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HELLO EVERYONE. Today I am going to share some more long-winded thoughts about Resident Evil with you. It's time to slog through the second chapter of Chris' campaign.
Spoilers behind the cut. Also I hate most of this chapter, as it features nearly every single gameplay aspect I found frustrating and/or stupid. Brace yourself for a metric fuckton of complaints.
So this flashback starts out with an extremely generic exposition/inspiration scene. Piers gives the mission details, which I totally can't remember but I'm pretty sure they boil down to KILL BIOMONSTERS, and then Chris gives a speech about being a team and how it's his job to make sure everyone gets home safe!, which serves the dual purpose of showing us that Chris is both a responsible leader and a compassionate dude. How novel! Anyway this could have been the most boring scene in the history of forever if it weren't for one person: Finn Macauley.
Finn Macauley is the demolitions guy. He is young and earnest and a rookie on his first mission. He is also the only named NPC on Chris' squad. It's incredible he didn't have DOOMED stitched on the back of his jacket. Anyway, after Chris' entirely forgettable "Let's not die" speech Finn turns to Piers and says with complete sincerity:
"Is he always this awesome?
I
DIED
As in, legitimately laughed alongside my brother (who is my partner in all things Resident Evil) for a full minute. Is he always this awesome. Gamers, in addition to "responsible leader" and "compassionate dude," be sure to add "awesome" to all descriptions of Chris Redfield. It's true because someone in the game said it!
So after that informative cutscene the chapter starts and it is SO BORING OH MY GOD. First, if RE6's fictional Chinese city was China by way of P.F. Chang's, then it's fictional country of Edonia is Serbia by way of...I don't even know. Abandoned warehouse? There is literally nothing memorable or interesting about this environment because it is a bunch of abandoned buildings and rail yards and other lazy war shooter level setpieces. Bllllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
The gameplay is similarly uninspired, and also frustrating as hell. The first area of Edonia is designed to encourage squad-based tactics, with lots of secondary paths you can utilize to theoretically flank enemies and trap them with little harm to yourself or your teammates. This does not work in RE6 because your squad is hopelessly inept (to their credit, they're invisible rather than obtrusive) and just sit there, firing aimlessly until you, the player, kill everything in the area. So what you end up doing is running around everywhere, trying to flush out every single enemy while drawing all the gunfire because the bots barely register as an existence.
Also: ammo is scarce. I know, I know, it's a hallmark of the RE series, but in every other game that scarcity served a genuine purpose. Lack of ammunition was intended to make players truly consider their reaction to every enemy encounter, no matter how small, and encouraged either running away (and risk running into it later on) or the more dangerous melee option. And in RE5, the most action-oriented RE before 6, Capcom was smart enough to up ammo availability. (The real problem was carrying capacity: you didn't have enough slots to carry loads of extra ammo.)
In RE6, and specifically in most Chris chapters, the lack of ammo serves absolutely no purpose. The Edonia chapter is all about mid-to-long range combat, while running in to go for a melee kill attempt is likely to get you shredded and you can't run past any enemies because you're trapped in the area until you kill everything. I have no problems with RE becoming more action-oriented in theory, but when levels are designed for sniping, shooting under cover, and fighting large waves of enemies multiple times, it is pretty fucking stupid to limit the ability of the player to shoot things just because 'that's how it's always been.'
SO. The first section of the chapter is long and forgettable and god i don't even remember most of the shit you do there. Okay, there's a giant monster thing that's not very interesting visually, aside from its gaming-mandated weak point. (Part of its internal organs is sticking out of its back, and to injure it you um, tug that part out to expose more of its innards and shoot them. It's kind of awesome in a really gross, gruesome way.) There's a bunch of sections where you have to protect Finn while he sets up explosives and oh my fucking god it takes forever and he is the worst demolition guy ever. There's a bridge section that is awful on many levels because you and your partner are split up and you're stuck with the absolutely useless Team Cannon Fodder and you're supposed to storm shit and it's just the worst. THE WORST.
About halfway through this shitty level you get to meet up with Sherry Birkin andBaby Wesker Jake Mueller. Chris and Sherry have a moment of recognition/mutual respect, although IDK it's kind of weird that Chris and Sherry have never ever seen each other before? Whatever, their interaction is cute regardless. Jake calls the BSAA 'jarheads' which is silly because BSAA agents are not very Marine-like at all. Piers gets all sulky and angry with Jake because he is a -gasp- disrespectful mercenary oh no!, which serves the purpose of showing us that Piers is a stereotypically stuffy good soldier and that Jake is a stereotypical rebellious badass (lol). THEN, you get to ~team up!~
The objective is to blow up anti-aircraft guns so that you can get Sherry and Jake on a helicopter to safety or whatever. This translates into you and your parnters running around while waiting an eternity for Finn to set his fucking explosives. Three of the inside-out giant monster guys show up and you have the option of killing them or distracting them. Neither option seems to make Finn work any faster so you are SOL in both cases. There are also J'avo with sniper rifles that shoot you at the worst possible moments and god i don't even care anymore this part is terrible.
After approximately a zillion years the anti-aircraft guns are destroyed and the BSAA swoops in, etc etc but apparently they can't evacuate Chris' group, just Jake and Sherry? So Chris and Piers and Team Cannon Fodder have to go through -oooooh- a creepy mansion! (It's also possible that Chris is in the mansion to investigate suspicious happenings, I dunno. I wasn't really paying attention at this point. :S )
The mansion is not the most original of areas but it is suitably unsettling. The main hall is covered with vaguely people-shaped cocoons which are obviously going to burst into hideous monsters, but you're never sure when. There is some cursory exploring and then you are dropped into a library (I think) that is full of menacing cocoons. Until they open and reveal hideous monsters. Actually, the monsters are not -that- hideous but they are big and covered in armor and like to charge around the room doing tons of damage to whatever they trample and when they die, they try to rage punch you dead. You have to kill all the armor beasties (of course) which requires a lot of dodging, maneuvering, and shotguns, and it's the only part of the chapter that I enjoyed playing.
There's another monster you encounter that's sort of a mini-boss, a lizard thing that shoots spiky bits at you and scuttles around really fast. They aren't particularly intimidating as they look an awful lot like a really big bearded lizard, and bearded lizards are inherently cute. I bring this up because I would like to highlight the aimless nature of the monster design in RE6. The early RE games had a similar hodgepodge of monster types, but 4 and 5 had a much more cohesive design and RE6 feels like a huge step back in comparison. It has zombies, the insect/spider theme of the J'avo, and then some random animal-like creatures, all ostensibly caused by the same C-Virus. Yeeeeeeeeeeahhhhh, I dunno.
Back to cutscenes: eventually, you meet a ~mysterious lady~ who says she's Ada Wong, which does not ring any bells for Chris because I don't know, plot convenience? Anyway, you escort her out of the mansion and the overly dramatic soundtrack informs you that this is a bad idea. Once you get to the, um, I think it's the basement? the Not-Ada woman traps Chris' squad (excluding Piers, of course) and turns them into cocoons, OH NO! Finn dies in a particularly dramatic and generically heartbreaking manner, like seriously he turns into a cocoon with his hand outstretched because he was reaching for his idol, the Captain, and Chris goes NOOOOOOooooooooOOOooooooO! and Piers says, oh i don't even remember but i think it's something about controlling yourself. Then things get MOAR TRAGIK when the cocoons open up, and Chris tries to save his men while Piers goes blahblahblah it's too late let's go blahblahblah. Chris suffers severe head trauma for his troubles and finally, FINALLY the chapter ends.
Next up: Chapter 3, which I found to be far more enjoyable than the first two and has one of my favorite sequences in the whole game. HOORAY FOR POSITIVITY!*
Spoilers behind the cut. Also I hate most of this chapter, as it features nearly every single gameplay aspect I found frustrating and/or stupid. Brace yourself for a metric fuckton of complaints.
So this flashback starts out with an extremely generic exposition/inspiration scene. Piers gives the mission details, which I totally can't remember but I'm pretty sure they boil down to KILL BIOMONSTERS, and then Chris gives a speech about being a team and how it's his job to make sure everyone gets home safe!, which serves the dual purpose of showing us that Chris is both a responsible leader and a compassionate dude. How novel! Anyway this could have been the most boring scene in the history of forever if it weren't for one person: Finn Macauley.
Finn Macauley is the demolitions guy. He is young and earnest and a rookie on his first mission. He is also the only named NPC on Chris' squad. It's incredible he didn't have DOOMED stitched on the back of his jacket. Anyway, after Chris' entirely forgettable "Let's not die" speech Finn turns to Piers and says with complete sincerity:
"Is he always this awesome?
I
DIED
As in, legitimately laughed alongside my brother (who is my partner in all things Resident Evil) for a full minute. Is he always this awesome. Gamers, in addition to "responsible leader" and "compassionate dude," be sure to add "awesome" to all descriptions of Chris Redfield. It's true because someone in the game said it!
So after that informative cutscene the chapter starts and it is SO BORING OH MY GOD. First, if RE6's fictional Chinese city was China by way of P.F. Chang's, then it's fictional country of Edonia is Serbia by way of...I don't even know. Abandoned warehouse? There is literally nothing memorable or interesting about this environment because it is a bunch of abandoned buildings and rail yards and other lazy war shooter level setpieces. Bllllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
The gameplay is similarly uninspired, and also frustrating as hell. The first area of Edonia is designed to encourage squad-based tactics, with lots of secondary paths you can utilize to theoretically flank enemies and trap them with little harm to yourself or your teammates. This does not work in RE6 because your squad is hopelessly inept (to their credit, they're invisible rather than obtrusive) and just sit there, firing aimlessly until you, the player, kill everything in the area. So what you end up doing is running around everywhere, trying to flush out every single enemy while drawing all the gunfire because the bots barely register as an existence.
Also: ammo is scarce. I know, I know, it's a hallmark of the RE series, but in every other game that scarcity served a genuine purpose. Lack of ammunition was intended to make players truly consider their reaction to every enemy encounter, no matter how small, and encouraged either running away (and risk running into it later on) or the more dangerous melee option. And in RE5, the most action-oriented RE before 6, Capcom was smart enough to up ammo availability. (The real problem was carrying capacity: you didn't have enough slots to carry loads of extra ammo.)
In RE6, and specifically in most Chris chapters, the lack of ammo serves absolutely no purpose. The Edonia chapter is all about mid-to-long range combat, while running in to go for a melee kill attempt is likely to get you shredded and you can't run past any enemies because you're trapped in the area until you kill everything. I have no problems with RE becoming more action-oriented in theory, but when levels are designed for sniping, shooting under cover, and fighting large waves of enemies multiple times, it is pretty fucking stupid to limit the ability of the player to shoot things just because 'that's how it's always been.'
SO. The first section of the chapter is long and forgettable and god i don't even remember most of the shit you do there. Okay, there's a giant monster thing that's not very interesting visually, aside from its gaming-mandated weak point. (Part of its internal organs is sticking out of its back, and to injure it you um, tug that part out to expose more of its innards and shoot them. It's kind of awesome in a really gross, gruesome way.) There's a bunch of sections where you have to protect Finn while he sets up explosives and oh my fucking god it takes forever and he is the worst demolition guy ever. There's a bridge section that is awful on many levels because you and your partner are split up and you're stuck with the absolutely useless Team Cannon Fodder and you're supposed to storm shit and it's just the worst. THE WORST.
About halfway through this shitty level you get to meet up with Sherry Birkin and
The objective is to blow up anti-aircraft guns so that you can get Sherry and Jake on a helicopter to safety or whatever. This translates into you and your parnters running around while waiting an eternity for Finn to set his fucking explosives. Three of the inside-out giant monster guys show up and you have the option of killing them or distracting them. Neither option seems to make Finn work any faster so you are SOL in both cases. There are also J'avo with sniper rifles that shoot you at the worst possible moments and god i don't even care anymore this part is terrible.
After approximately a zillion years the anti-aircraft guns are destroyed and the BSAA swoops in, etc etc but apparently they can't evacuate Chris' group, just Jake and Sherry? So Chris and Piers and Team Cannon Fodder have to go through -oooooh- a creepy mansion! (It's also possible that Chris is in the mansion to investigate suspicious happenings, I dunno. I wasn't really paying attention at this point. :S )
The mansion is not the most original of areas but it is suitably unsettling. The main hall is covered with vaguely people-shaped cocoons which are obviously going to burst into hideous monsters, but you're never sure when. There is some cursory exploring and then you are dropped into a library (I think) that is full of menacing cocoons. Until they open and reveal hideous monsters. Actually, the monsters are not -that- hideous but they are big and covered in armor and like to charge around the room doing tons of damage to whatever they trample and when they die, they try to rage punch you dead. You have to kill all the armor beasties (of course) which requires a lot of dodging, maneuvering, and shotguns, and it's the only part of the chapter that I enjoyed playing.
There's another monster you encounter that's sort of a mini-boss, a lizard thing that shoots spiky bits at you and scuttles around really fast. They aren't particularly intimidating as they look an awful lot like a really big bearded lizard, and bearded lizards are inherently cute. I bring this up because I would like to highlight the aimless nature of the monster design in RE6. The early RE games had a similar hodgepodge of monster types, but 4 and 5 had a much more cohesive design and RE6 feels like a huge step back in comparison. It has zombies, the insect/spider theme of the J'avo, and then some random animal-like creatures, all ostensibly caused by the same C-Virus. Yeeeeeeeeeeahhhhh, I dunno.
Back to cutscenes: eventually, you meet a ~mysterious lady~ who says she's Ada Wong, which does not ring any bells for Chris because I don't know, plot convenience? Anyway, you escort her out of the mansion and the overly dramatic soundtrack informs you that this is a bad idea. Once you get to the, um, I think it's the basement? the Not-Ada woman traps Chris' squad (excluding Piers, of course) and turns them into cocoons, OH NO! Finn dies in a particularly dramatic and generically heartbreaking manner, like seriously he turns into a cocoon with his hand outstretched because he was reaching for his idol, the Captain, and Chris goes NOOOOOOooooooooOOOooooooO! and Piers says, oh i don't even remember but i think it's something about controlling yourself. Then things get MOAR TRAGIK when the cocoons open up, and Chris tries to save his men while Piers goes blahblahblah it's too late let's go blahblahblah. Chris suffers severe head trauma for his troubles and finally, FINALLY the chapter ends.
Next up: Chapter 3, which I found to be far more enjoyable than the first two and has one of my favorite sequences in the whole game. HOORAY FOR POSITIVITY!*
*but not too much positivity, there's a lot of dumb shit too.
