Poor old Slant Six Games. They must have been feeling cautiously optimistic - bullish, even - about the interesting yet questionable, multiplayer-oriented Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, due out in March.
Sure, a SOCOM developer doing action-horror gives us the wrong kind of shivers, and footage to date hasn't exactly knocked Left 4 Dead into a cocked hat, but in the absence of comparable zombie fodder, the prospect of revisiting Raccoon City with an HD brush, shooting it to pieces online and (eventually) tearing Leon Kennedy a new breathing orifice isn't without its charm.
Resident Evil 6 will probably carry the day in terms of scores and sales - if nothing else, it's building on surer foundations - but we'd hate to see Operation Raccoon City snuff it on the strength of Capcom's promotion schedule alone. Here, then, are a few ways Slant Six's effort could KO its better-fed numbered stablemate.
1. It's not afraid to admit that it isn't going to make you afraid
Resident Evil 6 wants you to think it's still a survival horror title, at least in part, despite the noisy, skull-popping chaos of its debut trailer. Resident Evil 5 sang a similar tune - is still singing a similar tune, in fact - and look how that turned out. Capcom's grooming Resident Evil as its Modern Warfare or Assassin's Creed - an umbrella IP (badumtish) that encapsulates several game types and thus several audiences. Nothing wrong with that on paper, but in practice, one of those genre models will get less screentime than the others, and let's face the music - it's probably not going to be the stuff Resident Evil borrows from the multi-gazillion selling Gears of War.
2. There's nothing quite like an old setting made new
One of the Resident Evil 2's greatest frustrations was that it was an open world in waiting. It gave you a trashed city - a city stuffed with bus-fuls of grumpy corpses and Umbrella Corp labs - then nailed your feet to a rail. It did this, of course, because the PlayStation hardware was too sickly to handle textures of the requisite crispness across a true 3D environment, necessitating a reliance on hands-off, pre-rendered backgrounds. Thank the gaming goddesses for Operation Raccoon City, which takes those classic scenarios and pastes in a manual camera. We're still waiting to find out exactly how many old environments have made the cut, but the Police Station's in there for sure. Colour-coded door locks included, regrettably.
7 comments so far...
Johnbhoy69 on 1 Feb '12 said:
Its a good idea for a game...but yeah Resident Evil 6 has me more excited than this does
bamozzy on 1 Feb '12 said:
I watched a 10 minute play through on CVG and thought this game looked awful (by todays standards). All of the characters have masks so no facial animations and the environment was unspectacular and very dull too. The AI of the enemies was abysmal and the shooting mechanics also looked terrible. In fact there was absolutely NOTHING about it that I could honestly say looked good or would make me even want to play it.
I am a fan of the Resident Evil series and even liked RE5 but Operation Raccoon City looks awful. I will definitely be waiting for Resident Evil 6 and that is already high up on my wish list for 2012.
Regardless of whether RE6 was coming out or not, I still would not be interested. I think it was/is 'dead' already!
Clanger67 on 1 Feb '12 said:
We were talking about this in an earlier thread,because i didn't get with the announcement about resi being more action what the point of raccoon city was.Seems it hasn't had good first reviews explains a lot.
pauloselhombre on 1 Feb '12 said:
Well, posting a gameplay video that shows off how they haven't even stuck to the series' continuity in the opening mission has been enough to put me off this to a degree. Yes, it shows the outbreak fully underway by the time the UBCS flee Birkin's lab. Oh, and he's already more mutated than when you first see him in RE2 and carrying the pipe that he picks up during that later scene. Now, sure, this won't bother some people, but the way I see it, if they can't be bothered to make the effort to get small stuff like that right, then how many other shortcuts are they going to have taken?
OXM Jonty on 1 Feb '12 said:
Raccoon City was just supposed to be a spin-off. From what we've seen, it's not a very successful one. I think they'd have done better with Angry Birds: Resident Evil.
Still, that's Capcom. I do respect them for trying so hard to reach the Western audience, but for every Dead Rising there's a Dark Void. Can't help but feel Square's doing better by making Western devs make Western games, like Deus Ex or Tomb Raider.
Furie on 5 Feb '12 said:
Dear Capcom,
Please for the love of everything holy, make the following game. It's what a lot of your fans have been waiting for and the main reason so many of us are disappointed by Resi titles.
Game Style - Solo shooter like Resi 4 rid of most of the changes from Resi 5 except for the enhanced melee attacks, and nowhere near the ORC squad based results.
Setting - Raccoon City. This time the city is a streaming open world, with secure locations locked off and tough bosses keeping some areas out of bounds at the start.
Enemy Styles - Traditional Raccoon City fare. Zombies, mutated animals and genetic experiments. Larger roaming enemies like William Birkin, Mr X and Nemesis will add to the tension as they can show up anywhere.
Storyline - The complete outbreak in Raccoon City, told from multiple perspectives and via multiple shorter stories.
Characters - Everyone playable from Resident Evil 2, RE3: Nemesis and the Outbreak games. Starting with the base set of Leon, Claire, Jill and Carlos, further characters can be unlocked either by rescuing them or finding them in another way (falling into a certain trap that unlocks an episode where a new character finds and eventually frees you). Some characters will require certain objectives to unlock and they will in turn be able to open the route to locked off portions of the city.
Missions - Each mission will start with an objective for the player to fulfill, and then set the player loose in the city at the last place the character was at (some actions will lead to a previously played character rescuing or meeting another and them starting from that new place). Most missions will end with the player completing the objective and getting to a safe area (these might be the traditional safe rooms from old Resi games or shelters for survivors depending on who is being played and what stage the outbreak is in). Natural character swaps will occur where a small scene plays between two characters and ends with the player in control of a new character (two people talking, one person being watched through the sniper scope of another, etc). Throughout missions the outbreak will get worse, more and more zombies will take to the streets and previously safe areas to stock up will start to become infested with other creatures.
Resources - Weapons, ammunition and healing items will be around the city but in limited supplies. Stocking up with one character will leave another high and dry, leading the player to take what they need in order to survive. Items wont show up in places they aren't expected - hospitals full of guns for example.
bamozzy on 6 Feb '12 said:
That sounds like quite a good game... I wouldn't mind playing a Resident Evil game like that!
I must admit to liking Resident Evil 5 (am I the only one). In essence it isn't a bad game - obviously not the same type of game as previous RE titles but none the less it is quite a fun action game. I agree that solo based games seem to have more atmosphere and are also more scarier too - something that RE5 certainly lacks. My main criticism is when playing on your own (in RE5 particularly) your partner is STUPID!! Sheva will always use the Pistol (if you let her have one) despite having better or more appropriate weaponry. She also gets herself into positions where death is inevitable unless you happen to notice and call her back - I ended up losing a mission because Sheva died at the hands of a boss, chainsaw Majani or even going into incinerators on conveyor belts - STUPID!!! However she also enables you to carry MORE items. I just ensured she has 1 weapon (of MY choice) and made sure she picked up ALL health based items as she will run to you when you are low and heal you. By doing this it enables you to carry more varieties of weaponry and ammo. As you can only carry 9 items each, by having a partner she doubles your carrying capacity to 18 items (weaponry can take 2 spaces or more as 1 slot is used for the weapon and additional slots are used for extra ammo.
It looks like Resident Evil 6 will also be co-op. I hope that they sort out the AI if you do play on your own.