Okay hello hello, I'm back, and as I said in the preceding entry, I will now be talking about Leon's Campaign for Resident Evil 6. So let's get into it.
STORY
Leon's campaign starts out much like any other resident evil game in the past (and any zombie game for that matter), you're immediately thrust into a zombie apocalypse with no knowledge of anything, except for the fact that you just shot the american zombie president. So congrats, your first zombie casualty is the president of the United States. The feel of the game opens up with Helena (some girl beside Leon) explaining to Leon that the outbreak was her fault. You trust her or you don't but you don't have any say in the matter since she will be your companion for the entire campaign. For the rest of the campaign, Helena keeps Leon in the dark as much as possible, while maintaining ominous and vague comments that only frustrate you as a player. Conversely, Leon keeps mouthing of corny one liners and references to Raccoon. Dude you went through Europe by yourself around crazy murdery Ganados and you still whine about the Raccoon city thing? Sigh.
Moving on! Leon and Helena somewhat bond through the course of the entire campaign, despite both of them knowing next to nothing about each other. This aura of secrecy gets heightened when Helena and Leon encounter Ada Wong (more on that later). Eventually they find a common enemy in the National Security Adviser, Simmons, who apparently caused all of the bio-terrorist attacks (zombie outbreak) in the USA and China. A few bullets, grenades, and herbs later, Simmons is killed after n encounters, and you have saved the world. Hooray? No. Here's why.
STORY CRITIQUE
1. The first three chapters in the game revolves around Helena's back story, which did nothing for me as a gamer. I understood her urgency of wanting to go to the cathedral, because, "This is all my fault, I have to show you something at the cathedral." Okay, that's the game plot so I go with it. It felt as though Capcom just wanted to visit their pasts with this campaign. You start in campus, then a subway, then a semi-urban city, a graveyard, a cathedral, and some tombs. Settings they've explored in the past games. I was very confused with the aesthetics of the whole damn thing, it didn't seem to make sense, especially that makeshift high-tech laboratory that's beneath an ancient church.
2. I didn't see Simmons as my enemy. Killing him off didn't elicit that gratuitous feeling of elation when you kill a boss that's been bugging you for an entire game. Simmons didn't give me that, because I didn't connect with him in a certain way that made me want to murder his face. He didn't cause me enough grief. I mean, he kidnapped Helena and her sister, Deborah, turned Deborah into the freaking Queen of Blades, and framed Leon and Helena for the murder of the president. Those things on top of causing the outbreak. I listed four things, what else was I supposed to hate him for? His thumb ring? Capcom lacked in two aspects, not making the gamer relate with and take place of the characters (Helena and Leon), and by giving a lackluster enemy that didn't do much to aggravate the lives of our heroes.
3. Here's the big flaw. There's no overall goal. Unlike in Resident Evil 4, where your goal was clear from the get go, to save the president's high pitched shrieking daughter, Ashley(who I missed in this game, "Leooooooon, Heeeeelp"). Nothing was pushing me through this game except for the fact that I was consciously playing it. Killing Simmons didn't resonate within me to make me work hard for it. I just played through it. What pushed me through the whole thing was the promise of an interaction scene between the two other pairs in the RE6 universe, which ultimately proved to be disappointing.
In conclusion, we finished the game, which is good and all, but it didn't feel like we achieved something.
Next up I'll be tackling some technical aspects of the game.
CO-OP
The horrid co-op screen
So first up, Capcom. Ahem, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING WITH THIS LAME CO-OP SCREEN? The Co-op features a staggered split screen which as you can see from the photo, looks absolutely ridiculous. 20% of the screen is unused, at all. I felt that this was highly inefficient, and unpleasant to the eyes. Having blacked-out splotches on the screen distracted me from time to time. The upside is that you're not alone through the whole damn thing, but this becomes a con as well, but we'll get to that later.
REACTIONS
Reaction trigger that requires you to wiggle the left analog
When I watched a video review of Resident Evil 4 in the before years, I was freaking out. Capcom introduced a system where you can't be complacent during cut-scenes or any part of the game for that matter, because the game will require you to key in commands to avoid getting killed, murdered, dropped, etc. That thing blew my mind as a kid, that was fantastic. Then in Resident Evil 6, they took a step further, and ruined it. They overloaded the game with reaction triggers. The higher the frequency, the less special the triggers felt. The triggers in themselves, were fairly easy to execute, except for this one:
Horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible climbing
Every few climbs you make, you fall down. I got stuck here for longer than I'm proud of. I'm told that many people consider this to be a glitch. *Sigh of frustration* This is one of the biggest annoyances in a game for me, for all time. At one point, I just wanted to climb the building, Assassin's Creed style, but to no avail. :(
ADVENTURING WITH A PARTNER
Another shot of campaign protagonists Leon and Helena
Here's a crucial game-changer that got introduced in Resident Evil 5 with Chris and Sheva. Playing in a campaign with two characters, be it Co-operative or Solo with an AI. The question isn't how effective this gameplay is compared to when your character is by your lonesome, the question is, how does this change Resident Evil? From the beginning, Resident Evil has always been about giving the gamer a shocking, and scary zombie apocalypse action adventure, emphasis on the scary. I remember booting up a Resident Evil 3: Nemesis when I was a kid, I freaked when I saw the first tyrant. That was legit scary. Part of the reason why the old games were scary was because your character was mostly alone. In Resident Evil 6 you're always with your partner, except for those parts where you get separated and the game becomes significantly more challenging. But in general, it underwhelms the whole undertone of the game itself. Knowing that you aren't alone makes you more brave. You're not afraid to get tackled or groped by a zombie because your partner can assist you. You're not afraid to run out of stuff, because you can share ammo and healy-stuffs. In addition, having another player to focus on, diverts attention from any one character, it's hard to see character development when you're keeping tabs on two of them. Leon and Helena had their moments together, but in my mind, I believe the game would have been infinitely more challenging had Leon been on his own.
I'll try and get the Chris campaign finished so I can get a review up for posting. I'm very excited to try the Ada campaign, since she's by herself. So, just wait for them.
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