Resident Evil 6's messy mix of annoying quick-time events and constant set pieces makes it a poor caricature of modern-day action games.
With Resident Evil 6, a once-mighty series makes another stumble. From a production standpoint, this atmospheric third-person shooter (this is no survival horror game, certainly) hits a number of high notes, weaving multiple stories into a single narrative that you untangle from different perspectives. It's unfortunate that actually interacting with Resident Evil 6 is an excruciating chore. This is a wannabe action film that resents your interference, and punishes you by forcing one horrible quick-time event after another upon you.
That Resident Evil 6 wants to be a movie is evident in almost every facet of its gameplay. Plenty of games dramatize their events through extended cutscenes, Metal Gear Solid being an oft-cited example of a series known for long-winded cinematics. Having many cutscenes isn't a problem in and of itself; constantly interrupting the flow of gameplay, on the other hand, is Resident Evil 6's disappointing calling card.
In a typical five-minute stretch, you might watch a cutscene, walk for five seconds, trigger another cutscene, open a door, perform a quick-time event, view another cutscene, shoot some mutated freaks, and then do nothing while you wait for your co-op partner to finish some task or another before you can continue on. All through that stretch, the camera changes position countless times, you're forced to walk really slowly for a while, and an almost-unavoidable scripted "gotcha" moment gifts you with a game-over screen ("You Are Dead"), forcing you to replay the sequence while wondering what you could have done to prevent it.
These problems infiltrate all four of Resident Evil 6's campaigns, though each campaign shifts its focus and tone--and all but Ada Wong's puzzle-driven campaign (unlocked when you have finished the other three) feature cooperative play. In Leon Kennedy's campaign, you play as either Leon or newcomer Helena Harper, while your cohort is left to the care of another player, or of the AI. Leon's campaign is the most traditional, recalling the fourth and fifth chapters of the series by way of mysterious locations like an eerie graveyard and creep-strewn city streets. In a campaign that looks to military shooters for inspiration, Chris Redfield joins fellow BSAA operative Piers Nivens in war-torn streets to shoot up infected foes and larger-than-life bosses. Jake Muller and Sherry Birkin's campaign is focused more on scripted events than the others and lacks the thematic cohesion of the other three (unless you count an overload of contextual button prompts as a theme). A short prelude introduces you to the basic mechanics, which are mostly identical across the campaigns. It also functions as a warning of what's to come.
Right off the bat, you notice what is to be a common theme in Resident Evil 6: quick-time events are prominent to the point of distraction. Keep your thumbs limber and your trigger fingers ready, for you will be hammering buttons and jiggling thumbsticks ad nauseam. Wiggle that stick to get the monster off you! Furiously tap that button to crawl faster! Making matters worse is that the quick-time events aren't even that well implemented. Some of them require superhuman wiggling speeds; others, like those that require alternating trigger presses, don't have a clear rhythm. And succeeding means triggering a sonic zing and a bright circular eruption that distract you from the dramatic animations.
Even ignoring quick-time events, button prompts are the rule rather than the exception. Capcom drops in so many set piece moments that they lose their luster. Good set pieces--that is, large scale events with major visual punch and limited interactivity--punctuate gameplay, rather than replace it. Here, they constantly disrupt the gameplay, and a few types of set pieces emerge as clear developer favorites. One such type is the "run toward the camera" bit, in which you hold a button to sprint toward the camera, and press buttons to leap over obstacles or slide under them. It takes a special talent to make such sequences work, but no such talent is demonstrated here; the camera constantly changes position, which destroys the flow of both the controls and the visuals.
Resident Evil 6 is constantly (and annoyingly) playing with camera angles, even outside of the running sections. The worst moments are those that yank control from you and force you to stare at a growling behemoth's dramatic entrance, or a helicopter's flyover, even when you're in the middle of a quick-time event, or engaged in a shoot-out. Smart games either have you hold a button if you want to witness a major incident, or simply allow the incident to happen. Resident Evil 6 is not a smart game. It doesn't care what you're doing: that monster is big, and the game forces the bigness upon you. (And when the sequence is done, the camera may not be in the position in which it started.) Such occurrences are, every time, detrimental to gameplay, and it's shocking how many of them there are.
Not that your co-op partner is usually harmful to the experience. If you play on your own, the AI does a great job of knowing what to do and where to go. The game does have a few good co-op ideas up its sleeve, such as a sequence in which one player swims from the snapping jaws of a finned fiend, and the other must shoot it. But the good ideas are too often let down by troublesome execution: in that same sequence, your mission objective might contradict what the game actually needs you to do. Other times, one player waits around with nothing to do, while the other slashes up bio-organic weapons (that is, B.O.W.s) and finally opens a door or lowers a ladder. Most cooperative actions simply involve opening a door together. And boy is there a lot of door opening in Resident Evil 6.
Kevin VanOrd is a lifelong RPG lover and violin player. When he isn't busy building PCs and composing symphonies, he watches American Dad reruns with his fat cat, Ollie.
Its not that bad people, If you can get past the fact that its not RE4 or lower then it s a fun game. Capcom really needs to work on the controls tho, They're not smooth at ALL. If the controls were smooth like a COD game then I would give it a 7.0.
And God forbid if they try something new like QTE. I mean I just the same old crap over and over and over again, right?
I watched the video review and I gotta say while you didn't sound super thrilled with the game I was shocked when you gave it such a low score at the end of the review. You seemed generally positive about game with minor grievances. Well they seemed minor. Then a 4.5.... that's pretty damn low. I bought he game on a sale and will play it eventually. Perhaps I will see what you mean perhaps it doesn't all fit together well. I know games can have seperate elements be amazing in and of themselves but then not bind well so I shall see... But I find your review a little...off.
Have to say....very underrated.....I played all the campaigns and have to say that it was a good and lenthy campaign. And it wasnt ever repetitive......
Much better than those stupid call of duty games....I'd give it an 8
1 Like I'm sorry, but its not the "direction" that makes this game bad. It's the crappy story, the horrible controls and mechanics, the tedious gameplay, etc. This game is just bad. I would have given it a 5.5 at most.
If Capcom wanted to increase margins, they should have focused on improving on the RE4 formula, not changing the game to copy the bland North American FPS formula. Kinda ironic since imitating that formula serves to halt the series' development, not drive it forward.
A fan of the series, I truly believe that this is the second worst of them all (not counting spin offs, just the main), with the worst being the fifth. I really did enjoy Leon's campaign, but the others are quite awful. QTEs are pretty bad and I don't really like the direction, but I don't think this game is inherently bad. A 5.5 or 6 seemed fair to me, but I guess I know where the 4.5 is coming from.
This man gives every game he doesn't like 4.5.....i mean come on it's not that bad, i haven't played it yet but my brother thoroughly enjoyed it and said it would be retarded to give this game such a low score and i agree with him because i watched some scenes with him while he was playing and i really enjoyed them...though i think script was bad and i do acknowledge that it must have it's flaws and it may not stand to the glory of it's predecessors like RE 5 and RE 4 but still to give a technically superior and beautifully visualized a game in this era merely and poorly just 4.5 is outright crime and a blight to the talents of hundreds of developers and programmers work and determination
I'm a bit of a fan of the Resident Evil series, and I have to say, this game is truly bad. Awful AI, a hilariously terrible story, and clumsy and awkward controls make this the absolute worst of the series. I can't believe that after the good thrill ride that was 4 the series turned to shit. I wanted to like this game, but I couldn't stand having to fight the controls against really bad AI and truly unscary moments.
@mastermetal777 Nope. I'm not seeing in your PSN profile where you actually ever booted up RE 6.
Roflmao I never saw this review until now but this is one of those few times where I actually appreciate GS opinion (though if you look at scores I begrudgingly seem to rate games the same). RE6 was abysmally terrisable (terrible + miserable), so...abysterrable. Every word here is correct. On launch, the only redeeming factor to the game was that Ada Wong's campaign felt somewhat like survival, if not survival horror. They ruined that of course with a patch. Chris's campaign was the only thing that seemed remotely decent but the game overall is just god awful. While it's true the narration was interesting, the actual plot was non-existent and even completely disregarded all former lore in the franchise.
hmmm... the giant snake boss in chris' campaign seemed so bland.... so many checkpoint didn't really feel like much of a fight
@zerantoss It's much better than the first game...so are you saying you don't like Resident Evil at all?
2 Like This game was so epic, it had a kind of a Mass Effect 3 vibe to me, pulling in your old familiar characters from old games and having them go on a grand adventure to save the world. Having played Resident Evil from the first big black box and purchasing the thing twice more, once for Director's Cut and REmake along with all of the other games, I felt Capcom did some really good fan service. They even bought the dogs back!
@Kryptonbornson Not really. Chris and Leon and Ada and Sherry who had virtually no role in RE2. Chris, again a completely reworked character, Leon in an uninteresting, unenthusiastic shell of his former appearances, and Ada...Ada was the only one who even remotely resembled her character. The real Ada anyway. I am astounded anyone who played the original RE1 could find this game remotely good but to each their own.
1 Like @Grenadeh Just play the game man. You're missing out. Now that I'm working on Ada's campaign, I know anyone who hates the game is irrationally following irrationally bad reviews instead of playing it for themselves. Ada's campaign even has the Resident Evil DNA.
Conflicted on which one I love more, this or Tomb Raider. I want to give it a 9.5, but I actually like Tomb Raiders controls just a wee bit more. And although you can more and shoot, you don't move quickly while shooting. I only just finished Leon's campaign and can say that it was a mix of all of the classic Resident Evil's 1-4. Started Chris's and can see it's more on the Gears of War, Call of Duty flavor like 5, but looks to be awesome nonetheless and better than anything it would have copied. QTEs are less than Heavy Rain (obviously) or the Walking Dead and about on par to Uncharted and Tomb Raider. My only gripe about them is that the few QTEs they have in the game some come without warning. I guess I'm used to it because it wasn't that frustrating. I might give it a 9.5 just because I felt the game was already worth the Steam price tag just from Leon's campaign and now I have alot more enjoying to do. I also wish there would have been some way to swap skills more often instead of just between stages. Other than that I loved it. Plot is Resident Evil B-movie as always and much more coherent than Bioshock Infinite. Best in the series and one of the best games this gen.
2 Like Mr. Kevin vanOrd, you are a rpg and 9+ kind of games reviewer why did you bother reviewing resident evil 6. You torned and ripped a part this once a mighty series who gave us resident evil 4. Yes capcom moved from their usual formula but its always good to experimenting new things in games. Or else all games end up like most rpgs because people like you don't want to move on.
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3 Like I do not understand reviewers. Some of them gives 2 some of them gives 10. If you haven't played RE once sure you will give 2. And, I approve everything Kevin said but 4.0 is too much underrated. More like 5.5 or maybe 6.0. I mean it is just RE style. If camera was same with RE 4 I am sure as hell Kevin will give a 6.0. Also the funny thing is another reviewer was reviewed RE 5. And RE 5 got 8.5. RE 6 is almost same as RE 6 (But I thing RE 6 is better except there is no melee combat while equipping weapon and game is not pausing when pressing ESC). About experience. I enjoyed except 1-2 quick-time events. It is still feels like a RE. A mediocre one but it is really playable.
@atahanbozkurt This game had nothing to do with Resident Evil. Not camera wise, not story wise, not control wise, not gameplay wise, and not enemy wise. If this was your first RE, you'd give it a high score. If you were a veteran and you had any sense or self respect and understood what does and doesn't work in a game, you'd give it a 4 if you were being extremely generous.
1 Like Well I have been playing the PC version of this and though it has not properly evolved the Resident Evil 4 formula but is definitely better than Resident Evil 5 though i would not want the series to further move in the direction adopted by this game but it certainly is not that bad to deserve a score of 4.5 when Resident Evil 5 scored 8.5. The things I hated about this game were the lack of exploration,a lot more action oriented compared to previous games the action needs to be toned down,the hit detection was not good,no weapon cusomization and they need to bring back the inentory system of Residdent Evil 4 most of these problems were there in Resident Evil 5 apart from the hit detection.So hope they could improve the game and bring some of the Resident Evil 4 elements which made that game one of the best in previous generation. I would say its more deserving of a 7,7.5ish 4.5 is too harsh and most of the guys here complaining about this game they Seem to be fans of the old RE 1,2,3,Code Veronca X style of gameplay and though i liked those ones as well this one is not as bad as the rating make it to be.
@Aleksander99 I don't think you comprehend the meaning of unbiased. You gave this turtle shit a 9. That's obscene.
@Aleksander99 yeah, the giant button on the front page to buy advertising spaces really screams unbiased...
@GameYakuza @Aleksander99
Did you see any ads?
Your website here has 10x larger buttons on header and both footer O.O
Are you getting payed for those replies? If not, i am so sorry that you clicked the link just to see buttons and not the review itself.
Have a great day!
1 Like I spent most of the game b****ing about the painfully slow door opening and crawling animations, only to find towards the end that I only had to double tap the button... this is more than a bad game: it's a AAA game made while checking a list of things NOT to do and put them in anyway.
@GameYakuza Kicking the door open has been around since RE4. Capcom does have a way of making sequels just for fans leaving out newcomers. That's why my brother got more into Mega Man than I did. Each game left off in difficulty where the last one let off on some of them.
1 Like Now that the PC version is out I finally forced myself to play it... This review is spot-on. Good story, good cutscenes and actors - terrible everything else. I lost track of how many times I died during the game's many QTEs. The gunplay is really bad too. All the weapons feel the same
@Godlikan silent hill series still amazing although its not amazing as SH 1, 2 ,3 and the room . I missed dino crisis series so much :( . As for resident evil .. 6 is the downfall for the series . RE 5 was good but we missed the pizzels and the horror . Lets wait and see when RE R comes to ps3 and xbox360 .
is there be PC review ??? i heard nasty rumors that kevin is fired from GameSpot !!! Who then will be review then on my most trusted GameSpot if not Kevin ?????
@Chui_GamingX Kevin writes awesome reviews, but he's far from trustworthy. I've been duped by his overrating and underrating games one to many times.
The mighty have fallen.
Stop thinking about getting RE to sell in the mass market. It just spoil the game, that mass market wouldn't even think of getting it (because they have other better games that cater to "mass market") and lesser fans are getting it. So it end up selling worst than ever.
Identity crisis really can be fatal to the game.
this game in my opinion is the biggest let down and one of the worst games ive played in recent memory it's clunky the moment you start to get in a rhythm its taken from you by some action sequence split screen co -op is near impossibility due to lack of vision all i could think of was what could have been. it's so poorly put together what a terrible game 5 out of 10 would be my score as a huge fan of R.E I've never been so disappointed.
1 Like The worst in the series . But 4.5 ? I Will give it 7.5 . The multiplayer is very fun especially when fighting against boss . But i missed the horror and the puzzles . Resident evil 2 and resident evil archive ( game cube ) are the best .
5 Like Dear Kevin,
I want to apologize. When I first read the review, I disagree completely with it. How can this game have the same score as Operation Raccoon City? Surely it is heaps better than that debacle. And as I played Leon's campaign, I was determined that you are wrong.
Then I started Chris's campaign and began to see your point. By the time I was midway through the campaign after numerous game overs for no apparent reasons at all, I understand the pain you went through during the review. And mind you, I was playing WITH the OFFICIAL strategy guide by my side. "Run left, SPLAT!, Game Over", "Run left, SPLAT!, Game Over", "Run left, SPLAT!, Game Over", lather, rinse, repeat for about 20 times. I don't even know what I did wrong. Then for some reason, I survived, only to die on the next quick time event.And what business does a Resident Evil game has in driving a vehicle or piloting a fighter jet? How about poorly designed arena with poor choice of color usage so that you cannot see enemies at all? How about moving platforms and twitchy aiming mechanisms preventing you being able to even aim at a sniper, and being constantly knocked down from their grenades?
Instead of screaming in fear like I did when the dogs jumped into the mansion during the RE1 days, I was spouting so much colorful language here that my console told me to shut up.
You are right, Kevin. This game deserves its 4.5. I shall never doubt you again.
3 Like It's the most unfair score I've ever seen in my whole life . shame on you gamespot.
