The Resident Evil games have seen a huge amount of evolution over the years, which some fans have at times been frustrated with. Whilst change can sometimes be for the better or for the worse, one thing I’ve noticed about the Resident Evil games over the years is that they can’t settle on what the games should be.
If a series refuses to evolve it becomes stagnant and eventually gamers won’t feel the need to pick up the latest instalments. There is perhaps no greater example of this than the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games or the Toys to Life genre of games. They had almost no way of evolving and so their novelty ran dry.
For better or worse the Resident Evil series have rarely stayed the same, which ultimately is one of the main reasons it’s still the premier brand of the survival horror genre thirty plus years after its initial release set in the Spencer Mansion.
Each new entry in the series played around with new ideas, and gameplay mechanics. Resident Evil three introduced exploding barrels, the ability to create your own ammo, a quick turn feature and loads of other tweaks beyond the first two games. Perhaps most importantly, it gave us the first Mercenaries mode which was an evolution of previous Battle Modes, and has become a staple of the series.
Code Veronica and Cod Veronic X put the games in fully 3D environments for the first time (not counting Survivor).
Zero experimented with controlling two characters at once. The list goes on and on, but the change most people remember is what came with Resident Evil 4.
Resident Evil 4 put a huge emphasis on action, but retained the puzzles and atmosphere of the earlier games.
Resident Evil 5, much to the annoyance of long-term fans went into action overdrive and the addition of co-op play destroyed what little was left of the feeling of survival against the odds. This was because, even in single player mode, it was still a co-op experience, and you always had back up with both Chris and Sheva tag teaming it.
The series continued to evolve with Resident Evil 6, but many would agree that many of the changes were for the worse.
In story terms, Resident Evil 6 felt like a new beginning rather than a needed continuation. For a while after the end of Resident Evil 5, with the series’ main villain Wesker defeated, I was convinced that the series had come to an end. How I can look back on that and laugh now. RE6 just seemed to start things up again. A new virus, a new outbreak making a new Racoon City, and even a new Wesker in the form of his never before mentioned son Jake.
They definitely went with the idea of bigger being better and in this sense, they were wrong. Instead of the usual one or two main playable characters, RE6 initially gave you six, and then later seven when later ports let you play as Ada from the start instead of her being a bonus character.
Also, the way the game let you choose to play as different characters who were all involved in an intertwining story just didn’t work as well as it had on the original version of Resident Evil 2.
Working a little like the movie Vantage Point (obscure reference these days) you could see different sections of the same story from various perspectives. This could have been great, but rather than build up mystery and give cool revelations along the way, it was just confusing in my experience. Playing as one character gave what felt more like spoilers for the other characters stories rather than fun teasers.
It was just a bloated plot which had huge set pieces and couldn’t have felt further away from the claustrophobic Spencer Mansion or RPD of the first two games in the series.
For me though, the worst part of Resident Evil 6 was the gameplay.
For years fans had wanted Capcom to ditch the tank controls, and whilst this was achieved for the first time properly in the series, everything else was a mess.
You still collected money and items from fallen enemies as you could in RE4 and RE5, but the inventive upgrade systems from Resident evil 4 and 5 were replaced with a weak version.
This really didn’t matter too much though they introduced hand to hand combat to the gameplay which meant you could button mash your way through much of the game. This was a long way of the hatchet fun of Resident Evil Requiem and just didn’t feel good.
The biggest sin however was that there were many sections of the game where it didn’t really feel like you were playing it. QTE’s had been in games for years, but Resident Evil 6 took away choice of action to the extreme and had sections of the game which would play themselves if you held up on the control stick. I’m not even kidding. Even a few minutes after starting the game it gives you the illusion that you are controlling things which could auto play if you hold down up or A.
I know some people love this game, and good for them, but for me, this was a total disaster. But one day I will return to it soon and maybe my opinion of the game will have evolved, and I will find new appreciation for it.
Despite the game selling well, and lets face it, it did so based mostly on hype and good will from past Resident Evil games, it got a very mixed reaction critically, and this opinion generally turned worse and worse as time went on. Especially after the series course corrected in several stages.
Firstly, they somewhat learned from their mistakes by making the Resident Evil Revelations games feel more like the older survivor horror games in the franchise whilst having gameplay that was much closer to Resident Evil 4 than what it had evolved to with Resident Evil 6.
Still, with Revelations 1 and 2 seeming small not main numbered entries in the franchise, and with Revelations 1 initially launching on Nintendo 3DS, it was no wonder that the excitement around the franchise significantly cooled.
Other spin off games like Operation Racoon City and Umbrella Corps didn’t help the franchise, and it wouldn’t be until the new direction of Resident Evil 7 Biohazard that the games would really make a big comeback.
Even then, I feel like it was that game’s radical new direction, fresh storyline and return to horror that first caught everyone’s attention, combind with what happened next.
Resident Evil 2 remake brought back maybe the most loved PSOne game and gave it Resident Evil 4 style gameplay which itself was another big departure from what Capcom had just done with Resident Evil 7. Still, RE2 Remake was much more grounded and horror based than the sometimes too action focused era of RE4 and RE5 and this was followed up with the string of RE8 Village, RE3 Remake, RE4 Remake and RE9 Requiem which other than a dip in public opinion with RE3 revived the series.
In all these games though, they’ve never returned to the stylings of RE6 and it’ll be interesting to see how the game is handled if ever remade but I suspect it’ll be significantly different.
