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I finished RE6's first 3 campaigns a few days ago! It was...a mixed bag as far as entertainment goes. There were some parts that were fantastic and a great many parts that I found boring and a few parts that were pretty rage-quit worthy in their awfulness. All in all, a pretty standard RE experience.
I am not sure why this RE has taken up so much of my brainspace recently, though. I think it's partly due to the uneven quality--the great parts are already some of my favorite in the series, and the shitty parts are some of the worst gameplay experiences I've suffered in years. Also, every single RE discussion and review I've read ends up talking about the series as a whole and the direction video games in general are headed and...there's just a lot to think about.
Not sure how all these thoughts will eventually come out, nor how coherent they will be. When I was playing through the campaigns I tended to go on GameFAQs forums and/or the RE6 tumblr tag and dump all of my thoughts onto the unsuspecting masses there, so I guess I'll just do the same here. :P
Spoilers behind the cut. Also: wall of text that I did not intend to write. I had more opinions than I realized. :S
MAN THIS ENTIRE OPENING IS PRETTY AWKWARD. Like it is a pretty generic 'oh look at this drunken asshole who is clearly hiding some kind of ~deep pain~' scene, but the drunk asshole is Chris Redfield, so watching this behavior is a mix of 'lol, so OOC' and 'ouch, so OOC.' Of course, Capcom being Capcom, the explanation they come up with for said behavior is extra melodramatic.
See, it's not just PTSD that Chris is suffering from--that's not enough for Capcom. Chris has post-traumatic amnesia. Which, to be fair, is something that does happen to people and in the right hands could easily be an effective dramatic development. But the RE6 scenario writers do not have such hands. Consider how they're setting up Chris' character arc: he can't cope with the guilt he has over what happened in the recent past, so he abandons the BSAA. Piers comes to appeal to his sense of duty, and though Chris protests at first he eventually agrees. At no point is amnesia necessary for this particular scenario. In fact, in the grand tradition of unnecessary plot developments, the amnesia angle takes a simple setup and makes it far more nonsensical. Chris' guilt and self-loathing doesn't have the same effect when he literally cannot remember the events that led to said guilt. (The in-game notes state that Chris doesn't remember anything that happened Edonia. He just feels guilty without understanding why.) Apparently he's also forgotten what the BSAA is, (given his confused reaction at seeing Piers' badge) which means...he doesn't remember anything related to bioweapons/bio-terrorism? I HAVE NO IDEA. I don't think anyone at Capcom does, either.
The fact that Chris has such severe amnesia makes the BSAA's decision to reinstate him as an active captain rather questionable. One assumes that they want Chris because he and Piers are the only agents who have prior J'avo experience, but if Chris is so far gone that he can't even remember that he's a soldier...Good thing common sense is in short supply around the BSAA.
I'm torn between hating the amnesia aspect because it's spectacularly awful, and loving it because it's spectacularly awful.
So, onto the actual chapter! Which is pretty bad, tbh. You run around a very poorly laid out level meant to be a modern Chinese city--though it looks a lot more like a rejected set concept for Blade Runner--and try to reach an apartment building where some hostages are being held. The first portion of the chapter is fucking *endless*, just you and your completely useless AI squad running down generic streets and rooftops shooting at J'avo creatures that are far more annoying than intimidating or frightening.
Also, this chapter seems designed to showcase every single flaw in the new game mechanics. There are a lot of fights where it's clear you're supposed to use cover, but the cover system is kinda junky. I think Capcom was trying to make it simple by limiting the amount of button presses you have to do (you automatically take cover when you're close enough to a wall/object and start aiming, and to shoot from cover you move to the left/right) but instead of being simple and intuitive, the system requires you to be fairly precise in your actions because if you're not you'll be taking/leaving cover at the most inopportune moments, or worse, be running in order to take cover somewhere else, only to jump over the object you meant to crouch next to and leap into a hail of bullets. F U N!
There's also a section where you're in a mostly-open area, surrounded by a constantly spawning group of J'avo, and I think you're supposed to get used to things like countering and the revamped melee system here. But counters only work on enemies close to you, and there's a ton of dudes faaaaaaar away taking pot shots at you in addition to knife-wielding dudes and I'm pretty sure at one point a guy with a rocket launcher shows up to ruin your day. There's exploding barrels all over the place and little boxes that are supposed to offer cover but I spent most of my time hopping over them by accident.
The whole thing is just one big unfun clusterfuck. I think it's supposed to recall the first chapter of RE5, when you get attacked by the majini mob and have to survive in an enclosed space until help arrives, but all of the aspects that made that first chapter work are absent in RE6. In RE5 the mob/execution discovery is supposed to be shocking; you know something weird is going on but the severity is something Chris, Sheva and the BSAA aren't prepared for. In RE6 the J'avo are already a known threat and while it's clear the mission is dangerous it's not unexpected. There's none of the holy shit, this is so much worse than we realized quality that the beginning of RE5 had.
ANYWAY. The end of the chapter has Chris and Piers and the rest of Team Cannon Fodder finally getting to the apartments to save survivors, and there's um...spider people. Having to search for people in a dimly lit apartment while intelligent spider monsters scurry around faster than you can follow should be creepy, but it isn't, mostly because the camera is super floaty and gets stuck on walls and doorways and the whole thing kind of kills the mood.
Also, the spider monsters shoot guns, and the effect is silly rather than menacing. If you have an unholy spider-person hybrid, and you introduce it by having one scurry along the ceiling to kidnap a survivor, one suspects that maybe you could have the spider monster attack by having it, I dunno, drop from the ceiling and try to crush your head with its horrific mutated spidery parts? But instead the spider monsters just stick to the ceiling and shoot guns at you. Which I guess is effective, sort of, but if Neo-Umbrella is going to arm its mutated bioweapons with conventional weaponry wouldn't that, like...defeat the whole purpose of developing bioweapon technology? Why bother going through all the mutation rigmarole if you're just going to use guns anyway? why am i asking for reason in an RE game?
Eventually you save the survivors and everything is okay!, but not really because OF COURSE the apartment building is going to be bombed and the dude over the radio is all WE ARE GONNA BOMB IT SO YOU'D BEST GET OUTTA THERE 'CAUSE WE'RE NOT WAITING and OH NO debris falls or something, and you have to find the exit before it's too late!!11! Only, for some reason this section takes awhile. It's not long, just...there are a lot of unnecessary detours that are intended to increase tension but end up being tedious.
Then everything blows up, cocoons are everywhere, Chris has a flashback and the chapter mercifully ends.
I realize that most of the RE6 stuff I've posted has been negative, but I genuinely enjoy the game. There's just a lot of boring stuff you have to wade through to get to the good parts.
I am not sure why this RE has taken up so much of my brainspace recently, though. I think it's partly due to the uneven quality--the great parts are already some of my favorite in the series, and the shitty parts are some of the worst gameplay experiences I've suffered in years. Also, every single RE discussion and review I've read ends up talking about the series as a whole and the direction video games in general are headed and...there's just a lot to think about.
Not sure how all these thoughts will eventually come out, nor how coherent they will be. When I was playing through the campaigns I tended to go on GameFAQs forums and/or the RE6 tumblr tag and dump all of my thoughts onto the unsuspecting masses there, so I guess I'll just do the same here. :P
Spoilers behind the cut. Also: wall of text that I did not intend to write. I had more opinions than I realized. :S
MAN THIS ENTIRE OPENING IS PRETTY AWKWARD. Like it is a pretty generic 'oh look at this drunken asshole who is clearly hiding some kind of ~deep pain~' scene, but the drunk asshole is Chris Redfield, so watching this behavior is a mix of 'lol, so OOC' and 'ouch, so OOC.' Of course, Capcom being Capcom, the explanation they come up with for said behavior is extra melodramatic.
See, it's not just PTSD that Chris is suffering from--that's not enough for Capcom. Chris has post-traumatic amnesia. Which, to be fair, is something that does happen to people and in the right hands could easily be an effective dramatic development. But the RE6 scenario writers do not have such hands. Consider how they're setting up Chris' character arc: he can't cope with the guilt he has over what happened in the recent past, so he abandons the BSAA. Piers comes to appeal to his sense of duty, and though Chris protests at first he eventually agrees. At no point is amnesia necessary for this particular scenario. In fact, in the grand tradition of unnecessary plot developments, the amnesia angle takes a simple setup and makes it far more nonsensical. Chris' guilt and self-loathing doesn't have the same effect when he literally cannot remember the events that led to said guilt. (The in-game notes state that Chris doesn't remember anything that happened Edonia. He just feels guilty without understanding why.) Apparently he's also forgotten what the BSAA is, (given his confused reaction at seeing Piers' badge) which means...he doesn't remember anything related to bioweapons/bio-terrorism? I HAVE NO IDEA. I don't think anyone at Capcom does, either.
The fact that Chris has such severe amnesia makes the BSAA's decision to reinstate him as an active captain rather questionable. One assumes that they want Chris because he and Piers are the only agents who have prior J'avo experience, but if Chris is so far gone that he can't even remember that he's a soldier...Good thing common sense is in short supply around the BSAA.
I'm torn between hating the amnesia aspect because it's spectacularly awful, and loving it because it's spectacularly awful.
So, onto the actual chapter! Which is pretty bad, tbh. You run around a very poorly laid out level meant to be a modern Chinese city--though it looks a lot more like a rejected set concept for Blade Runner--and try to reach an apartment building where some hostages are being held. The first portion of the chapter is fucking *endless*, just you and your completely useless AI squad running down generic streets and rooftops shooting at J'avo creatures that are far more annoying than intimidating or frightening.
Also, this chapter seems designed to showcase every single flaw in the new game mechanics. There are a lot of fights where it's clear you're supposed to use cover, but the cover system is kinda junky. I think Capcom was trying to make it simple by limiting the amount of button presses you have to do (you automatically take cover when you're close enough to a wall/object and start aiming, and to shoot from cover you move to the left/right) but instead of being simple and intuitive, the system requires you to be fairly precise in your actions because if you're not you'll be taking/leaving cover at the most inopportune moments, or worse, be running in order to take cover somewhere else, only to jump over the object you meant to crouch next to and leap into a hail of bullets. F U N!
There's also a section where you're in a mostly-open area, surrounded by a constantly spawning group of J'avo, and I think you're supposed to get used to things like countering and the revamped melee system here. But counters only work on enemies close to you, and there's a ton of dudes faaaaaaar away taking pot shots at you in addition to knife-wielding dudes and I'm pretty sure at one point a guy with a rocket launcher shows up to ruin your day. There's exploding barrels all over the place and little boxes that are supposed to offer cover but I spent most of my time hopping over them by accident.
The whole thing is just one big unfun clusterfuck. I think it's supposed to recall the first chapter of RE5, when you get attacked by the majini mob and have to survive in an enclosed space until help arrives, but all of the aspects that made that first chapter work are absent in RE6. In RE5 the mob/execution discovery is supposed to be shocking; you know something weird is going on but the severity is something Chris, Sheva and the BSAA aren't prepared for. In RE6 the J'avo are already a known threat and while it's clear the mission is dangerous it's not unexpected. There's none of the holy shit, this is so much worse than we realized quality that the beginning of RE5 had.
ANYWAY. The end of the chapter has Chris and Piers and the rest of Team Cannon Fodder finally getting to the apartments to save survivors, and there's um...spider people. Having to search for people in a dimly lit apartment while intelligent spider monsters scurry around faster than you can follow should be creepy, but it isn't, mostly because the camera is super floaty and gets stuck on walls and doorways and the whole thing kind of kills the mood.
Also, the spider monsters shoot guns, and the effect is silly rather than menacing. If you have an unholy spider-person hybrid, and you introduce it by having one scurry along the ceiling to kidnap a survivor, one suspects that maybe you could have the spider monster attack by having it, I dunno, drop from the ceiling and try to crush your head with its horrific mutated spidery parts? But instead the spider monsters just stick to the ceiling and shoot guns at you. Which I guess is effective, sort of, but if Neo-Umbrella is going to arm its mutated bioweapons with conventional weaponry wouldn't that, like...defeat the whole purpose of developing bioweapon technology? Why bother going through all the mutation rigmarole if you're just going to use guns anyway? why am i asking for reason in an RE game?
Eventually you save the survivors and everything is okay!, but not really because OF COURSE the apartment building is going to be bombed and the dude over the radio is all WE ARE GONNA BOMB IT SO YOU'D BEST GET OUTTA THERE 'CAUSE WE'RE NOT WAITING and OH NO debris falls or something, and you have to find the exit before it's too late!!11! Only, for some reason this section takes awhile. It's not long, just...there are a lot of unnecessary detours that are intended to increase tension but end up being tedious.
Then everything blows up, cocoons are everywhere, Chris has a flashback and the chapter mercifully ends.
I realize that most of the RE6 stuff I've posted has been negative, but I genuinely enjoy the game. There's just a lot of boring stuff you have to wade through to get to the good parts.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-23 04:00 am (UTC)From:I just wanted to punch everyone in charge of this part of the story. Love so much about so many things in this game, but whoever thought about throwing Chris in for....I can only assume shits and giggles at this point because his arc basically ended with RE5. Let him retire. Let Piers and someone else (CARLOS? BARRY? BILLY? REBECCA?!) have some fun. His entire character got derailed for the sake of including him in this game, and it doesn't get any better. I'D ARGUE IT EVEN GETS WORSE.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-24 02:02 am (UTC)From:Pre-release I assumed Chris was in because fanboys have wanted a game with both Chris and Leon for like, I dunno, forever? But then Chris and Leon only have two scenes where they interact so I have no idea.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-24 02:16 am (UTC)From:CHRIS NO
DON'T BE STUPID
uuuurrrggghhhhhh
I'm still on that boat, frankly. He didn't need to be there. There wasn't anything in his campaign that couldn't have been handled by Jake and Sherry or Leon and Helena, unless they also wanted to do something with Chris and Jake as ~*~Wesker's son~*~, which they did for all of a scene (which also made no sense because Jake had never given two shits about his father why start now and yes, Chris, it was pretty much personal by that point HE HAD TAKEN JILL AND WAS ABOUT TO UNLEASH A SUPERVIRUS ON THE FUCKING PLANET. I just. Would he have really walked away had the BSAA ordered him not to kill Wesker?)
no subject
Date: 2012-10-28 04:33 am (UTC)From: