Review – Resident Evil 6

Action/Horror

Yeah, you might want to clean up a little bit first.

Gareth

Is it classic Resident Evil? No. Is it as good as Resi 4? No. Is it the best co-op experience I’ve had in a long time? Hell yep. Resident Evil 6 returns with over the top third person action and forced co-operative play (without a friend the AI will accompany you) in this incredibly divisive sequel.

Resi 6 takes place across four separate campaigns. Three are open to you initially with the fourth unlocking once you’ve finished the others. The campaigns each star a character from previous games being paired with an unknown (who will probably never be heard of again, like Carlos from Resi 3 or Sheva from Resi 5). There’s Leon (S. Kennedy from Resi 2 and 4) and Helena, Chris (Redfield from 1, Code Veronica and 5) and Piers, and Sherry (Birkin, the child from Resi 2) and Jake. Each campaign plays a little differently, but not hugely so. Leon’s is the only one to feature zombies, though these aren’t the zombies from the originals, Chris’ tends to be more of a generic shooter, whilst Jake’s campaign (he is the lead, not Sherry) has the duo being constantly pursued by a Tyrant like monster. I say constantly, he pops up every now and then, it’s not like in Nemesis where he can just appear bursting through walls at any time. That would have been awesome.

Survive the QTE or get T-Virus goo all over your fucking chops.

As started by Resi 4 and continued in 5, Resident Evil 6 plays like a third-person shooter now, complete with cover (though it’s not as well integrated as most games) and plenty of ammo. Survival horror this is not. There are actually far more moves your character can pull off than your average shooter however, especially when you take into account all the context sensitive actions. Whether it’s diving onto your back to dodge an attack and taking a shot whilst lying there, or running up to a dazed or unaware enemy and slamming its head into a wall or pulling off some sort of wrestling move. The results are usually pretty gory as well, I’ve not seen such elongated death scenes since getting your head sawn off in Resi 4.

The variety of gameplay, set pieces and the pure co-operativeness make this a laugh a minute. I seriously have not gained so much joy from playing a game in a long time. It’s not without faults obviously, otherwise it wouldn’t be getting torn apart by other gaming websites (fuck other gaming websites – Ed). Instant death sections are a pain, the controls take some getting used to, the inventory system is another step back, the story doesn’t really add anything to the Resi lore and it’s not so enjoyable in single player.

However there’s plenty of content with each campaign weighing in at about 6-10 hours, extras such as the Mercenaries (points based survival mode), unlockable abilities, it looks gorgeous the majority of the time and most of all it’s jolly good fun with a friend.

Rating: 8/10