The Best of All Resident Evil Spin-Off titles
User Rating: 8 | BioHazard Outbreak (PlayStation 2 the Best) PS2
Bad Controls, Horrible voice support. These things along with so many others are constantly criticized of to Outbreak, but I'm here to stand up for the game. While certainly not better than any main series title, Outbreak is certainly the best of the spin-off titles. You might be asking yourself, what spin-off titles are good in the RE world. And on that note I agree with you. Survivor was an ambitious take on the Resident Evil series but failed miserably. Dead Aim tried to improve on Survivor's already established style, but at the sake of a good story and a fun game overall. Outbreak is unrelated to them though and instead of merging the RE world with the world of first person shooters, Outbreak tries to merge RE with online games, and succeeds... kinda. I mean certain things like communicating with partners is a tough task to accomplish off or online. It plays like a traditional RE game as opposed to an online game, and that's a good thing for me. Not for everyone I realize, but for me. The game lets you play as 8 of the average joes of Raccoon City, trying to escape the zombie carnage of the city instead of the police officers and special forces units we're all used to playing as. There's the, well, police officer Kevin, the security guard Mark, the waitress Cindy, the plumber David, the doctor George, the Raccoon City newspaper reporter Alyssa, the subway worker Jim and the college student Yoko, all equipped with special abilities that the others do not have such as Alyssa's ability to pick locks, Mark and Kevin come already equipped with their own guns and probably the most useless ability ever - tossing a coin, brought to us by Jim, the worst character in Outbreak. Jim also has the ability to "play dead", which will cause his viral meter to sky rocket, inadvertently killing you as your trying to save yourself from dying. The Viral Meter: unlike previous RE titles where you were trying to not get infected with dreaded T-Virus, there is no escape in Outbreak as your character starts each scenario already infected with the virus which means you have to rush all the much faster. Things like falling to the ground or getting attacked speeds up your viral meter, although there are pills you find to halt the flow of the meter and for the first time in Resident Evil, the Red Herbs FINALLY do something on there own. They can also halt the production of your viral meter. But if you aren't fast enough, and your viral meter reaches 100.00%, you die or in the online mode, you can come back to life as a member of the undead and attack you former teammates - A FIRST IN RESIDENT EVIL! If you are a fan of Resident Evil, you will love this game. The scenarios are short- taking about 30 minutes to beat on your first try- but there are 5 of them in Outbreak to make the game a little longer. If you have always hated Resident Evil (if you do your insane by the way), (sigh) I guess you'll hate Outbreak as well. But if your already love the RE formula you will love this game and if you don't you're even crazier then the people who don't like the game in the first place.
