Resident Evil 6 review

    This is going to be a relatively short review. What's my opinion of Resident Evil 6? This is not the game for me. It may be the game for you but you are not me. My desire to play this game was pretty strong at the beginning them vanished as I continued to play. It's not the graphics, they're gorgeous. It's not that I don't like the characters, I've loved Leon Kennedy since Resident Evil 2. It's not even that I've grown tired of zombies. I'm very glad to have them back in the franchise.

    No, it's just my impression of the game is that it resented for me for attempting to play it. I had this experience once before, playing Castlevania: Lord of Shadows. While playing alternate-universe Belmont, I was continually met with the feeling that the game would have preferred if I was  watching as opposed to actually playing. Resident Evil 6 is this x1000.

The game of quicktime events.

    I should warn you that I only got about four hours into the game before I made this assumption. I played some Leon Kennedy, got really confused, and concluded that I had better things to with my time. Some of you may consider this to be unfair but if a game doesn't hook me after four hours I'm pretty sure it's done something wrong. Dishonored was at least fun at times during the steep learning curve. Resident Evil 6 isn't fun in the slightest, at least from the early levels, it's just like watching a movie.

    Yes, which brings me to my major complaint about Resident 6: Quick Time Events. I never got on the God of War phase so I don't know why this became a thing but I *HATE* these things. I don't consider this actual gameplay, it's just like an intelligence puzzle that completely divorces you from the action on screen. The first part of Leon's journey through Zombieville during the start of the game was nothing but Quick Time Events.

I have no doubt this fight would consist of nothing but QTE.

    I knew I would not enjoy this game the moment Leon was faced with his first zombie and you have the option of shooting it before it attacks. Okay, that's a classic opening scene. I shot it a couple of times and it still ended up biting me and forcing to fight it off hand-to-hand. Okay, obviously it's because I didn't shoot it in the head. Well, I reloaded and shot it in the head. Nope, it turns out that shooting it in the head or the body or missing means nothing in the long run. Yes, your actions are completely meaningless.

    You could argue it was part of the tutorial and it was just trying to show how to grapple with zombies but my opinion is they shouldn't have allowed you to shoot it in the head then. The rest of the opening level consists of running past zombies, quick time event, running from explosion, quick time event, flying a helicopter, two quick-time events, and a decided lack of anything that couldn't be replicated by fiddling with the remote on a DVD player during an action movie.

    Harsh, I know.

There's monsters, at least.

     The premise of the game is Leon Kennedy, Chris Redfield, Sherry Birkin, and newcomer Jake Muller are all involved in a government conspiracy which involves covering up the events of Raccoon City. You'd think that would have been out in the open given the United States launched a nuclear weapon to blow it up. The plot is difficult to get info on as the game isn't really interested in sharing it. Instead, you have to gather information physically throughout the game or none of this is going to make a damn bit of sense.

Sherry Birkin having grown up this much makes me feel old.

    Bad storytelling and bad gameplay make this a difficult game to judge because I'm not sure where one begins as well as the other ends. I will say, though, it kind of suffers from a Michael Bay abundance of explosions and action scenes which don't actually feel all that action-y since you're not involved, Zombie stories tend to work best when there's a very simple plot: there's a creepy mansion you're trapped in (Resident Evil 1), get out of the city (Resident Evil 2/Nemesis), get off the island (Resident Evil: Code Veronica), and even rescue the President's daughter from the Spanish speaking Medieval village (Resident Evil 4). This seems caught up in a mythology the game doesn't even intend to expand on.

    You may argue I'm being too harsh on this game but I felt cheated and disappointed. The graphics are still good and the characters are ones I enjoyed. Still, I didn't get far enough in the story to judge whether it's any good.

3/10