Sup gamers,
In full disclosure: I have not played any of the demos of Resident Evil 6. I have not played the recently released demo if you purchased Dragon’s Dogma (because I’m not going to buy Dragon’s Dogma) and I have not played the newer demo from Comic-Con this past weekend. What I have done is watch all the gameplay footage from these demos, combed over the details, imagined how I would feel playing them and came to the conclusion that RE6 (with blowjob giraffe logo and all) does not look all that great. Here’s why.
On paper, RE6 has a lot of cool concepts: three distinct campaigns with three distinct play styles, drop-in/out co-op, a hefty globetrotting story, a rumored fourth campaign, plenty of scares and things to shoot. So, why do I have my head up my ass? Well, to be honest, I am not all that impressed with the demos I’ve seen. Keep in mind, yes, this is gameplay from an unfinished release and I have not actually played any of these. So let me get to it: none of what I saw looks good.
In Leon’s campaign demo from Dogma, he walks slowly around a college campus for twenty minutes with an insufferable AI looking for his presumably infected daughter. You take in the atmosphere and progress at a deliberate pace while the tension builds. Finally, you find the infected daughter, have to kill her and then fight your way out. In his Comic-Con demo, you fight through a college campus while looking for a key card. I have serious issues when games won’t let me play the way I want. Why does the game disable the Run button when you walk through the campus? Why must you wait for the AI characters to keep pace? Why does the game force you to play in one fashion by disabling other mechanics? Wouldn’t it be creepier if you had more control over your character?
Chris’ campaign is filled with run n’ gunning to an exceptionally distracting degree. Shoot some dudes on rooftops, progress, shoot more dudes, progress. In the Comic-Con demo, Chris was on a snowy street with tanks and machine-gunning soldiers. Because Resident Evil 5 sold so well based on the success of Resident Evil 4, Capcom thinks people want a Resident Evil game with scares AND ripped ultra-soldiers of the Aryan race destroying with ease.
And Jake’s campaign looks incredibly disjointed. The Dogma demo has you running away from a hulking Nemesis type, employing the Uncharted run-towards-the-screen mechanic. And his demo ends when you strategically shoot red barrels near the Nemesis.
Now the three distinct gameplay campaigns don’t sound so good. RE6 sounds schizophrenic because Capcom went the route of pleasing everyone rather than emerging with one solid direction. Also keep in mind in some of the demo footage, there are way too many cutscenes. Capcom really wants to invest you in their hilariously awful RE stories to the degree that there is four hours of promised cutscenes in RE6.
But what do I know? I didn’t play any of the gameplay, only watched and absorbed with disgust. Maybe the four hours of cutscenes and ultra-lengthy game has a metric ass-ton of kick-ass gameplay that will deliver on Capcom’s lofty promises.
At the moment, I see this as the lead up to The Dark Knight Rises. At this moment in time, I’m hazy on what the movie is about, most of the secrets remain secrets, but I’m excited because the footage I’ve seen is promising coupled with the pedigree of everyone involved. Resident Evil 6 comes with bizarre gampelay after questionable attempts to reboot the RE series and some truly mediocre games from Capcom in the last several years (Dark Void, Dead Rising 2, Lost Planet 2, Bionic Commando, Dragon’s Dogma, RE Operation Raccoon City).
Or maybe I just have my head up my ass?
2 Comments
The last sentence sort of says it all. At least give it a try in the demo or something before passing judgement. And then I’m sure some people will probably say that the demo won’t give you enough for a full opinion on it, but I’d say just trying a demo out forms a clearer image of the game than if you watch gameplay videos.