign until you beat all three of the others. But you don't need to know what the other 3 are about to understand why Ada's is so fucking bad. Especially considering that all 4 campaigns occur simultaneously. Honestly I think the biggest problem I have with Ada's campaign, is that it's so painfully sexist that it often becomes flat out offensive. And I'm hardly a feminist, feminism bothers the hell out of me (in so far as women that identify as feminists rarely want equality, they want superiority, so no hate mail, I'm all for equal rights but sexism goes both ways (what? I'm not just covering my bases shut up)) but this get's so far out of hand. I'm talking bukkake monsters bad. I'm talking full blown Japanese fan service that's stops about a quarter inch from being full blown interactive hentai. And there aren't even any tentacles you guys. But you're going to have to wait for that glorious description, first you need to get a basic feel for the gratuity here.
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| Huh, oddly relevant. The site tells me when you save images. |
There are moments in all of the campaigns where you have to crawl through tight spaces, during these moments the camera cuts back and you view your character from the feet forward, or at least that's what happened during Chris, Leon and Jake's campaigns. In Ada's the camera cuts straight to her ass which, she literally arches her back in order to push further up in the air.That might sound relatively tame. But this next part, I am honestly not making up. If you don't believe me, rent the game, or find a friend who owns it. These things show up in the first 10 minutes of Ada's campaign and stick around for probably half of it. No. Fucking. Shit.
It's a type of j'avo, which, by the way, exists only in Ada's campaign, and has a mutation which causes it's head to lower, right next to its crotch to it's crotch on a very long neck (You might be able to see where this is headed but just wait it gets better). When Ada get's too close it spews a gooey white substance all over her in stringy shots (not spider web unfortunately, not spider web). If enough of it hits she becomes stuck in place and must pull herself out of a literal cocoon of jizz. I've got a pretty dirty mind, but it doesn't reach that far, I am not just imagining this. The first time it happened I just stared in disbelief. This is the first and only time, that a cock zombie, has bukkaked any character in any game that I have played, to such an extent that the character literally must pull themselves out of their cum cocoon, or cumcoon, yes I'll call it a cumcoon. Come on guys. I know it's Japan, and all kinds of crazy shit comes out of Japan, but is this really the place for it? Whatever, I'm done talking about it.
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| It's from Japan what do you want from me. Free use images are Free to use for a reason. |
And that isn't even the worst part of this particular campaign. It's the repetition. The way the game works, is while you play through one campaign, you'll meet the characters from the others. Each campaign does a great job of showing you how those characters got there and shows events from a cool new perspective. But Ada doesn't ever move independently of the other stories. Outside of the moments when she intersects with the other campaigns, she might as well not exist. This means that when you play her campaign, you're not experiencing a unique story, you're literally watching a highlight real of the other three. I almost feel like Ada's would have been better, were it the FIRST campaign you had to play through. Seeing all these snippets of all the difference characters could get you interested in how the hell they reached that point, though a few things would have needed to be cut to prevent spoilers, I think it would have been a better path.
The final nail in this Y shaped coffin, is Ada herself. Ada is obnoxiously self assured. And it is absolutely in the spotlight due to the fact that her campaign is the only one that doesn't have a coop partner, AI or otherwise. She has no one to talk to. But that doesn't stop her. Every time she kills an enemy she pats herself on the back, reminds herself how fantastic she is and how no one else could have done that. (despite the fact that the other 3 characters all do the same things with markedly more efficiency and intelligence.) and it really just wears you down. By the end, I honestly kind of wanted Ada to die. And I don't mean clone Ada, (yeah there's a clone, yeah it's a little goofy) I mean the real one. She was just that annoying. She comes across as this bizarre mix of stereotypical Japanese hyper-sexism, and a girl power ploy for female players. Neither of those things work on their own, much less when thrown together in the same pot. It's entirely possible to create a strong female character, like Zoey in Firefly, or Anya and Sam from Gears of War, all kick ass tough as nails characters in their own right, but they achieve this not by going "God I am tough!" they achieve this by fighting in the worst conditions, never giving up, adapting to things they were never trained to do. Anya especially, goes from being a non-combatant adviser, to full blown soldier and it seems perfectly natural, the fact that she and Sam are women at all is hardly even mentioned, much less used against them. They're just tough, and they belong on this battlefield as the warriors they are. But Ada almost never makes herself seem impressive or tough, and when she does she completely trivializes the entire thing with a stupid comment about how her vagina made it possible.
I'm not going to really get into gameplay or visuals here, I'll leave that for a roundup at the end of these reviews. Next time (hopefully next week) I'll review Jake's campaign.
This review is ©Alex Jenkins 2012
Resident Evil 6 is the property of Capcom
