So. I've just played the demo for Resident Evil 6 on PS3.

Oh boy.

Where to begin...

I loved Resident Evil 4. Seriously, who didn't?

I enjoyed Resident Evil 5 to some extent. I liked the graphics, the variety of real life weapons. I disliked the fact that you always had someone covering your back. I disliked the fact that it was more action than horror. By the end, it was more or less a roller coaster ride, a pretty unmemorable ride that just wasn't that interesting. But, still, enjoyable.

And now I've played portions of what would become Resident Evil 6.

I feel sad. I remember hearing in a making-of video of some sort that three teams under Capcom built the three different campaigns. Correct me if I'm wrong, but It's pretty clear. I'm not going to talk about the Jake Campaign, I'll just talk about Chris and Leon. The Bad and The Good, respectively.

Chris' campaign is as generic as they come. A typical run&gun with really heavy controls. Things I recall;

-Horrible dialogue, generic military setup.

-Characters have flat ears, a la PS2.

-An intro that's more than a little reminiscent of the Modern Warfare series.

-No way to pause the game.

-Horrible GUI design.

-A really dull and uninteresting boss fight.

So you see, I really disliked the "Chris Portion". Now on to Leon;

-Tense atmosphere.

-Characters have detailed ears! Leon's hair and facial animation looks stunning.

-Totally old school RE level design and lighting.

-Heavy controls translate excellently to Leon's slow&tense gameplay.

-Only a HK VP70 and a Survival Knife. Limited ammo.

-Still don't like having a partner in the dark...

-Amazing end-game sequence, looking for the keys in a police car, while zombies crawl on your windshield.

-Why can't the entire game be like this?

Seriously, Capcom. Release the game in three portions. I don't want to pay 60 bucks for one third of the product. I won't buy a game that has three completely different parts, two of which I couldn't even care less about. I won't.

There might be those out there who want to play mindless generic shooters (yeah, those Call of Duty titles do break records every year, don't they?)

But there are those of us who still enjoy a memorable ride that reminds us why we chose to buy a Resident Evil title, rather than just about any random shooter that will be forgotten a month after release...

I actually thought the Chris part was better then the Leon one (haven't played Jake yet). The controls don't match up at all with the atmosphere in the Leon sections. And the way that so many enemies attack you from different angles seems to encourage a spray and pray gameplay style, but you don't get enough ammo. I was basically left kicking everyone during a large portion of the demo. The Chris campaign has a lot more ammo and the controls make more sense. Spray and pray works here and you have enough ammo to goof off and throw yourself around and roll on the floor while shooting. The Chris campaign also seems to be focusing on what was always the threat since the first Resident Evil. Bio Organic Weapons being used as weapons of war. It is interesting to get to play through that from the perspective of both a dude in the city (Leon), a soldier (Chris), and a superhero (Jake). I think this is why they made three campaigns, this way everyone has something to enjoy.

@DarthOrange: Hey, all the more reason why they can sell them seperately. Everyone's got different taste in games.

Peace.

ive never understood why people have such a problem with the newer resident evil games and ive been playing them since 1998. the games have simply evolved. it took them what? five games before RE4 to change things up? as far as resident evil 4 goes, thats pretty far from the resident evil "formula" yet people allways talk about how great RE game it is. i will admit that the more recent games have focused more on action but again,thats the natural evoltution from RE4. people complain about COD allways being the same every year or how assassins creed is just a new coat of paint,yet capcom has truly changed the way we play Resident Evil while keeping the spirit of it intact and fun. despite what people say,RE5 FEELS like a resident evil game,just as RE6 will. i guess some people are just never pleased.

I thought the Chris campaign was pretty terrible. It was trying way too hard to be something it's not (Gears of War). The controls felt clunky, the cover mechanic is badly implemented and the dialogue was badly written and super generic.

When playing the Leon campaign I felt the infected were like bullet sponges. You can keep shooting them in the head and they wouldn't drop. It wasn't that tense or atmospheric, they just threw a bunch of zombies at me and I just had to keep spamming my kicks and melee attacks. When a horror game gives me the ability to superman a bunch of infected and round house kick them or do a 360 corkscrew throw, then it cease to be a horror game.

The Chris campaign played like another generic cover shooter and the cover mechanic was a chore to use. The characters and atmosphere is dejavu, been there done that. Oh well at least it gave us awesome dialogue such as "is he always this awesome?"

There's already a thread open for discussing and posting your RE6 demo impressions y'know.

To me it dies strait away with the fact you have a co-op partner in it. I really don't like that a lot of games are designed around co-op now. It always makes it so there's concessions for those who prefer to play these games on their own. RE4 had 2 characters at once for some parts, sure. But it wasn't designed to be played co-op so the gameplay was still designed as if 1 person would play it. Now with co-op everywhere they design it for 2 people to play at once (killing any tension or atmosphere) and when you are playing it alone you get a bumbling AI controlled character dancing around you glitching out.

So for me RE died after 4. RE is supposed to be a tense and engaging single-player game. Not a type of game I want to be playing co-op over xbox live.

Therefore, until they make a new RE game that's strictly single player in the campaign (I have no problem with a separate multiplayer part) that goes back to it scary roots then I'm not interested.

I like the different campaigns. For variety's sake.

@Yummylee: Sorry, first blog post, wanted to post it under the most relevant place possible.

Edit; Just got RE4 HD on PS3. Still kicks the hell out of the RE6 demo in my opinion. Mikami is a genius.

@scarletsnake: RE4 was the pinnacle of that series. RE5, while good, had some issues, but this demo....OMG its horrendous. Its absolute garbage....

@AlfredCapone: It is pretty bad for the most part :(

Resident Evil 6 will make a great action game, those who enjoy mercenaries and other multi-player modes will probably have a lot of fun. Resident Evil has never skimped on a good single player campaign so far and I'm sure 6 won't be any different but the changes aren't something that make the game an immediate buy for me. I'll definitely get it when it's cheaper and I'm almost sure I'll have a lot of fun with it.

The RE6 demo was like RE5 on crack. I didn't enjoy my experience at all. Makes me sad cause I use to be a fan of the RE series, until it became an adrenaline rush.

After playing through the demo...this will be a game I borrow from a friend during next summer's game drought. It didn't seem bad, just not what I'm looking for ATM. Suppose I'll be playing through the Dead Space series again ^_^v

i like it. all 3 campaigns.

So it's out. And it seems it's a failure of epic proportions.

Is the final product that bad?