Resident Evil 6 - Better than Resident Evil 5?

[Ed Oscuro]

lol at the waffling

"I'm not butthurt...I just wanted to beleeevee..."

So is it a good game or isn't it? It's not both. If the game were the second coming, then maybe silly things like $80 LE packages and out-of-the-gate DLC would be justified. Amazing that so much time has been wasted defending a game by people who found out that, lo and behold, the reviews (which weren't 4/10s across the board, mind) were actually correct in the end.

There are lots of things I like about the game, but the extremely lopsided placement of content (sometimes very thick, sometimes exceedingly stretched out to the point where things that should be astounding end up as filler) and some of the baffling high-level choices make it painful to think about because every moment is a reminder of what could have been. This is speaking just as a gamer who's content to regard the old designs as still available and not really relevant to the current design - if they had decided to go for a REmake 2, that'd have been okay; if they'd decided to do a minor update of RE4, that'd be okay too; and if they had set out on a totally new path but made it worthwhile - the melee combat, for instance - that would have been even better from my perspective, just in the way that RE4 (still a new game in my opinion) was far better from a REmake 2, or a Code Veronica 2.

Capcom was essentially a triple-A studio like Konami, but (dare I say it) there doesn't seem to even be the consistency of vision that let gamers feel some relief at a steady influence in Kojima's or Igarashi's franchises at the big wave. They could have resolved much of the problem by fleshing out the content more than was seen here - admittedly not very likely; even given the huge size of the team and the good money thrown at the problem, the coordination to get it all together may still remain a problem. That leaves at least one other approach - flesh out the gameplay. Again, it's kind of hard to see how anybody thought that uncoordinated third-person-from-behind-the-retina melee against RE5-style enemies with firearms was a good idea - not the firearms or even the lack of bullets as much as the lameness and unsatisfying nature of the combat; this ain't Ninja Gaiden Black. Tightening up either of these issues would have made the game sit much better with one gaming constituency or another.

I'm going to point fingers - it's a shame that there was so much self-important yapping instead of a willingness to admit that peoples' concerns were not really rooted in blind traditionalism or an unwillingness to take the game at face value, treating it like a blank slate.

[Friendly]

So is it a good game or isn't it? It's not both.

Some parts of it are good, some even very good, others aren't. Like I wrote, it's a mixed bag. Some of its elements surpass Resident Evil 5. Its overall structure is probably weaker, and there is a bit much scripted stuff at times (mostly during the intro level).
So far I had fun playing it. Is a game good if you have fun playing it?

[replayme]

I kind of liken RE6 to GnR's Use Your Illusion albums. They're good - great even - but the extra padding makes the overall package feel bloated as a consequence.

Some people have stated that RE 6 took them 60 hrs to complete. Of course the game isn't going to be consistently great - and neither was FF 7 in case some people haven't noticed.

[Ed Oscuro]

Is a game good if you have fun playing it?

Yet you've qualified that goodness in your reply here, even, as if you aren't really believing it.

Some people have stated that RE 6 took them 60 hrs to complete. Of course the game isn't going to be consistently great - and neither was FF 7 in case some people haven't noticed.

So again we have self-contradictory statements creeping in! It's both good and not good, at once? It doesn't make sense to say "it's good but it's also not good."

I'm willing to leave alone the question of a game giving more "replay value" but this is a significant shift from what people were originally saying - that alleged problems with the basics of the gameplay were wrong. It also seems reasonable to call into question the wisdom of Capcom thinking it was appropriate to try to compete in terms of content, with a game like Fallout 3, which is completely about longevity of play (to the detriment of fundamental playability, as I discovered a few weeks ago). Yet that is a game that sets out to do one thing "well enough" - I don't feel confident saying anything like that about RE6.

So if we say (to point out the piecemeal acceptance) "Mercenaries makes it worthwhile" - isn't that a marked shift in what the game is being sold for, and the "value" it represents? Who here went out of their way to buy the standalone Mercenaries on 3DS, or thought that it was worth a large sum? I think that points the way to resolving this "good in spurts" argument, which is basically saying that it's OK to buy a bloated, overly expensive game and suffer through the badness for a few ingenious crumbs of actual gameplay between QTEs (which itself may be broken up by QTEs, of course).

So anyway, instead of slinging mud, I just want to say that I would vastly prefer if Capcom took time in what they were doing, and did not settle for a make-work approach to gaming development (especially when they already did exceedingly well in pacing and quality of a quite long game in RE4; so yes there is a factor of wanting to promote consistency in quality - seems reasonable to me). I'm sure I will like the game too, overall - so we shouldn't also overplay the supposed extent of the criticisms here. It's just that it is not consistently good and it has too many obvious, glaring flaws to be a worthwhile purchase for the money, at least as far as I'm concerned.

[mesh control]

low standards in this thread.

RE4. Best thing ever.

Just saying. Again.

[Friendly]

It's just that it is not consistently good

It's definitely uneven. However, I wouldn't call its flaws "glaring". Some parts of RE6 are simply mediocre (of course when someone expects perfection, mediocrity equals failure). Some aspects are definitely better than RE5, though: Gameplay for the most part; control scheme and item management. That's why it's hard to judge. For me, the sum of its parts is more positive than negative.

[Ed Oscuro]

Moving while shooting hearkens back to Dino Crisis; it was just left out of RE due to traditionalism or accidents of controller schemes, and possibly both in some cases. Beyond that, I consider the too-close camera a part of the control; as is the tripping over bodies and being bumped by APCs repeatedly; as is disorientation when being zombie-rushed. The melee combat - surely that's a part of the control scheme! - is rather horrifyingly incompetent; it seems to turn you into an invincible machine during animations, yet connecting with an attack does not seem reliable. That point is not going to please the NG crowd (as already mentioned), nor should they. Animations led to enemies constantly being hard to target - that I am ambivalent about; it was simply annoying to have the AI partner constantly juggle but rarely decap zombies with shots, delaying your own headshot attempt, yet the mix between fast and slow motion did keep things fresh and from becoming routine, as they often were in RE4, even (just line up the dot and shoot), yet it did not seem to mesh well with the rest of the game because the shaky shooting implies more ammo use, and more ammo use implies that you will run out at bad times unless you play the game melee-only more than appears to be intended.

[dan76]

lol at the waffling

Were you being ironic?

So far the game is both good and bad, great and awful! It is a contradiction.

[Strider77]

RE4. Best thing ever.

I agree with the butt hurt crying over old school RE. Get over it... play the old ones and deal.

[replayme]

RE4. Best thing ever.

I agree with the butt hurt crying over old school RE. Get over it... play the old ones and deal.

Thank you. Luddites be damned. RE has moved on. And so should they...

I like the present RE template, and if it doesn't continue past 6, I won't be spilling any milk. It's just a game, and some people need to realise that.

[replayme]

lol at the waffling

Were you being ironic?

So far the game is both good and bad, great and awful! It is a contradiction.

Some people can be clever one day, and dumb on another.

On average, RE 6 does more things right than wrong. Therefore, it's a good game. Nothing contradictory about that.

[BIL]

Wow. When I left the supermarket this evening there was a man-sized poster of Geoffery getting head in the window. Brightened up my evening commute a bit.

[Ruldra]

Just tried the demo and I thought it was awesome. Although Chris' campaign feels more like Call of Duty than Resident Evil.

Well, it's a full-blown action game now, but it's fine by me. If you want the survival horror of old, go back and play the classics.

[Ruldra]

By the way, I was kinda surprised at how much ammo I had to use on all 3 campaigns. Does the game gives away a whole lot ammo than before? With the amount of enemies they throw at you, you really can't survive with only a few ammo boxes here and there.

[lilmanjs]

I'm not reading through this entire thread as it seems mostly about the last halfway decent RE game, but RE6 looks heads and shoulders above the crap that was RE5. Though Code Veronica is the best RE game to date. so glad I have that on dreamcast. I've not played the ps2 port though or the HD remake.

[Ed Oscuro]

RE4. Best thing ever.

I agree with the butt hurt crying over old school RE. Get over it... play the old ones and deal.

Thank you. Luddites be damned. RE has moved on. And so should they...

I like the present RE template, and if it doesn't continue past 6, I won't be spilling any milk. It's just a game, and some people need to realise that.

Why do you guys keep saying this? It's not true; nobody is saying that. I pretty explicitly said that I consider the old games just fine for quenching that need. Sure, it'd be nice to get new games in pretty much every loved type of franchise or play, but I know that's not gonna happen and I am always excited to see good new types of games - the question is whether this is good or not. But by all means, let's keep yukking it up about those stupid old gamers and their misplaced concerns about playability

So far the game is both good and bad, great and awful! It is a contradiction.

Well, let's put it this way - if somebody handed you this great popsicle, but every other inch was just frozen poop, would you go through the whole thing? I mean, the badness does have some kind of effect on the good parts, too.

If you want the survival horror of old, go back and play the classics.

Nobody read the fuckin' actual complaints, that would be BAD.

I'm not reading through this entire thread as it seems mostly about the last halfway decent RE game, but RE6 looks heads and shoulders above the crap that was RE5. Though Code Veronica is the best RE game to date. so glad I have that on dreamcast. I've not played the ps2 port though or the HD remake.

The GameCube port is pretty great IMO. I don't think anything was left out and it looks like it should. It won't tax a GC either. It will be interesting to see how the HD remix looks, and of course it has those poppin' boxes too.

Really, the GC is probably the only console I'd feel I needed for the series (up to now, of course).

By the way, I was kinda surprised at how much ammo I had to use on all 3 campaigns. Does the game gives away a whole lot ammo than before? With the amount of enemies they throw at you, you really can't survive with only a few ammo boxes here and there.

How are you playing it? I found (and many reviewers found) that there wasn't enough ammo to do much more than hold off some boss monsters, and as a result a lot of time is wasted on the badly implemented melee combat.

But anyway, if you have some other thoughts here, please share them.

It will be pretty hilarious if it turns out that multiplayer is the saving grace of this game (...doubt it, but it's worth a shot) and I only get the game after everybody else has moved onto RE8

[njiska]

I'm not reading through this entire thread as it seems mostly about the last halfway decent RE game, but RE6 looks heads and shoulders above the crap that was RE5. Though Code Veronica is the best RE game to date. so glad I have that on dreamcast. I've not played the ps2 port though or the HD remake.

The GameCube port is pretty great IMO. I don't think anything was left out and it looks like it should. It won't tax a GC either. It will be interesting to see how the HD remix looks, and of course it has those poppin' boxes too.

Really, the GC is probably the only console I'd feel I needed for the series (up to now, of course).

The only one I'm missing from my collection too. RE Zero, REmake, RE2 and RE3 all look and play fantastic on GC. The bigg selling point though is the controller. It's the perfect button layout for RE's control scheme.

[Ed Oscuro]

Mine was in a bargain bin at a local grocery chain, of all things...I wish they'd find some more! Kinda wish I'd picked up more at the time, too, if they had them. $15 or something. Man, those were the days...

[mesh control]

One thing is certain: this is a thread.

[Ed Oscuro]

One thing is certain: this is a thread.

So is this!

[CMoon]

This is what all your nostalgia is for:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G78z87h0 ... e=youtu.be

I agree with Ed Obscuro in that I want to hear why RE6 is or isn't a good game, not why it doesn't live up to the RE franchise. RE4 might be the only RE game I fully enjoy, so I don't really care about the nostaltia, just want a good game.

[dan76]

Not really SPOILERS, but it's an opinion...

Having completed Leon's campaign I'm now on the third chapter of Chris' campaign. I'm suspecting there might be a pattern here. The first two chapters with Chris were pretty good. Hardly any scripting, it just lets you play through the game at your own pace. Some excellent enemies as well. It's as good as, if not better than anything in 5 in that respect. Very solid gameplay, feels a bit more polished than Leons section.

So it's good - and bad! Mainly because of the camera and controls. For me that's the thing with this game - no matter how good the situations are I always feel I'm fighting this unseen enemy. I am getting more used to it though - actually managed to dodge something for once.

A quick explanation of the controls - if you have the aiming control set to classic (Left stick aims, right stick moves) it means that to dodge you have to press L1 to aim, X and a direction on the right stick at the same time. Your right thumb has to do two things at once - very tricky.

Anyhow I have a feeling that as each campaign progresses and you reach the climax of each characters story that the QTE's and scripted events will become a lot more frequent. I hope not but thats the fear.

Anyone else actually playing this?

[Strider77]

I like scripting and bad ass QTE...

I didn't like RE5 b/c it was racist.

[Zaarock]

Anyone played the mercenaries mode much yet? will definitely buy if it's better than RE5s mercenaries which made the game worth buying for me

[SuperSoaker360]

Anyone played the mercenaries mode much yet? will definitely buy if it's better than RE5s mercenaries which made the game worth buying for me

Mercenaries is great as always. You can play it right off the bat when you first get the game instead of having to unlock it. Unfortunately, there are only three maps. The first one is unlocked already but the other two require you to do Chris' and Jake's campaign to unlock them. There are another three maps but that's DLC for people who pre-ordered the game, I believe.

Also, proof that Resident Evil 6 is the greatest game of all time.

[BrianC]

lol at the waffling

Were you being ironic?

So far the game is both good and bad, great and awful! It is a contradiction.

Like this?

[mesh control]

The most certain thing about RE6 is how polarizing it's going to be.

[cj iwakura]

I tend to draw my own conclusions when it comes to divisive games, so I'll try it at $20 like I did RE5(liked it, just not as good as any other main game).

I really don't like what I've seen of RE6 though. The co-op stuff looked even worse than 5's. It's not survival horror unless you're alone.

[Ed Oscuro]

There are another three [mercenaries] maps but that's DLC for people who pre-ordered the game, I believe.

From what I read, only the aircraft carrier (?) map was preorder-only. I'm expecting it to be released later at some point, maybe even as first round content for the PC port.

[drauch]

Played a bit of the Chris campaign with a buddy today. From what I played, it kinda gives me the same taste as 5, but a little more inventive. Decent action, and that's about it. I dunno, this sort of thing kinda bores me anymore.