Dishonored: Heart In The Right Place?

My usual blogging time went into writing an opinion piece for Game Reactor, which you can read here.

Resident Evil 6: Adapt To Survive

Evolution is all about trial and error. Like uncooked pasta on a kitchen wall, mutations are fired scattershot into the ether by Mother Nature to see what sticks. The weakest links are filtered out through the course of natural selection, leaving only the strongest elements to carry on their legacy. If that’s so, then as an exercise in gaming evolution, Resident Evil 6 is positively Darwinian.

Capcom have always been doomed to be stuck between a mansion and a hard place with Resident Evil 6. Long-term franchise fans clamored for the now-outdated fixed camera angles and slow pacing of the original games, where frankly rubbish controls created much of the tension. More recent Resi adopters want the return of the action-oriented gameplay they first tasted in Resident Evil 4 and 5. And yet to grow, the developers must also strive to net new fans, by bringing the series shambling into line with other popular, more cinematic games on the market today.

Capcom’s solution to this problem? Try and please everyone all at once. But though it’s an admirable effort on their part, it doesn’t entirely work.

Leon still refuses to let the nineties hair go.

RE6’s single player campaign has been split into four distinct sections, each with an emphasis on different elements of gameplay that have, at one time or another, been a focus of the series. Leon’s trek through the town of Tall Oaks tries to bring the terror back with a necessity for resource management, whilst Chris Redfield’s bullet-soaked section forgoes any pretense of survival horror and instead focuses on all-out third person shooter action. Newcomer Jake’s campaign, where he must continually outrun the Nemesis-like Ustanak with an all-grown-up Sherry Birkin in tow was the wildcard of the bunch. It turns out Wesker Jr has inherited more than just his Daddy’s taste in dark clothing and penchant for a good sneer, with some formidable hand-to-hand combat skills lending a different flavor to the fighting. The fourth campaign, unlocked only after completion of the original three, has the player take control of the enigmatic Ada Wong, in a solo adventure that ties up the narrative loose ends left hanging over the other preceding plots, and emphasizes puzzles and stealthy traversal over prolonged shoot-outs. But though each campaign brings something new to the table in terms of gameplay and sheds light on another mystery of the plot from a different perspective, they all, at one point or another, manage to outstay their welcome.

It makes you wonder why Capcom didn’t simply shorten each character’s distinct story and intercut them chronologically to weave one master single player campaign. This may have played a lot smoother than having to go through four lengthy individual plots in a cumulative narrative fashion that at times just feels disjointed. The very separate stories mean that key sequences are actually repeated in other campaigns when the action overlaps, which lessen their overall impact and lead to some unwanted and unwelcome déjà vu.

Ada Wong, who never uses a pseudonym. Best or worst agent ever. 

The result of all this is that, like a clogged and bloated corpse, Resi 6 is abnormally large. In what feels like an effort to make up time, sections that should only last a few minutes are swollen to the half hour mark. Atmospheric locations are overused, and repetition makes some initially thrilling combat sequences and shootouts quickly disintegrate into wearisome monotony. Individual campaigns should have been about maintaining pace and purpose, rather than meandering just for the sake of shooting a few more enemies before moving on.

 Yes, there is a lot of content in Resident Evil 6. But more does not necessarily mean better, and here the sheer amount just dilutes the strength of the truly worthwhile sections found therein. So much content ultimately means that when a real gem of an idea comes along, it is immediately swallowed up, either by overuse or by a deluge of other less inspired tropes, and is immediately pushed to the back of your mind, where you’ll struggle to recall it later.

But for all its flaws, Resident Evil 6 is an enjoyable game. There may not be much in the way of actual scares, but the new and more varied enemies are about as horrific as they’ve ever been in the series, with the gruesome monster design of later stage bosses being a standout highlight. Some of the set pieces are spectacular too, and give a sense of scale to the now global pandemic that we otherwise only see through the confines of a very narrow corridor. For a series once famed for its woeful voice acting, the cast do a great job in bringing the characters to life in more subtle ways than the pantomime performances of old, and this, coupled with a tense musical score and appropriately hideous sound effects, make up an impressive audio landscape.

S.T.A.R.S and B.S.A.A. What acronyms you got, Kennedy?

If there’s one word that sums up the Resident Evil franchise in my mind, it’s atmosphere, and in places, Resi 6 is dripping with as much atmosphere as it is the decomposed remains of the formerly living. Fantastically beautiful and well-placed lighting makes for some memorable moments, like when you see the silhouettes of a ravenous zombie horde stretched on the side of a train tunnel before they come slavering around the bend towards you.

Everything in Resident Evil 6 is about variation. There are different combat styles, different weapons, different characters and different countries, all clearly designed to appeal to and placate as wide an audience as possible. The result is a jack of all trades but a master of none, where Resident evil 6’s biggest crime is trying to do far too much all at once. You get the feeling that the game would have benefitted from a lot more focus and a bit more confidence in itself; there’s a pervading sense that the developers aren’t sure which elements of the series are worth scratching and which are worth saving, and so just do everything in the hopes that the good will ultimately outweigh the bad. But as a rabid Resident Evil fan who has been with the franchise since the Arklay Mountain incident, I still found plenty to enjoy in Resi’s latest outing.

Evolution is to be expected. It’s a natural and unavoidable fact of life that favours the survival of the fittest, so that when mistakes are invariably made, they’re for the benefit of the species as a whole. With RE6, Capcom has tried multiple mutations on the old series strain, and whilst some elements didn’t work, there’s still a lot that did. It’s not perfect, but it’ll satisfy until the next Resident Evil inexorably hoists itself, snapping and snarling, out of the primordial ooze.