Resident Evil 6: how Leon Kennedy will exhume survival horror
We get hands-on time with Capcom's latest zombie thriller and discover that Leon's portion of the adventure is a chillingly effective paeon to the original Rez Evil titles
Resident Evil 6: Leon faces some old familiar foes in his story, which carefully references the first and second games
Resident Evil is back. No, I mean really back. While Resident Evil 4 changed the old recipe in a brutal yet considered way, the fifth title seemed to mangle the whole franchise into a sub-standard sun-burned shooter. Resident Evil 6, however, wants to have its slice of undead gore cake and eat it.
The game's interesting structure follows three sets of characters on three very different quests through a zombie-infected world. There's Chris Redfield breaking out the blast-'em-up action in China, while Jake Muller, son of Resi antagonist Albert Wesker goes on the run in Eastern Europe in a sort of action adventure romp. And then there's Leon Kennedy, back in the US and facing his own infected outbreak in the traditional Resident Evil form. Having played a section of his story, it seems Capcom has truly rediscovered the essence of the survival horror genre.
In this section Leon and his partner Helena must escape from a college campus where a zombifying gas has infected just about the entire student body. As soon as the demo begins it's clear this is classic Resident Evil fare. We're in a dingy cellar room, poorly lit and filled with rubbish. Leon's footsteps echo loudly and every once in a while a strange noise makes him flinch and look around. Was it a cry? A growl? We don't know, but our view of the room is restricted and the tension cranks up.
So up the creaking steps Leon goes, out into a corridor, littered with more trash and smeared with blood. We're back, at least in terms of dense atmosphere and crushing inevitability, to the mansion in Resident Evil 1. And I might be over-reading it, but I'm sure the way that Leon slowly pushes each huge wooden door open is a reference to the old loading screens between locations in the first title.
Leon makes his way gingerly into a tiered lecture theatre – bathed in shadow and seemingly deserted. Then, suddenly and subtly, a drink can rolls down the steps onto the central floor. Immediately from the gloom, a zombie rises, then another. It's game on. Leon has a handgun, as does Helena, but – guess what – ammo is in very short supply. The one concession to modern tastes is the melee element: while in the first Resi titles taking on a zombie in hand-to-hand combat was always a nightmarishly risky endeavour, Kennedy is a high-kicking hard guy, who can knock the undead down then quickly stamp on their fetid faces. There are also short QTE sequences, allowing more devestating and visually impressive attacks.
As an AI character, Helena tends to hang back prefering to avoid and shoot, rather than wade in with blows. It's a good idea, meaning that she never puts herself into unncessarily risky situations.
As monsters are disptached, Leon picks up skill points, which can be used throughout the game to upgrade characters and weapons. Rooms also contain herbs and bullets, as well as useful pieces of information. Leon and Helena don't talk much, but they trade theories as they move. In the background a discordant organ soundtrack plays, or there's silence punctuated only by breathing sounds.
Cleverly, although it's a 3D environment with a dynamic camera, there's still an angular, expressionistic feel to each room, like the weird fixed camera angles in the first Resi titles. Often objects or shadows restrict your view, or you'll catch glimpses of movement through doorways – Capcom has remembered how to be subtle and artful; how to use the tricks of Hitchcock and Romero to hint at terror while restricting our ability to properly see or deal with it. At times when groups of zombies come in, I often get stuck trying to turn Leon between the undead aggressors, and far from being a flaw, it once again takes me back to the tension and vulnerabiity of Resident Evil 1 and 2.
Outside, the campus is crawling with the undead – we need to open a security gate but the key is in a staff house and when we go in, zombies suddenly mount an attack on the building crawling in through the windows in a reference to the classic stand-off scene in Resident Evil 4. It's bloody, nerve-wracking stuff, and when we finally grab the key, it's all bout navigating through the darkened landscape to get to that gate and to freedom.
From here, there's a great denoument. Leon and Helena dive into a police car and screech away, heading for a cathedral, until another zombie attack sends the car spinning off the road. This is how Resi has always worked – slowly but surely building the atmopshere to firestorms of destructive action. I can't wait to see the end-of-level monsters in this one.
Best of all, I love the way this level plays with the memories and expectations of longtime Resi fans. It's not only those door-opening sequences; there are also sections that comment on how the first games made you run through the same sections time and time again; only here, new zombies awaken to make the return trip more dangerous. It also looks as though zombie dogs will be back, no doubt smashing through windows and giving us all heart failure once again. Everything is both familiar and new. It is marvelous fun.
It will be fascinating to see how all this fits together. Apparently each of the three sections is its own adventure, though the stories interconnect. They're all around ten hours long, and finishing them unlocks an extra Ada Wong story, which itself is another ten hours. On top of this, there are multiplayer modes, as well as a new social layer, RE.Net, which compares player stats and achievements, and lets you unlock extra costumes and other goodies.
I played Leon's quest in single-player, and it'll be fascinating to see if the old skool fear is retained with a co-op partner. It's the same thing people are worrying about with Dead Space 3, though here it feels like co-operating is subservient to the main motivation – trying to get out, trying not to be eaten, trying not to be scared. Resident Evil has always been about the terror of transmogrification and decay – it was at its best when it did this in a mannered, manipulative way. Leon's story is hitting those same old nerves, those same fear points. We are residents of evil once again.
~guardian.co.uk/
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