A review of Resident Evil 6 (SPOILERS)
OK, first things first, to get the pro's out of the way: Helena, Sherry and Ada are hot, well-realized and have numerous ryona moments. That right there is worth the price of admission...but only barely. This game, which clearly had so much money and thought put into it, absolutely sucks.
I was a big fan of RE 4 and 5, and I even liked the move toward more action-oriented gameplay that they represented. But RE 6 is a big step backward in every department. I have not been more frustrated with a game in a long time, and I've played my share of terrible games solely for the ryona content (Bulletwitch, anyone?) I even found myself enjoying the opening of this one, starting with the Leon/Helena campaign and the throwback RE 1-style feel of the first levels (which I had already played on the demo, but still).
Things began going downhill the moment Simmons reappeared as a boss for the 3rd time. Or was it the 4th time? Or the 5th time? It reached the point where I felt like "why bother? I'm not actually killing him here." Getting run over by the train should have been the end of him, but no. And that brings me to a major plot point error: why, oh why, would Ada have infected Simmons to "teach him a lesson?" Ada knows what the virus does to main bad guys, like it did in RE 4: it makes them super-strong and much more dangerous. Why would she intentionally power up Simmons as "revenge?" That premise was beyond stupid. I mean, anyone who has played a Resident Evil game knew Simmons would turn into a monster, but having it delivered by one of the heroes? Ugh.
The real moment the game came crashing down for me was when I was fighting Simmons in his "bug-eyed" form. As soon as the fight started, I noted the big, red, glowing eyes, then Leon helpfully said "he's protecting his eyes!" OK, clear sign that's what I should be targeting. I fired every round from all of my guns into his eyes, having to wait as he blocked his eyes with his mandibles, but it didn't kill him. It would have been different if I could say I shot his eyes 'to no effect,' but I can't. Every hundred rounds or so Simmons would rear back, roaring in agony, and I would think I was getting somewhere. But he would never die, he would just eventually return to spitting acid at me. Eventually he got me, when I was out of all ammo and had been fighting for 15 straight minutes. Man, does a boss encounter get tedious when you think you're doing it right and the boss isn't good enough to actually kill you. It sucks the suspense right out of the scene. I was laughing in disgust by the end.
Eventually I had to go online to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. The solution was easy, and I might have come to it myself if the game hadn't intentionally misdirected me, and then never thrown me a bone. I'm halfway through Sherry's campaign now, and it's more of the same. Boss battle after stupid boss battle. Ill-conceived levels and regular enemies who are frankly near-harmless. I was stuck for a half-hour fighting the huge beasts roaming around the streets, unsure of how to take them down. I was told I had to pull the "device" out of one of the monster's backs so it could be bombed, so I went to the tallest building and fought him. The monster repeatedly smashed his hand down on the structure, I would run up and hit every button I could think of, but I wasn't interacting with him. Then my AI partners would shoot the monster in the face, he would roar in agony, and eventually smash his hand down again. Rinse, repeat. I thought the game was broken...why wasn't it letting me jump on his back to get at the device? Imagine a half hour of this, and you see how absurd it gets. The monster was too pathetic to kill me; in fact, in all that time it failed to hit me. My AI partners unloaded more than a thousand bullets into it, to no effect. Every minor enemy on the map was dead. It was BORING. Eventually, after running around the rest of the map like a headless chicken, I found that I was on the wrong building, that I would only get the jumping animation on a LOWER structure. Because that's where the developers put the spot. I had to be there, nowhere else. Just terrible.
The gunplay is also shoddy compared to RE 4 or 5. Bullets seem to have zero effect on the bigger enemies, especially the bosses. This many years later, and the protagonists are still shooting the BOW's with regular guns? Please. The controls feel loose, which is definitely visible in Mercenaries Mode. I was excellent at RE 5 Mercs Mode, but in this iteration I have trouble hitting targets and following up with melee strikes. It just isn't as well implemented this time around.
I'm actually a big fan of QTE in games (because it leads to less-generic ryona moments), but I have to agree with the reviewers that RE 6 feels more like an "interactive movie" than a fully-realized game. Too many long cutscenes followed by you being allowed to walk the character 10 feet, followed by more loading and another cutscene. That isn't fun. The best, most over-the-top action takes place in the cutscenes, then I get to take over for the down-time. Terrific, thanks.
My grade for the game: a low C-. It would be worse if I wasn't allowed to use the female protagonists from the get-go, and if they weren't attractive. But this is bottom-of-the-barrel for me, a game I'm playing solely for the ryona, when in the past this was a series I really enjoyed. Buyer beware.
