A while back I made a list detailing the shrinking number of Resident Evil games I haven't yet played. And while it wasn't specifically created as a bucket list of sorts, it did remind me of my blind spot in the franchise regarding the Chronicles games. Coincidentally spotting it on sale for about £5.50 recently then finally pushed me over the edge in trying out. Unfortunately, the reasons as to why I was so hesitant in the first place have come to fruition.

A Relic of the Past, But Not The Kind I Enjoy...

I can't say I've ever particularly enjoyed light-gun games. I played House of the Dead 2 some at the arcades, and I did also surprisingly enjoy my time with Dead Space: Extraction, yet it's never a genre that'll have me rushing to buy any that comes available. I wanna say the only reason I played through Extraction in the first place was because it came free with all Day-1 copies of Dead Space 2 on PS3... And while again it turned out to be a pleasantly enjoyable experience, part of that was undoubtedly for its pre-Dead Space 1 story and its cast of characters, specifically Gabe.

All the same, light-gun games in general definitely feel like the sort of genre that's of a by-gone era, and these days I envision the tightly-scripted roller coaster rides of a Call of Duty campaign are perhaps the natural evolution of these styles of games. When playing one of these time capsules from a modern mindset, they can often feel a little too... inhibiting. The way the camera keeps jerking around completely out of your control is often simply annoying, and the gameplay is traditionally rather shallow and one-note. There will need to be a helluva lot going on screen to help make up for the lack of actual control, be it sheer spectacle or a decent dose of personality, and Umbrella Chronicles doesn't come very close to delivering either.

Though not only are light-gun games not exactly my thing, there's also the fact that I have no Wii, nor a PlayStation move controller for that matter... Which has also admittedly steered me clear from many (of what few there are these days) in the genre. I have also been playing Umbrella Chronicles completely single-player at that, and with all this in mind... I can't say I'm enjoying myself so much with this game.

Though while I admit I'm far from playing this game under the ideal conditions, I'm hesitant to believe that even with a Move controller in hand I don't think that would help the actual shooting feel more satisfying. It would certainly assist my aim, but the actual shooting itself would still feel as lifeless and dull as it does regardless I'd wager. I think that would have to sum up my experience overall in playing Umbrella Chronicles -- that is one of boredom. Shooting zombies simply doesn't feel as fun as it should be, and beyond critical hit head-explosions there's a surprisingly distinct lack of feedback. The gun sound effects are all rather weak at that, and given that the entire gameplay revolves around you shooting stuff, you can imagine then why it's not left me overly enthusiastic about it all.

Having to use a DS3 most definitely isn't helping things, though, as the aim somehow manages to feel both sluggish and yet weirdly squirrelly. I won't deny that part of my lack of enjoyment with this game rests on me for not playing it correctly, but... like Hell am I getting a Move controller.

Resident Evil: CliffsNotes Edition.

The stories contained within are another thing, too. Given the structure of it all I guess it makes sense to essentially boil them down to these abridged versions, but they omitted Barry Burton from the original Resident Evil retelling for starters!... In fact there's a great many liberties they make with all the main three they have in here, being Zero, the remake of the original, and Nemesis. That said, certain unique scenarios created for this do sound rather interesting, such as one following the exploits of Rebecca Chambers shortly upon arriving at the Mansion after the events of Zero and meeting up with Richard Aiken. It's too bad Zero wasn't released in an era of DLC, as I would have loved to play through such a scenario with the old-school survival horror gameplay of the series.

There's all these scenarios following Wesker's actions throughout the series too, and not to mention one that depicts the forming of the BSAA and the ultimate downfall of Umbrella. All of which inspire a feeling of disappointment for how they're restricted to this format... The whole end of Umbrella thing in particular seems important enough that you'd think it would have been handled in a different game altogether.

There's an awful lot of Files you can collect, though like the stories themselves most only seem to be repeating information that's already out in the ether, only in much more detail. I guess for the sake of anyone who doesn't want to play the older games but is still interested in the lore surrounding them it may hold some appeal, but for myself at least many of the carrots had already been caught long before I loaded the game up.

Also, the voice acting and writing is all pretty bad. Which, Resident Evil I know, but I'd say it's all potentially even worse than their original work. Or in most cases is at least more... bland. The writing has never been stellar in Resident Evil games of course, but there's often a B-Movie level of charm to it all, which Umbrella Chronicles lacks in favour of something much more altogether dull and forgettable. Rebecca's new voice actress also makes the character sound a helluva lot more Anime than she did in the regular RE0, too. Many of those weird ''Uh!'' noises and all that... You're typically bombarded with a lot more dialogue overall courtesy of the game's structure featuring two character side by side at all times, so it makes it a little harder to ignore than it would have been in their original incantations.

Though there is this weird quirk regarding Billy Coen which I thought was kind of funny. See, when I first started up the RE0 to my surprise it was Roger Craig Smith inhabiting the character! Who has been Chris Redfield's voice actor since RE5. However when you get into gameplay... the character is very clearly being voiced by someone else. Then we reach another cutscene and RCS makes his welcome return! So, at that point I figured that RCS voices Billy in the cutscenes and this other guy voices him in gameplay... Still weird, but least there's some consistency to it I guess. That is until this scene where Billy explains about his time as a marine, where he quite literally switches between the two voice actors on the fly. It's just so bloody bizarre that that alone has sort of at least partly justified my purchase...

But not completely, as I'm still not really enjoying myself with it very much. As mentioned earlier, it's all just rather boring and feels a little muted at times as well. Lot of slow panning and shit in its attempts to create a little bit of the ole tension I suppose, but none of it is effective and only threatens to obliterate the pacing. I can't say it looks very good either, and the few occasions you see the game in third-person show off some pretty awkward animation work at that. Chris' back kick after knocking off an enemy in particular just looks terrible. Oh, and the framerate will begin to chug in some instances as well... It's not common, but the fact that it'll occur is still embarrassing to witness.

Is funny to see how it's essentially an asset-smoothie made up of so many games from the series, which even includes the Outbreak games as the zombies in the Raccoon City portions hail from over yonder. Difficulty also seems a little unbalanced, with Yawn thus far being the most difficult boss fight, while the T-002 Tyrant that succeeds it in the next chapter was a complete pile of piss.

Oh! Conclusion!

I'll likely wanna see all of its content through for the sake of... seeing it all. That way I can then comfortably add it to my list I also recently done ranking the series from Best to Worst. For the sake of 'scholarly' purposes I guess I'm getting enough out of it, but... eh, suffice it to say it's not going to be ranking very high. I am at least curious to check out its rendition of RE2's 4th Survivor story, due to the praise from one @arbitrarywater. Given how there was so little to that to begin with, giving it a wee bit of added substance may actually benefit it. Though I doubt it'll be able to top the superbly haunting Outbreak intro, however.

Still, this has all left me wondering what it was about Extraction that I found to be surprisingly engaging in comparison to this. I'm both curious but also slightly worried at the prospect of giving Extraction another ride to find out in any case. However by the time I shelf this selection of Chronicles I likely won't even care one way or the other anyway. I'd likely sooner play its seemingly universally agreed upon inferior sequel...

Also, since I'm all about linking to my lists in here it seems, to Hell with it have another!

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