Life is like a box of chocolates, as Forrest Gump's mum once said - you never know which one you're going to get. Resident Evil 6's flamboyant cast of C-virus victims is kind of like a box of chocolates, too. It's not just that they come in all shapes and sizes - invisible snakes, half-rotten sharks, Nemesis wannabes with drill-bits for arms and a Chainsaw Dude who resembles a stack of mating lobsters. It's that they have a habit of transforming into something else depending on where you shoot them.
Blast a guy's arm and odds are he'll sprout a tentacle, all the better to pluck you from cover. Shear his knees away and his torso might fissure and pump out spider legs, turning a regular bogey into a fast-moving wall-crawler. Worse still are the enemies that fizzle to a chrysalis when strafed, shattering seconds later to reveal one of the game's elite nasties - a mound of pugnacious basalt, for instance, or a vulture made of gristle, or highly annoying frilled lizards who spit toxic gas and darts.
Thanks to those mutations, even the most throwaway of zombie dust-ups has the potential to mushroom into - well, there is a mutation which looks rather like a mushroom, one that explodes in your face. Resident Evil 6 itself is the most volatile monster of all, however. The fourth game's survival-action pressure cooker is at bursting point here, as Capcom seeks to ignite waning enthusiasm for the series via sheer scale and variety. Don't let the slew of returning faces and the bassy title screen announcer fool you - this is an enormously ambitious sequel, albeit one that, as a consequence, can't always decide what it wants to be.
Gears of Sprawl
The 30-odd hour runtime makes room for a tank chase through a bathhouse, a trip to the subway complete with renegade trains, puzzles which involve reflecting laser beams, hostage scenarios in Hong Kong tenements, HUDs tailored to each of the seven playable characters and a multiplayer mode where you seize control of the zombies in somebody else's campaign.
The returning off-set gunplay just about holds everything together, though the bombardment of novelty appears to have given it the shakes: aiming dots wobble about inside cross hairs and you'll do a lot of the fighting on your back, recovering from a knockdown. Some may miss the crispness and lower-key suspense of Resi 4's shooting, but the new game trumps its predecessors in terms of supporting systems.
19 comments so far...
Johnbhoy69 on 1 Oct '12 said:
Same score as Resident Evil 5...?
I actually enjoyed RE5 aside from the incredibly short main game so if this bumps up the playtime then its all good.
Disappointed the story isn't up to much. Used to be the best part of Resident Evil.
comabob on 1 Oct '12 said:
The demo for this one SUCKED MONKEY BALLS
And yes - thats putting it as childish as possible.
The series died when 4 became so popular
Clanger67 on 1 Oct '12 said:
Good score,although on the grounds of the demo. only really enjoyed the Leon bit.The other two just seem like shooters at least with Leon you get to take your time a bit and explore.Will get it at some point given i have all the others since beginning.Won't be straight away though,full price for mostly Leon's campaign,no thanks.
msbhvn on 1 Oct '12 said:
Definitely on my "get it when it's cheap" list, too. If the story is weak, and I don't like the direction they've taken the gameplay, there's not much point shelling out £40 for it, is there?
OXM Jonty on 1 Oct '12 said:
This game is really divisive. Ed likes it, as do a few others - many hate it. Including Matt, as mag readers will know. I'm actually slightly pleased to see a bit of diversity in opinion, rather than everybody falling in the same band bar a few mad outliers.
Decent_Jam on 1 Oct '12 said:
The variety teased by the multi-campaign is an attractive prospect - certainly no need for a re-tread of all that's gone before, Resident Evil as a franchise is already a bit of a cliché of itself, but still I'm finding it difficult to get excited about this one.
Since I sort of played my way through five enjoying it but never really having a lot of fun with it I think I'll give this a miss. There's plenty left in Left 4 Dead 2 to keep my bloodlust satisfied for the time being.
comabob on 1 Oct '12 said:
Jim Sterlings Destructoid review is pretty scathing
Johnbhoy69 on 1 Oct '12 said:
He really tears into the game and makes it sound like a complete train wreck...getting a little less excited about being off work tomorrow now.
Carpet Monkey on 1 Oct '12 said:
Can't decide on this one at all. Got something like a 4/10 from Gamespot (ouch)
OXM ETboy on 1 Oct '12 said:
Of note: I hated Resi 6 when I played the demo. Then I played the preview code for five hours and hated it a bit less. And then I got past 10 hours and found myself enjoying it. At the end of the day, the gunplay works, the scenery is exciting and varied and the enemies are fun to fight. I think people should probably base their final buying decisions on the demo regardless, but know that this is a game that grows on you.
schwepterbrowser on 1 Oct '12 said:
Got a 4.5, but I really don't see how they can justify that - I didn't like the demo, but judged on its own merits it was a 6 at least. Still interested myself and am just about to go and watch the GameTrailers review; they gave it 8.8.
Ryan599 on 1 Oct '12 said:
I have played every Resident Evil so far so i will get this one and some of the reviews I have read have been positive like this one around 8 or above
Lancer Armstrong on 2 Oct '12 said:
After Resi 5 and Operation Raccoon City, I will never play another Resident Evil game ever again.
They are horrible. This franchise is dead.
omallystwin on 2 Oct '12 said:
ignore this and play borderlands 2
fracturedrich on 2 Oct '12 said:
your all bunch of review whores my copy be here in 10 mins while you lot debating scores ill be killing stuff all day with my ak from behind cover its a game guys and the only score that matters is my high score
comabob on 2 Oct '12 said:
And you are an idiot.
WHy shouldnt people read reviews to determine whether or not a game is any good? The score is irrelevant its the actual text that matters.
CunningSmile on 2 Oct '12 said:
Obviously an idiot with too much money. Some of us need to be selective about where we spend money.
FishyGinger on 2 Oct '12 said:
I'll take 7!
No, from another review and some strange goings on (one review had that it wasn't worth the full price, but was worth an 8/10...) and the demo which I thought was just a load of old dongle, I can't buy it. If the game is really that good but the demo is pure scallop, that's really poor marketing.
And I really don't think the problems I had with the demo were fixed somehow in the main game, just can't see it. It was a below average shooter for me.
Metalratex on 2 Oct '12 said:
Gamespot gave it 4.5.