Revelations - not shite, but it might give you a headache unless you turn the 3D down. That came out seven years ago – so why, now, has there been such disappointment expressed at a company’s perfectly acceptable stance of sticking to their (never-quite-enough-ammo) guns?
A return to Resi’s comparatively quaint beginnings would, frankly, have prioritised fan service over the acknowledgment and reaction to contemporary gaming trends, those that keep doors open rather than slamming them shut on developers (which is perhaps something that the Capcom-funded Clover Studio might’ve been advised to note when putting together God Hand back when).Īnd it’s not like these games haven’t been falling further and further from the tree for some time: perhaps the most celebrated of all Resi titles, the fourth, is less survival horror, more straightforward third-person shooter, albeit of an exceptionally high quality. Resident Evil - oooooh shiiiiiit RUN AWAY RUN AWAY (etc)Ĭapcom doesn’t make games to be a makeweight operation it makes them to lead the way in an increasingly crowded, massively competitive and fantastically ruthless marketplace. Even this generation’s relatively sedate, violence-as-an-option stealth games, like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and recent hit Dishonored, are always on the tipping point of blooming into glorious carnage. But such a slow-moving game would seem out of place in a commercial-achievement-driven environment dominated by boisterous, brash war games, sports simulators and dance workouts.
Resident Evil, or Biohazard in Japan, stood out like a sores-weeping zombie on a commuter platform full of shiny suits when it first appeared on the PlayStation in 1996.
Like the fifth proper Resi before it, 6 is an all-action blockbuster affair, more in thrall to movies with something blowing up every eight seconds than flicks designed to creep under your skin and haunt waking and sleeping hours alike.īut you probably also know – and if you didn’t, now you do – that it was never Capcom’s intent to revisit the tense atmosphere, grubby visuals and enveloping dread that characterised their first forays into the survival horror genre.
You already know, from previews and reviews elsewhere on the ‘net, that Resident Evil 6 spectacularly fails to return one of Capcom’s most beloved franchises to its survival horror roots.