Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City or OUTRAGE CITY?

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City- one of the most anticipated FLOPS of the year.

Sad but true fans- Resident Evil ORC had all the trappings of an epic adventure, the likes of which had never before been seen and may never be seen again. Take all the awesome stuff that is Resident Evil, shake things up with a new 3rd person squad based shooter twist and take it from the perspective of the bad guys! Throw in Nemesis, Tyrants, and G-Berkin for good measure and mix well! Sounds like the recipe for an amazing time right? What could go wrong, right?!

For starters, everything. The game was made by Slant 6 who were previously famous for S.O.C.O.M. games, thus the squad shooter style. The weak-ass story follows Umbrella’s Delta team, code named Wolf Pack, as they try to fumble their way through Raccoon city during the events or RE2 and 3 to clean up Umbrella’s mess by killing off civilians (which, although it is billed as a key mission point, players never actually do), collecting (insanely easy or insanely hard to find) Data, and killing off Spec Ops (the good) guys.

Don’t get us wrong here, the concept is strong- its the delivery that is lacking. The missions are few and players move from one to another pretty smoothly (or at least more smoothly then the Left4Dead series) but with far too few decent cut scenes and even less explanation of how the characters got from one level to the next. What cut scenes there are do a good job of explaining the missions but show no details of getting from one point to another.

There are a few great sounds that remind you that this IS actually an RE title like when you pick up a green herb, and the smooth graphics are best used when in familiar levels like the RPD station and Umbrella’s underground facility, but there are not enough to tug at old school RE fan’s nostalgia strings long enough to satisfy them.

Fan Favorite characters are back but only really in the multi-player versus modes. The campaign mode itself only boasts about four classic characters but does not follow their stories at all. This would be fine but I, for one, would have loved to see Wolf Pack follow and collect intel while spying on characters like Ada Wong or even Leon Kennedy himself.

Speaking of good ‘ol Leon, yeah, he’s in the game… for a level and a half. No, seriously. The game creators really loved pushing the idea that players would get to “Kill Leon” but only bring the guy in for a level and a half.

“But STZ, Please tell us the multi-player gives us some hope?!”

No.

Even if you are a Navy Seal in real life, your crew will find it hard to really get into and enjoy the online Versus. The game play modes are boring, the levels uninspired, and as for playing as the Heroes? Don’t get your hopes up. Yes, you will get to play as them, but die once and you automatically get stuck with one of a number of random characters you don’t care about.

As a hardcore gamer, I try not get my hopes up even when a game sounds as epic as RE:ORC could have been, but I have to admit- I did. I was let down.

We can only HOPE that RE6 will redeem the Resident Evil name.

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