Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City Review

Resident Evil: Raccoon City is a substandard port of a poor co-op shooter.

PC owners deserve better. Resident Evil: Raccoon City was hardly a quality game on consoles, but you'd hope that developer Slant Six Games might have given the PC platform at least a little respect. Alas, all the signs of a sloppy port are apparent from the moment you boot up the game. Ridiculous menus that only half-support the mouse and quick-time events that indicate to wiggle the C key like it's an analog stick are just a couple of these indicators. Capcom, the game's publisher, earned a reputation for careless PC ports years ago with games like Onimusha 3 and Resident Evil 4. It now carries on that dubious tradition with Raccoon City--only this time, the game it's debasing is one that was never worth your time in the first place.

These problems are a shame, considering the possibilities. The game puts an intriguing spin on events you might have already witnessed in previous Resident Evil games. You're a member of Umbrella Security Services' special Wolfpack team in the infamous Raccoon City, where the T-virus has turned the population into voracious zombies, and mutant dogs lurk in shadows, ready to ravage the defenseless. From this new perspective, you face a glowering Nicholai Zinoviev and watch Ada Wong wilt in Leon Kennedy's arms. You infiltrate storied locations like the Raccoon City police department, and fight off zombies in front of the Kendo Gun Shop. Some of these regions are legitimately atmospheric: city streets are awash in a neon red glow, and ominous-looking equipment hints at the atrocities that occurred within Umbrella's underground laboratory.

You might miss some of the more subtle touches, however, given how dark Raccoon City is. This is a Resident Evil game, so you expect to push through pervasive gloom. But environments are poorly lit, everything cloaked in a dim cloud that obscures your vision without ramping up tension. (Compare this visual design to the infinitely superior Left 4 Dead 2, which provided proper visual contrast and still elicited your innate survival instincts.) The problems don't end here, though: Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City drowns in its own faults, many of them so basic it's a wonder they appeared in a final product.

These faults infest the gameplay from the very beginning, and remain to the very end. Consider a battle versus the infected William Birkin, which takes place in the very first mission. At first, you can't turn and run; all you can do is slowly back away and shoot. If you brought a shotgun to this unexpected battle, sorry: you really should have brought an assault rifle if you wanted to be effective here, assuming you have enough ammo in the first place. Eventually, you're allowed to flee, but the game doesn't tell you that, and so you back into the streams of flame bursting from the corridor's walls. Want to run past the beast? There's an invisible barrier on either side. You'd suppose that AI-controlled teammates might help, but they're not even in view, apparently filing their nails in the corner while you get caught in an inescapable series of knockdown attacks.

With AI this dumb, you might have been better off going it alone.
With AI this dumb, you might have been better off going it alone.

That entire scene is absurdly bad, as if the game is actively working to make you hate it. But the problems aren't just specific to individual encounters; some invade the entire game. One such problem is the cover system, a core component of third-person shooters like Raccoon City. Here, you don't need to press a key to take refuge behind a wall or curb. Instead, you lumber up to it and automatically stick--a fine idea in a world where games are able to read your mind. Raccoon City, sadly, does not exist in such a world, and so you slip into cover when you rub against a shelf, or fail to stick to a wall that, for some unknown reason, won't let you take cover at all. You may seek to pop out and take potshots, but instead slide around the corner, as if volunteering to become a targeting practice dummy.

The shooting model is functional, at least, each weapon handling more or less as you expect it to. There's little joy to the shooting, however, because the weapons don't feel particularly powerful. Normal zombies twitch and lurch based on the impact of your bullets, but enemy forces and larger monsters like hunters don't always react to your shots, so you don't get that sense of power you expect from a shooter. It doesn't help that enemies are bullet sponges. It takes seemingly forever for certain foes to die, so you and your teammates pump out clip after clip, hoping that it's enough to take down that nasty T-103. Well, you might expect a tyrant to take such a beating, but when it's a bunch of lickers absorbing all this damage, the action stops being fun and becomes a slog. How perplexing, then, that the game would be so stingy with ammunition, considering how much you have to waste on these foes. You find yourself without ammo frequently, and scavenging environments for bullets so you can shoot your guns is far less entertaining than actually shooting them.

Boss fights are surprisingly lacking in excitement.
Boss fights are surprisingly lacking in excitement.

There's a reason that co-op shooters like Syndicate and Left 4 Dead have comprehensible rules regarding the placement of ammo stashes; the resulting ebb and flow allows you to focus on the shooting and gives teams a moment to refresh and regroup. Raccoon City has no such rules in place; you are never sure whether there is ammo nearby, or where it might be found. Of course, we should want our games to rethink traditional mechanics in interesting ways, but developer Slant Six's deviations come at the cost of fun. One such example: you can't tumble out of the way of a charging hunter, but you can sprint forward and belly flop--always a treat when you wanted to run toward a health-giving herb, but then leap on top of it rather than consume it. Another example: for some reason, you have to shoot the locks off of special weapon containers before you can collect the gun within. Perhaps this was meant to deliver some tension, but it just feels like a waste of time and ammo.

And so it goes in Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, where imperfect concepts are imperfectly executed. If you play with AI teammates, make sure to stay alive: they are incapable of reviving you should you fall. (Somehow, most other co-op shooters have solved this AI conundrum.) Actually, these loons are incapable of many basic AI functions, such as avoiding blazing fires that burn them to a crisp. Human partners can revive you, of course, but not if your limp body disappears beneath the ground. Or perhaps your buddies might get tripped up by all the grenades and ammo littering the ground next to you, forcing them to dance around until the correct key prompt appears. The sloppiness comes to a head in the final sequence, where the game forces you to make a nonsensical choice and engage in a messy, anticlimactic firefight. And then the credits roll, four hours or so after the campaign began.

The virus appears to have no negative effects on the amount of blood the average human head can hold.
The virus appears to have no negative effects on the amount of blood the average human head can hold.

There are glimmers of entertainment here, though--moments of legitimate fun when things come together. Picking off one zombie after another in a series of headshots is a hoot thanks to the copious splatters of blood that erupt. Freeing a teammate from the grasp of a licker's snapping tongue instills a sense of camaraderie, as does healing multiple victims at once with a health spray. Then there are special abilities, like planting a mine and blasting an undead horde into smithereens, that give you brief moments of joy. And don't forget the brutal melee kills, which finish off zombies in fine fashion, even if the melee system itself is clumsy and overpowered.

Even the infection mechanic had promise, though it too is let down by the item scarcity and abysmal AI. The gist: a zombie might infect you with the T-virus. You can heal yourself with an antiviral spray, but if you don't have a can, you end up sprinting about, hoping the telltale blue glimmer catches your eye before you fall victim to the virus's deadly curse. Should you fail, the AI takes over for you, and you can only watch as you barrel toward your teammates, who have no choice but to shoot you down. If you play with others, no harm done: they can revive your limp body and you live to fight another day. Your AI teammates, on the other hand, don't have the intelligence to restore breath to your downed lifeless corpse.

It's like leading lambs to the slaughter.
It's like leading lambs to the slaughter.

Enjoying the cool moments that do arise means getting used to the sloppy interface and key assignments, however. With a controller plugged in, you get more or less the same experience you would have on the Xbox 360, PC-specific bugs notwithstanding. Prefer a mouse and keyboard? Then expect clumsy default key assignments (which can at least be customized) and interface elements that still assume you are using a controller (like the D-pad interface for switching grenades). Regardless of your controller of choice, expect periodic audio issues, such as a pervasive bug that causes the in-game sound to drop out completely, though the menu audio still functions properly. (Switching to your desktop and then returning to the game sometimes--but not always--fixes the problem.) It's also worth noting that the game forces you to use Windows Live, the unpopular online interface that brings Xbox Live features to PC owners.

Raccoon City isn't just a co-op game; it also includes competitive modes, where human players join the undead in their relentless quest to murder you. There are four modes on offer, two of which had real promise. The most enjoyable of them is Biohazard, in which G-virus samples appear on the map, and teams race to collect them and return them to their home base. That aforementioned mine might come in handy again here, should you plant it near the enemy's home area. (Like zombies, other players blow up real good.) The other promising mode is Survivor, in which two teams mow each other down while waiting for a rescue helicopter to arrive. The helicopter has limited seats, and some heated action can occur in that mad dash to safety.

Team deathmatch variants called Team Attack and Heroes round out the selection. No matter which mode you prefer, however, you run into some of the same problems as in the campaign: flaky cover mechanics, long animations leading to damage loops, and so forth. Weapon imbalances are also a problem. Raccoon City has a persistent leveling system in which you earn points that can be spent on new weapons and abilities. You can earn more powerful weapons in other shooters, of course, but pistols rarely make you an unstoppable killing machine. In Raccoon City, that Lightning Hawk pistol, combined with the game's quick draw aiming system, gives you an edge over players with dinky weapons like heavy machine guns and bolt-action rifles.

Birkin smash!!
Birkin smash!!

Yet all these guns and abilities are wasted in a game that never makes good on its potential, and what potential you glimpse is overshadowed by a careless porting job that makes you wonder why the teams responsible even bothered in the first place. Perhaps you crave a creepy and thoughtful journey through the darkest regions of the human psyche. Perhaps you crave tense, exciting action, either online or on your own. Either way, Raccoon City not only fails to satisfy--it leaves you feeling even emptier than when you started.

The Good

  • You see key Resident Evil events from a new perspective
  • Competitive play offers brief thrills

The Bad

  • PC-specific interface and technical flaws
  • Fundamentally problematic cover system
  • Scarcity of ammo at odds with bullet-sponge enemies
  • Stupid AI
  • Sloppy details constantly get in the way of the fun

About the Author

Kevin VanOrd has a cat named Ollie who refuses to play bass in Rock Band.