Resident Evil 6 is a bad game, like, a really bad game. Normally when I do longform reviews I come at them with an angle of unbiasness and try to review from a "maybe this is okay for some people" idea but no, this game is truly the first steaming pile of garbage I've played in a very long time.
I've played Resident Evil 1-6, and as the series went on I felt like my iterative appreciation also declined, however even if there were elements of 4 and 5 that I didn't like, they still held the Resident Evil charm that fans of the series have come to know and love. Dorky lovable protagonists Leon and Chris make their reappearances in RE6 and legitimately are the only thing that hold this dumpster fire together. Throughout the four (FOUR CAMPAIGNS REQUIRED TO BEAT RE6,) the best time I had was cosplaying RE5 Chris and just running through each level punching and football-tackling the B.O.W.'s. The mission would start and I would just beeline to the next door or objective, half the time even that wouldn't feel good because RE6 FORCES the player to wait for their AI companion to follow them. If they get stuck, you're SOL and you have to backtrack and save them.
I played Chris' campaign second, and even though it helped me learn the absolute minimum amount of lore and context, it was probably a mistake because it held the only modicum of charm and fun. Leon & Helena's playthrough? From a """"""LORE"""""" standpoint this was probably a good run, you play as everyone's favorite qt.314 man-bro protagonist for one more huzzah, however his name will be forever tarnished with [Appearance - RE6] on whatever wiki he's referenced in.
After Chris I played Sherry and Jake's campaign which was equally as terrible, you re-hash a ton of the elements from the Chris & Piers campaign (for some reason) but with the added benefit of SNEAKING MISSIONS, that's right everyone SNEAKING just like in Metal Gear Solid. There's a lot of snow in this playthrough, a lot of edge thanks to Jake "Lul hate everyone xD" mantra and a lot of really bad gameplay. The boss of this playthrough was also a very, and I mean very bad attempt at recreating the magic of Nemesis from RE3. Hehehehehe bossman doesnt die and he gonna chase ya! He gonna get ya!!! hehehehehe. Oh wait, that was also Chris and Leon's playthrough, the bosses NEVER DIE even if you KILL them to DEATH. Finishing off the game with Ada was probably a great touch because her campaign is significantly shorter in time spent, which is a net benefit. Usually with RE on the first playthrough I like to take my time and experience the game's nuance in tandem with how it was intended, slow and methodical. However with Ada I was (mostly) able to sprint through each locale and open doors by myself!!!
Oh man that's another great thing, that forced AI thing, haha yeah everyone loved that from RE5. The way RE5 does the forced duo partner was not great, they are a resource hog and Sheva doesn't add really anything to the story (which is fine because it is in-offensive.) RE6 saw all this feedback and said "hey lets have a forced AI for each campaign, they really loved that from the last game" (minus the post-main-three run unlock of Ada.) What they do right here is make an AI who immediately helps the player and doesn't take ammo and healing from the main player. The things they don't do are A) Add absolutely anything to the story (slight pass for Jake) and B) HELP YOU WITH THE OBJECTIVE. Ada's playthrough was great here because you didn't have to wait at every door (MAN RE6 LOVES ITS DAMN DOORS) and YELL at your AI partner to help you. Imagine that, Chris Redfield hero of STARS and the BSAA can slaughter thousands and thousands of Zombies and kill some seriously large beasts, but cannot open a door for himself. One like equals one sad react.
Man RE6 is bad.
Combat in RE6 removes any feeling of the franchise so far, it's just a generic third person shooter with ammunition galore. There's no ammo saving, there's no real requirement to adjust for proper aiming, its simply Left Trigger and Right Trigger. Another lost art in RE6 (up until Ada) is the lack of a meaningful puzzle. I honestly hate puzzles in games, but the ones in the RE series are usually fun and add quite a lot to make the run's seem interesting and split pacing. This game just throws all that to the wayside and in all four campaigns requires you to do fetch quests for three materials, its literally the same quest in different areas in each playthrough. I got to the fetch quest in the Chris run and thought to myself "ain't no damn way this is really the same thing as in Leon's playthrough" and boy howdy, was I wrong.
Man speaking of being wrong, that gets me to the lore. Lore is one thing that Resident Evil has held above almost every other long running series. With every new viral outbreak or epidemic, the RE teams have done an amazing job of building up the threat and providing first hand accounts throughout the game that explain why they are so devestating and build up the mysteries to such a great extent. With RE6 there is absolutely none of that, there's the C-Virus which is haphazardly explained throughout the game's four playthroughs via dialog and exposition, but absolutely no side lore of interest. Even in RE5 which was not a great game, I found myself lost in the documents and scientific accounts of the Los Plagas II and Uroboros diseases. In RE6 they just kinda say "hey this guy's bad and he's turnin everyone into cocooooooooooooooooooooons" and the player's left to just say "... okay but why tho." Seriously, I'd done a pretty good job following RE stories until this point, things just kinda... happen and they hope through the multiple campaigns that they were able to get a perfect understanding out of you. Mystery and intrigue are absolutely void in RE6. It's seriously jaw dropping how badly the ball was fumbled in making this an interesting RE game, the series is so freaking cool and then you have this.
I still don't understand how the outbreak of the C-Virus is so widespread. You start the game in Tall Oaks, USA and somehow manage to end up in Eastern Europe where there is a full fledged VIRAL INVASION as well as in a major Chinese city that has been completely decimated by the virus. Mind you, in the first 5 RE games the virus' and related diseases had been strictly sectioned off to certain areas. In RE6 its global out of absolutely nowhere. How did we jump from outbreaks in Africa in RE5 or the death happening in sub 100,000 Raccoon City to helicopter born assaults with entire cities caught in the crossfire of raging El Gigante (RE4) lookalike's? How did Neo-Umbrella (which is the laziest job at creating a new Corporate Villain manage to rise from the original Umbrella's ashes (and Tricell) to make this virus a global threat? The storytelling of the viral outbreak is so lazy that its laughable.
This game is too damn long, it took me upwards of twenty hours (a good chunk of that AFK because there's no way I could pay attention to this game in long chunks,) to finish which is about 2-3 times the length an RE game should be. A lot of this is due to the fact that you are repeating the same zones in multiple playthroughs, even the same boss fights and the same hallways. This isn't Nier, that's not fun when you don't add any new lore or reason to care for the next run.
Seriously, how Capcom managed to take all the most fun characters from the RE series thus far (minus Jill and Wesker) and create such a horribly misaligned game as this was impressive. You really have to hand it to the dev team, like this game is so bad and unfun in just about every way, that it can be held in my opinion as one of the worst AAA games ever made.
I can't defend RE6, the only reason I kept going was because you get more of that beautiful boulder punching a**hole, Chris Redfield.
I can not recommend Resident Evil 6, it's not fun man.
I've played Resident Evil 1-6, and as the series went on I felt like my iterative appreciation also declined, however even if there were elements of 4 and 5 that I didn't like, they still held the Resident Evil charm that fans of the series have come to know and love. Dorky lovable protagonists Leon and Chris make their reappearances in RE6 and legitimately are the only thing that hold this dumpster fire together. Throughout the four (FOUR CAMPAIGNS REQUIRED TO BEAT RE6,) the best time I had was cosplaying RE5 Chris and just running through each level punching and football-tackling the B.O.W.'s. The mission would start and I would just beeline to the next door or objective, half the time even that wouldn't feel good because RE6 FORCES the player to wait for their AI companion to follow them. If they get stuck, you're SOL and you have to backtrack and save them.
I played Chris' campaign second, and even though it helped me learn the absolute minimum amount of lore and context, it was probably a mistake because it held the only modicum of charm and fun. Leon & Helena's playthrough? From a """"""LORE"""""" standpoint this was probably a good run, you play as everyone's favorite qt.314 man-bro protagonist for one more huzzah, however his name will be forever tarnished with [Appearance - RE6] on whatever wiki he's referenced in.
After Chris I played Sherry and Jake's campaign which was equally as terrible, you re-hash a ton of the elements from the Chris & Piers campaign (for some reason) but with the added benefit of SNEAKING MISSIONS, that's right everyone SNEAKING just like in Metal Gear Solid. There's a lot of snow in this playthrough, a lot of edge thanks to Jake "Lul hate everyone xD" mantra and a lot of really bad gameplay. The boss of this playthrough was also a very, and I mean very bad attempt at recreating the magic of Nemesis from RE3. Hehehehehe bossman doesnt die and he gonna chase ya! He gonna get ya!!! hehehehehe. Oh wait, that was also Chris and Leon's playthrough, the bosses NEVER DIE even if you KILL them to DEATH. Finishing off the game with Ada was probably a great touch because her campaign is significantly shorter in time spent, which is a net benefit. Usually with RE on the first playthrough I like to take my time and experience the game's nuance in tandem with how it was intended, slow and methodical. However with Ada I was (mostly) able to sprint through each locale and open doors by myself!!!
Oh man that's another great thing, that forced AI thing, haha yeah everyone loved that from RE5. The way RE5 does the forced duo partner was not great, they are a resource hog and Sheva doesn't add really anything to the story (which is fine because it is in-offensive.) RE6 saw all this feedback and said "hey lets have a forced AI for each campaign, they really loved that from the last game" (minus the post-main-three run unlock of Ada.) What they do right here is make an AI who immediately helps the player and doesn't take ammo and healing from the main player. The things they don't do are A) Add absolutely anything to the story (slight pass for Jake) and B) HELP YOU WITH THE OBJECTIVE. Ada's playthrough was great here because you didn't have to wait at every door (MAN RE6 LOVES ITS DAMN DOORS) and YELL at your AI partner to help you. Imagine that, Chris Redfield hero of STARS and the BSAA can slaughter thousands and thousands of Zombies and kill some seriously large beasts, but cannot open a door for himself. One like equals one sad react.
Man RE6 is bad.
Combat in RE6 removes any feeling of the franchise so far, it's just a generic third person shooter with ammunition galore. There's no ammo saving, there's no real requirement to adjust for proper aiming, its simply Left Trigger and Right Trigger. Another lost art in RE6 (up until Ada) is the lack of a meaningful puzzle. I honestly hate puzzles in games, but the ones in the RE series are usually fun and add quite a lot to make the run's seem interesting and split pacing. This game just throws all that to the wayside and in all four campaigns requires you to do fetch quests for three materials, its literally the same quest in different areas in each playthrough. I got to the fetch quest in the Chris run and thought to myself "ain't no damn way this is really the same thing as in Leon's playthrough" and boy howdy, was I wrong.
Man speaking of being wrong, that gets me to the lore. Lore is one thing that Resident Evil has held above almost every other long running series. With every new viral outbreak or epidemic, the RE teams have done an amazing job of building up the threat and providing first hand accounts throughout the game that explain why they are so devestating and build up the mysteries to such a great extent. With RE6 there is absolutely none of that, there's the C-Virus which is haphazardly explained throughout the game's four playthroughs via dialog and exposition, but absolutely no side lore of interest. Even in RE5 which was not a great game, I found myself lost in the documents and scientific accounts of the Los Plagas II and Uroboros diseases. In RE6 they just kinda say "hey this guy's bad and he's turnin everyone into cocooooooooooooooooooooons" and the player's left to just say "... okay but why tho." Seriously, I'd done a pretty good job following RE stories until this point, things just kinda... happen and they hope through the multiple campaigns that they were able to get a perfect understanding out of you. Mystery and intrigue are absolutely void in RE6. It's seriously jaw dropping how badly the ball was fumbled in making this an interesting RE game, the series is so freaking cool and then you have this.
I still don't understand how the outbreak of the C-Virus is so widespread. You start the game in Tall Oaks, USA and somehow manage to end up in Eastern Europe where there is a full fledged VIRAL INVASION as well as in a major Chinese city that has been completely decimated by the virus. Mind you, in the first 5 RE games the virus' and related diseases had been strictly sectioned off to certain areas. In RE6 its global out of absolutely nowhere. How did we jump from outbreaks in Africa in RE5 or the death happening in sub 100,000 Raccoon City to helicopter born assaults with entire cities caught in the crossfire of raging El Gigante (RE4) lookalike's? How did Neo-Umbrella (which is the laziest job at creating a new Corporate Villain manage to rise from the original Umbrella's ashes (and Tricell) to make this virus a global threat? The storytelling of the viral outbreak is so lazy that its laughable.
This game is too damn long, it took me upwards of twenty hours (a good chunk of that AFK because there's no way I could pay attention to this game in long chunks,) to finish which is about 2-3 times the length an RE game should be. A lot of this is due to the fact that you are repeating the same zones in multiple playthroughs, even the same boss fights and the same hallways. This isn't Nier, that's not fun when you don't add any new lore or reason to care for the next run.
Seriously, how Capcom managed to take all the most fun characters from the RE series thus far (minus Jill and Wesker) and create such a horribly misaligned game as this was impressive. You really have to hand it to the dev team, like this game is so bad and unfun in just about every way, that it can be held in my opinion as one of the worst AAA games ever made.
I can't defend RE6, the only reason I kept going was because you get more of that beautiful boulder punching a**hole, Chris Redfield.
I can not recommend Resident Evil 6, it's not fun man.