First, some of my own backstory with Resident Evil.

I liked Resident Evil 0 through 3. I liked the ones that took place in Raccoon City/the mansion. Liked Outbreak though the online stuff was janky. When Resident Evil turned into the globetrotting adventures of Leon S. Kennedy and friends, I got bored. Code Veronica was okay, but Resident Evil 4 (everybody's favorite) was when I tuned out. It was a technically much better game but I liked Resident Evil because it was zombies in a sleepy Midwestern US city, not Leon S. Kennedy on vacation in Spain.

So, I had a lot of high hopes for Operation Raccoon City. It was a return to Raccoon City, the original outbreak, and you were playing as some mysterious Umbrella badasses. What made this game a must purchase for me was in the GiantBomb QL when they run past the gas station and the price of gas is like $1.69 / gal or something, because obviously the first games took place in 1998 so gas would be way cheaper then. If this game was filled with little touches like that, then I was in.

Unfortunately, this game is awful.

The third-person shooting controls are awful. The weapons are awful. The bosses are awful. The Wolfpack characters suffer from Hideo Kojima-itis where everybody is fucking weird, but some are cool, most are just weirdos. It's a shame, because this game really pays some cool attention to the lore and fiction of the first era of Resident Evil games. It's like the script for the best RE fan fiction ever.

To me, this is the opposite of my personal opinion of RE4. RE4 was technically perfect but I hated the story and setting. I love the story and setting (minus some characters) of Operation Raccoon City, but it's technically a hot mess.

Pretty late to the party. We established that this was a shitty game quite awhile ago.

But I agree. This game had total viable potential. Running around in the streets of Raccoon City as an Umbrella operative? You got my attention! But every single thing around that idea was so poorly executed and unpolished it was tragic. I never expected much when I saw this game, but I expected a compentant game, not a total disaster.

Why all the hate for this game? From reviews of this game I expected it to be shit but it is quite good. It's not great but it is better than other generic third person shooters like Army of Two yet this game have a metacritic of 52 while Army of Two is 74. I like the abilities, make it feel a bit like Mass Effect.

Maybe it is because I have not played the Uncharted games or any Gears of War after the first one but I don't understand what is so bad about the shooting. Like I said I like this game a lot more than Army of Two. I think it deserves a score around 75. I have not played RE6 yet but I am more optimistic now after having played this that was supposed to be garbage and it turned out to be avarage.

Try giving @yummylee's review a look through here. It should help put things in perspective.

@n7 said:

@dagas said:

Why all the hate for this game? From reviews of this game I expected it to be shit but it is quite good. It's not great but it is better than other generic third person shooters like Army of Two yet this game have a metacritic of 52 while Army of Two is 74. I like the abilities, make it feel a bit like Mass Effect.

Maybe it is because I have not played the Uncharted games or any Gears of War after the first one but I don't understand what is so bad about the shooting. Like I said I like this game a lot more than Army of Two. I think it deserves a score around 75. I have not played RE6 yet but I am more optimistic now after having played this that was supposed to be garbage and it turned out to be avarage.

Try giving @yummylee's review a look through here. It should help put things in perspective.

If I wouldn't lose its recommendations in the process I would take that score down from a 2 star to a 1. What a colossal pile of wank that game is.

Sadly this game suffers the most while playing it Single player. I was among the group that didn't care for it but if you can get a few friends together the game does actually get fun. I have no idea why AI partners in Resident Evil games are so bad/annoying but at least they got it right somehow for Resident Evil Zero.

And @dagas I do fully agree with you on this being better than Army of Two.

Whoa, this was nearly a two year old topic!

@dagas: wait a minute? there are people out there saying Uncharted's shooting is a gold standard of 3rd person shooting mechanics? Part 2 and 3 was decent enough for multiplayer but part 1 and 3 (single player) were really horrible.

Maybe it was that I went in having read all the bad things about the game or maybe that recently played the very first RE for the first time (have played RE2 and the GC remake of RE1 before but never the first on PS1) and it was so bad. I mean really bad! The intro scene looks like it is done by some junior high students who make a clip for youtube. The standards sure have changed over the years. It used to be that some games were almost unplayable because they were so bad. It seems avarage is the new terrible.

Anyone not blinded by nostalgia should be able to say that this is a better game than the first RE in pretty much every way yet that is regarded as a classic. At least the controls in ORC are standard shooter controls and perfectly playable.

Maybe it just shows what expectations can do. High expectations can ruin a game but at the same time really low expectations can save it.

@dagas said:

Expectations have nothing to do with it, it's just a really bad game. Also, the original Resident Evil has better shooting than Operation Raccoon City and it's not even a shooter.

*shrug*

I've played a lot worse. I enjoy the game well enough. Certainly not a high point in the franchise, but it doesn't offend me.

For some reason I hated all of the RE games but this one. The writing/script didn't make me want to jam a philips screwdriver into both eardrums. Found the characters to actually be likeable which is amazing for a Japanese game (they stopped making good games after the SNES imo). It could've been a great game but like most J-games it lacked the refinement I was wanting, close but no cookie... like the cover system. Was easy to use but you couldn't egress over it and the enemy had a nasty habit of still shooting the crap out of you lol. Besides all of its flaws it's totally playable. 2.5/5