Resident Evil 6: 14 Reasons Why It Sucks
The fact you’re alert enough to be reading this suggests that you’re probably aware that the Resident Evil 6 public demo dropped on PSN and XBL this morning, and has already been met with an extremely mixed, some might even say overwhelmingly negative (depending on where you read) reception. Sure, it was plastered with the typical label that it isn’t necessarily representative of the final product, but then, why bother putting a demo out at all?
Though it seems generous that Capcom put out a demo lasting roughly an hour, all this lengthy blast through a portion of the game has done is make it clear to us that Capcom are continuing their efforts to streamline the series, transforming it even further from suspense/survival horror into visceral action. While Resident Evil 4 and 5 both tended towards this direction, they still retained some elements one could label as “frightening”, though on the basis of this hour-long demo, Resident Evil 6 has gone full Call of Duty mode now. This feels far away from what most fans both want and expect out of the series, with the crass aim of maximising sales by watering the product down.
Here’s our 14 reasons why, on the basis of this demo, Resident Evil 6 sucks.
1. Graphics
There’s no way that this comment won’t make us sound like graphics whores, but it’s staggering how little has changed since the release of Resident Evil 5 three-and-a-half years ago; there simply isn’t a feel of progression, that the visuals have really improved much beyond a cursory effort made with slightly more lifelike faces and some fairly standard lighting. For the sixth game in an immensely popular franchise, Capcom really should be excelling in this regard, but the aliasing and jagged edges on the environments, as well as the unimproved quality of the animations makes it feel like a fan project someone concocted out of their own home. Remember those shiny map-packs you could download for the PC version of GTA:IV? This feels just like that, except it’s not that shiny; it’s simply different.
Given some of the A+ titles that have blessed this generation, it’s disturbing that the game still can’t really measure up visually to titles like Metal Gear Solid 4 which have been out for over 4 years. Though making dark locales look good is always harder than bright ones, that’s no excuse given that, at least in the demo, Chris’s campaign appears to take place during the day, yet the European marble architecture still looks substandard and low-res.
2. The Map is Too Helpful
It’s been a common complaint from fans of the series that in the last two games, Capcom have essentially opted to hold our hand more and more through the terror, such that it isn’t even really terror anymore. By number six, this is indisputably true; having spent an hour playing the demo, not once did my pulse race or did I feel particularly stressed – compared to the earlier games, where I was in a constant state of anxiety – because the game never allows you to creep outside your comfort zone. Borrowing gleefully from the Call of Duty school of “everything will be alright” and “you can do this”, an on-screen indicator points out the distance of your nearest objective, and if that’s not good enough for you, a simple press of the trigger and you are presented with a gigantic arrow, which points you towards your current mission objective in the most blatant terms possible.
While the back-tracking and darting about of the earlier games did often become tiresome, Capcom have gone too far the other way this time; where is the invitation to explore, the thrill of running into rooms, finding hidden items, and occasionally, having to wrestle with an unexpected zombie? Instead, you’re now encouraged to run from one objective to the next, and the fact that these checkpoints more often than not involve a cut-scene, it also allows lesser-skilled or cowardly players to simply flee from the enemy and run until they can reach the next video sequence, thereby eliminating the threat.
3. You Can Move While Shooting
This one’s a divisive one, because the inability to move and shoot has been a mainstay of the Resident Evil series for the last 15 years, yet in the sixth game, we are finally awarded the opportunity to run and gun. While it seems a lot more realistic that we might be able to do this, and having to stand still to fire feels like a horribly artificial way to enhance the game’s difficulty, it also created some awkward scenarios in the demo; the more chaotic nature of the game, for one, makes running and gunning quite impractical compared to the more sedate pace of the earlier games. Furthermore, the problematic aiming – which flutters about all over the place unless you buy a Steady Aim pick-up which can only be accessed a few hours into the full game – makes moving and shooting difficult, so often it is just preferable to stand still anyway.
It doesn’t make sense; why include such a feature if it’s not going to be that functional anyway? It seems like an arbitrary addition to satisfy the more casual crowd they are trying to attract this time…
4. Lame Obstacles
This is one of those annoying issues that we typically associate with older games, whereby limitations have been built into the mechanics in order to restrict the player and disguise technical limitations, usually hardware-related. However, there’s no excuse for a very strange obstacle that we encountered mere minutes into playing Resident Evil 6; Leon and Helena are walking through the college campus, and come to a lecture hall, and the first thing to catch our eye is a green herb. We walk up to it, but our way down the gangway is obstructed by a small piece of broken furniture; why can’t we just leap over it like we do with so many other objects in this game?
We thought we were past this in games now, but apparently not; Capcom have introduced an obstacle that isn’t only wafer-thin in conception, but also rather pointless, given that all you have to do is run down some steps and run up some more to collect it. All it does is bore the player, so frankly, what’s the point? We can only hope that the rest of the game isn’t filled with such banal, superficial restrictions.
5. Clunky Triggers
Though this is the sort of mechanical problem that still plagues many games, it’s one that most intelligent video game developers should be able to rectify quite easily. During Leon’s mission in particular, we noted how zombies would lie prostrate on the floor, or sit silently in a chair. Of course, being Resident Evil veterans, we’re not going to assume that they’re dead just because of that, so I took steady aim at the zombie’s head, fired, but of course, the bullet didn’t register, as though I was firing at an empty space. Again, I tried, and again, it was as though I was shooting at the wall. I shrugged and moved on, only for the zombie to attack as I passed through the room, in which event I had to cap it in the head, sighing at the poor programming I was forced to contend with.
Is it really that much to ask that developers don’t rely on such dumb mechanics, that we can only shoot a zombie when the game tells us to? If I see a threat, I’m going to want to take it down, regardless of what the developers want to force onto us.
6. Boring Objectives
This isn’t exactly a new thing for the series, to be fair; how many times can we remember having to go on ridiculous quests in the earlier Resident Evil games to fetch gems, cranks and various other absurd objects to progress through a convoluted, contrived puzzle? To their credit, the newer games have toned down these elements, though they still rely on some pretty shopworn set-pieces throughout. Take the latest game; in the demo alone, we have to go on a distended fetch quest during Leon’s level, to retrieve a key card that grants us entry to a new area of the campus, and during Chris’ mission, we have to fend off the zombies while a teammate works on opening a door.
It’s just so overdone and passée; haven’t we seen this in just about every action game in recent video game history? Furthermore, it only serves to add fuel to the argument that the Resident Evil games are progressively becoming more like Call of Duty; how many times have we had to hold down the fort while a nameless comrade opens the next level up for us?
7. Over-Generous Loot
We can all remember the immense frustration of running out of herbs and first aid sprays in the earlier Resident Evil games, such that we probably don’t want to encounter that level of economising ever again. That said, Resident Evil 6 appears to take things a step too far by not simply handing the player’s hand, but upping the stakes in their favor by allowing them to amass so many health-boosting items that the enemies – already rendered not-so-scary by the more action-orientated tone – are not really much of a threat at all. Case in point, in my 20-minute playthrough of Leon’s RE6 demo, I managed to amass 7 green herbs, and because it took me a while to figure out how to use the damn things – owing to the poor controls and confusing inventory – I breezed through the whole level without using a single one.
As far as this goes for the final game, one can only begin to imagine how many herbs we might manage to collect; it is as though Capcom, like Activision, simply want players to coast breathlessly through their game rather than encounter any stress and anxiety that, you know, came to characterise the series a good decade ago…
8. Poor Mini-Games
Though the above screenshot of Leon running away from the rolling boulder in Resident Evil is an example of Resident Evil’s introduction of mini-games in the fourth game, it is actually one of the better examples, for it was simple, and despite being sprung on viewers during a cut-scene, was actually quite effective and appropriately stressful. However, in Resident Evil 6, this has been enhanced to a more participatory level; note how in Leon’s mission, when you and Helena reach the police car, you activate a mini-game in which you must wiggle the analogue stick to fumble around for the car keys. The glove-box and the sun-visor seem to be the only places to look, yet the control prompt doesn’t make it clear that you’re meant to look around at all; it merely seems to suggest that you have to wiggle the analogue stick from left to right to escape the zombie horde. Furthermore, given that a poor performance doesn’t seem to create a “fail” scenario in which the zombies invade, it all seems rather pointless.
Capcom need to remember that Resident Evil is not and never will be Heavy Rain; that is something entirely different, and they should stick to what they know, which is certainly not overly fiddly button prompt sequences.
9. Zombies with Guns
In Chris’ scenario in Resident Evil 6, we are thrown headlong into a military operation to assault a village overrun with newly-developer BOW’s (Biological Weapons), who are reportedly more fierce than have ever been encountered. We soon learn that, while previous beasties in the series – such as the Plaga – could wield simple melee weapons, these new BOWs, called “J’avo”, can actually fire guns, and so combined with their commendable physical prowess, are among the most imposing threats that our protagonists have yet faced.
Simply put, advancing the zombie on so far from the original game to an entity that can now fire weaponry aches with the revisionism that nearly derailed George A. Romero’s “…of the Dead” series. Simply, it reduces their threat from an atmospheric perspective, because the whole point of the original games was that traditional weaponry was only cursorily effective against the uninitiated, but now, it’s going to be reduced to a series of fire-fights and little else.
10. Teammate Revival
While Resident Evil 5 did introduce elements of revival alongside its teammate mechanics, this has been taken to an absolutely ridiculous level in Resident Evil 6. Take the Sherry/Jake mission on the demo, whereby you are attacked by gigantic winged beasts, or Chris’ mission, where you encounter skilled BOW snipers, absurd though they are. Though they often might reduce you down to zero health, “death” isn’t so much a punishment anymore, as your team-mates now have the option to revive you, which they will almost definitely do if the demo is anything to go by, not that you’re really that likely to die at all…
Again, this is further in line with Capcom’s goal to streamline the game for a more populist audience, and make the game both easier and more accessible, such that death is denied at every available opportunity. But to long-time fans, it is going to feel nothing but diluted.
11. Too. Many. Weapons.
This complaint is, to be fair, only apparent in Sherry/Jake’s mission, and essentially only if you’re playing as Sherry. The original Resident Evil games made it clear that carrying a veritable arsenal of weaponry was not an option, and you had to be selective, placing irrelevant weapons in the trunk while carrying around practical ones as you needed. In the later games like REMake, and Resident Evil: Zero, this expanded to allowing you to drop weapons anywhere, a hugely welcome addition, but in the latest Resident Evil, they appear to have taken character versatility a little bit too far.
Remember Sherry Birkin, the little girl in Resident Evil 2 who ran defencelessly from the zombies while Leon and Claire took care of business? Well, she’s all grown up, but she’s still got a slight frame, such that she probably shouldn’t be able to handle a Bear Commander, a Sniper Rifle, and a few other pistols all in one go. While we can sort of let it go in something like Grand Theft Auto that’s supposed to be over-the-top and silly, the comparative focus on difficulty and fiendishness in the Resident Evil series would suggest that Sherry shouldn’t really be able to carry such a big load out. But of course, Capcom seem to be divorcing themselves from their roots as much as possible.
12. Hand-to-Hand Combat
Hand-to-hand combat was introduced in Resident Evil 4, whereby you could take on the zombie horde with your hands, albeit to a restricted extent. However, in the Resident Evil 6 demo, it often proves beneficial to stop shooting at the masses and simply start kicking. Three simple boots and a zombie will basically die, despite not having its head removed from its body; it makes the game feel exceptionally arcade-y, and seems to dilute the threat of the enemy considerably.
The whole point of zombies in everything from Romero’s films to the earlier games has been that they are exceptionally strong, and taking them on in weapon-free combat is not a particularly clever idea. Now that, in this game, our intrepid heroes can take them out with a few careless swipes, the enemies, no matter how much more advanced they claim to be, seem weak and feeble by comparison.
13. Controls & Camera
While the new camera system was widely lauded when Resident Evil 4 was released, one can’t help but lament it now, for Resident Evil 6, in attempting to appeal more to the so-called “casual” gamer, has quickened its pace to the extent that fighting foes with this camera and control system is itself quite confusing. Note during Leon’s demo mission, enemies dive through the windows of a crowded hallway, and we are forced to take them on, while wrestling with both a restrictive camera, and counter-intuitive control that, dare I say, almost make us wish for the tank controls (which are, admittedly, available as an option in the game).
Given the advancements made in the fourth and fifth game, the poor gameplay mechanics are a shame, as they undermine all the hard work put into advancing the series; rather, the overly contrived control scheme and imposing camera need to be better-streamlined if the gameplay is to be this frenetic.
14. Inventory
As if we haven’t had to contend with this enough throughout the series, the inventory system has once again been redesigned, and it is again headache-inducing as you try to work your way around navigating the various menus which will display your equipped and non-equipped items. It’s maddeningly counter-intuitive, such that you’ll probably end up necking some of your first aid items by accident to begin with, and learning how to throw a grenade is a more challenging mission in itself than the rest of the demo appears to offer. Though it’s sleek and shiny, it also fails to follow the basic rules of common sense; it isn’t in the least bit streamlined, and might serve to follow in the footsteps of something like Dead Space, which integrates its HUD into the protagonist’s outfit.
~http://whatculture.com/
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