Socom painted in zombie blood.
User Rating: 8.5 | Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City PS3
This review is just for the single player campaign. Resident Evil ORC tries to go outside the set formula and try something new for itself. This game was also developed by Slant Six, so don't take out your dislikes with Capcom. The game itself is a third person shooter set in the Resident Evil 2/3 timeline. It takes place in 1998 when the outbreak hit Raccoon City and Umbrella sent in a U.S.S. team to clean up the mess and leave nothing behind. You get to play as 1 of 6 characters, each with their own unique set of skills. As you progress through the game you can purchase new weapons and abilities with the points you get. You get to take 3 other members in with you on single player, but the AI is at best mediocre. At times I saw them walking into fire and mines. The enemy AI is nothing special and I found at times a few bosses can be cheap, but nothing too bad where you'll go through multiple controllers. There are a bevy of weapons and they all sound pretty well. You carry a main weapon which sometimes you run out of ammo very quickly for. You can quick draw your handgun and hold it out to automatically shoot and aim for you which is a good mechanic that you will probably use a lot. You also get to pick up some grenades, a first aid spray, and an anti virus spray when you become infected. If you don't take it you become a zombie, same as your teammates. Lucky for them you can shoot them down then revive them. Bleeding also plays a good role. You can injure and enemy soldier to where they bleed out and attract zombies to them. The action is very frantic as well and a number of zombies and soldiers can fill the screen at once. Also new is that the zombies get dismembered upon gun fire and melee, which hasn't been seen in a RE game. The melee is a simple button, but you can take zombies as a shield and do some devastating finishers. Graphics are very well done on this game, not so much Uncharted, but expect it to be on the same level with next gen. The environments are what you expect, labs and litter filled city streets which all look good. The single player campaign will last about 6 hours, so when you are finished with that you can go online for versus mode and co-op. You can also bring your story progression unlocks online which is a big help. All in all I had a great visit back to Raccoon City. I felt is was a good entry into a what-if story and enjoyed what was on the plate.
Just as an update, I was sucked into the multiplayer for quite some time. I felt that this was a solid game to play, everything felt solid and there was never a cheap kill. The coolest thing about the online is the fact that it is never just 4vs4, the games are littered with zombies to contend with as well. In certain maps, the Nemesis, Tyrant, Hunters, and Lickers will be out and about looking for a player to attack. This leads to teamwork playing a good role as you need to stick together as not to be taken out one at a time. The game modes also offer up a good amount of variety as well. The online is smooth and I never experienced any lag on my matches. The multiplayer was really the cherry on top of the whole package and bumped the score up for me.
