Resident Evil 6 Demo

The RE6 demo is now available for download and you can bet your sweet pippy that I have made my way through it! I'll start out by breaking down the individual campaigns and wrap up with my overall thoughts.

The Campaigns

So the demo (and the game itself) consists of three different storylines or "campaigns".  It is unknown whether or not the campaigns will intersect in the full game, but in the demo they appear to be independent of one another.  The campaigns follow Leon Kennedy, Chris Redfield, and series newcomer Jake Muller as they work with their partners to stop outbreaks and kill zombies and shit.  Let's dive in...

Leon and Helena

I started off by selecting Leon’s campaign. From there you can choose to play as either Leon or his new partner Helena.  As I came to find out, this campaign is the most “survival horror” of the three offered in the demo. The player guides Leon and Helena through the many stairwells and narrow hallways of an Ivy League college campus while fighting off zombies. The enemy encounters are sporadic at the outset, but as the campaign progresses things pick up, and a couple of intense battles ensue near the end of this 10-15 minute chapter.

Chris and Piers

Next I played Chris’s campaign.  In this section you can choose to play as either Chris or a dude name Piers.  This campaign is the most action packed and combat heavy of the three. You start out in a European looking city environment.  Chris and his team are aboard a transport truck discussing their upcoming mission when suddenly they are attacked by bizarre looking men wearing kabuki-like masks and motorcycle jackets. Unlike the shuffling zombies in Leon’s campaign, these guys are armed and they move quickly. As the enemy closes in, you must use cover and shoot accurately in order to take them out.  Near the end of this section, Chris and his team must defeat a HUGE three-story-tall mutant freak in order to progress.

Jake and Sherry

Finally, there’s Jake’s campaign. This time you can play as either Jake or Sherry as they make their way through a downtown cityscape at night.  The enemies in this section seem a lot like the baddies from RE 4 and 5 in that they are human but they also occasionally mutate. Remember the “snake heads” from the last two installments? These guys are kind of like “snake arms”. They can grab you and hit you from longer distances and (I guess since they still have their heads) they can still move around fairly deftly. There’s also another new enemy type in this campaign. Right now I’m calling them “fishraptors”. While moving around they sort of resemble fish with legs, but occasionally they rear up and spit (or shoot needles, I can’t tell) and do damage that way.

My Thoughts

In general, this demo has me pretty excited about the full game.  A few minor gripes aside, I think I'm going to have a hell of a good time with this.  First, I'll tell you what I liked:

Combat feels pretty good.  The system has been tweaked a bit (yes, you can move and shoot now) but those who are familiar with RE 4 and 5's combat system will have little trouble catching on.  One of the biggest and most welcome changes is that now you can perform a melee attack at any time.  You can still stun your enemies with a well placed bullet and then move in for the coup-de-grace, but you can also take them down with a well placed combination of kicks, punches, and finishing moves.  This was a smart move I think, as it takes the already visceral RE combat scheme and makes it even more brutal and fun!

I like that they've decided to break up the narrative by offering three different storylines.  The RE story is kind of boilerplate in general, and doing it this way will keep things moving while also allowing you to play as more characters.  Plus, as any RE fan knows, more characters = a more robust "Mercenaries" mode! It's also good to see Leon back in the fold; I like that character and I'm happy to see him make his comeback.  I'm also interested in this Jake Muller dude.  Supposedly he is the "son" of  super-freak Albert Wesker, and I can only imagine what strange powers he might have inherited as a result.

Also welcome is the decision to map the action, melee attack, and item use functions to DIFFERENT BUTTONS!!!  This was a hugely annoying issue in RE 4 and 5.  Thank you for fixing that Capcom.  Seriously, it's like developers don't even play their own games sometimes. 

I didn't really have too many negative reactions to the demo, but there were some things that concerned me:

Control-wise, most things worked pretty well.  Aiming and shooting is much as it has been in RE 4 and 5 (if not a little smoother) and it's generally not difficult to move around.  Still, a few little things gave me some big problems.  Performing a 180 degree turn, while easy to do and a reliable means of escape in RE 4 and 5, is made more difficult by the game's sometimes wonky camera controls.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  Also somewhat troublesome was the newly introduced cover mechanic.  Like a lot of games that allow you to duck behind things for safety, the controls for this feature are kind of confusing and involve the pressing and holding of many buttons.  It's usually easy enough to get into a cover position, but I encountered some problems when I tried to return fire.

Weapon and item selection is pretty strange as well.  It may just be that I'm not used to it, and things may change in the full version of the game, but the icons for the weapons look very similar and it's often kind of hard to tell which is which.  In addition, it seems you can't assign hotkeys to specific weapons as you could in RE 5.  The result is that you have to scroll through your weapons until you reach the one you want.  It's inelegant at calm moments and frustrating during intense firefights.  I'm sure I'll get a handle on it after awhile, but it could end up being something of a drag.

This demo is also quite DARK....as in it's difficult to see shit.  Scrolling through the game options I can see that there's an option to tweak the brightness, but the demo doesn't allow you to change it.  This will obviously change in the final version, but it makes me wonder if RE 6's visuals might be a little on the muddy side.  Don't get me wrong the graphics are nice, but they don't represent a huge improvement over RE 5, and like that game they're still only running in 720p.

The Verdict

Overall, I'm very positive about RE 6, and I believe that that I will have a lot of fun with this game.  The combat is a lot of fun and it seems to contain all of the visceral, in-your-face thrills of RE 4 and 5 and then some.  I have my issues with some of the control and presentation schemes, but I don't think we're talking about anything game-breaking.  Potentially annoying yes, but not exactly deal breakers.  In my review of Resident Evil: Revelations I mentioned how I thought that Capcom is in the odd position of trying to please two distinct audiences for the Resident Evil franchise.  With the multiple campaigns of RE 6, I see them trying to appeal to BOTH the classic survival horror fans, and the more action/combat oriented fans of RE 4 and 5.  It remains to be seen whether or not they can please everyone (I expect a lot of crying from both sides), but I'm fairly confident that RE 6 will be a hit with me.

...and Conan.