Although I enjoyed RE5, I didn't really feel interested in RE6. I've heard it was more of the same as RE4 and RE5, no original ideas. The one I was curious was RE7. However, for completeness' sake, I played it too.
In the end, I have mixed feelings about RE6. There's aspects of it that are great and huge improvements, and other aspects that are just like in RE4 or even worse. RE6 tries to combine lots of ideas, consisting in 4 different campaigns with different characters that are all interconnected. It returns back to the zombie/virus concept, while keeping also the parasites(now they're called J'avo for some reason) although they're also caused by the virus administered differently, so it is quite diverse, that's true. The action happens in different parts of the world, and the timelines of each campaign overlap, and sometimes you play the same moment twice but from another character's perspective.
Let's start with the easy part: Graphics are still awesome, even more now, and the detail and color it achieves is great. The setting is more focused in dark areas or at night-time, and the end result of shadowy areas feels again scary, finally. It is still an action game, but it recovers some horror elements that I've been missing from RE4 and RE5. Zombies are so much creepier somehow, maybe because they show they've lost their intelligence in the process, or because they're rotting. Not that parasites are nice, but with parasites in previous games it seemed like they were still people, and it hits very different if they're like mutated people with superpowers and mind-controlled or if they're actually dead, rotting people that were alive before. Zombies now die gruesomely, falling apart, while the parasite enemies show varieties of mutation that are also disgusting, like the two giant grubs that explode. Hunters return, together with plenty of other varieties of animal-like creatures, and regenerators too, although they don't have spines this time but still move creepily and jump at you.
The gameplay is almost identical to RE4 and RE5, third-person view where you aim at where you shoot and you need to be mobile. They added a lot of physical contact, which is nice: yes, now you can punch and stab enemies as a valid way of killing them, and it works well except you're limited by a fatigue attribute that gets used in these attacks or while running. The interface is a bit more chaotic, even changing between campaigns, and the inventory is weird, I didn't really get it apart from the fact that you grab things until you cannot grab them any more and then you may need to use something or just discard it. This time you don't upgrade weapons nor grab money to purchase anything, but at the end of a chapter (each campaign has 5 chapters) you can use the points to get specific boosts, although you can only have 3 active boosts at a given time. Your save file actually registers your status, like in RE5, allowing you to replay chapters, change settings or re-select boosts, but there's less motivation for it, since you don't have the shop system or the money or the individual weapon upgrades. Overall the changes are not bad, not great either, just shuffling a bit the situation, or even simplifying it I'd say: You don't need to worry much about anything, you just need to keep playing the campaigns. Enemies continue to drop ammo and health, and sometimes points (since there's no money and you can use the points to buy boosts). You will get the weapons, they're not secretly hidden or anything, and you need to use all of them in different situations. Each campaign even has different ones, although some repeat of course.
There's a lot of characters you play as, because each campaign has 2 except for the last one, with only 1. You can select who to play as, although the game has a very sexist bias and the "proposed" main player tends to be a guy in every campaign where there's a choice between guy or girl. To talk about the game it's easier to talk about each campaign separately now, because they're very different experiences.
Overall, what we need to know is that Umbrella is now called Neo-Umbrella (which is ridiculous, why would you change your name to that) and they've developed a C-Virus that turns people into zombies or mutates them into J'avo or turns them into cocoons that then transform into big monsters or, basically, turns them into whatever the plot needs.
The first campaign you play as Leon or as Helena. Leon has turned into less of an asshole, although he's still "defending the president of USA" and such crap. he's still quite intense, more than in RE2, but now he seems more reasonable and he's actually likeable. Helena is a new character that is also part of the people defending him. And the game starts as you shoot the president because he turned into a zombie. Of course Leon is like traumatized by it (while I cheered as it happened), and Helena says she was somehow involved and that has info about it, but she won't tell until going to some church. You need to cross the now-infected city, helping survivors (although they all have awful cutscene deaths or similar) and reach the church. This area is full of zombies, it's dark and it's scary again, finally. You get back the feeling of RE2 and RE3 of an infested city, which is dramatic and tense and proper horror again. The church is like very very far from you and you go through a cemetery, where zombies are even creepier, as they're old corpses that are coming out of their tombs, again a move in the right horror direction. Helena keeps saying she'll explain something but she doesn't, you reach the church and find some secret lab with some disturbing things, like a video where apparently Ada Wong emerges from a C-Virus cocoon, although that makes no sense at the time. You find Ada there too, all cool and mysterious, also not telling you what's happening, and Helena finds her sister that was kidnapped, but she's infected and you need to fight her (while she's naked, of course, turned into a monster but a nice-looking naked-lady monster. Sexism is still a big thing in this game). Eventually you learn that the president wanted to explain publicly how the government was also at fault in RE1-RE3 because they were working with Umbrella, and this other guy from the government, Simmons, that is kind of your boss actually works for Neo-Umbrella and infected the president, gaining access from Helena after kidnapping her sister. After all this you decide to go against this guy, which for some reason makes you travel to China, where your plane gets infected and crashes, of course. You meet with Sherry from RE2, now an adult and also working with you, and some guy that is helping her called Jake, that has taken the mantle of asshole protagonist in this game. Together you all fight a big monster similar to Nemesis from RE3, Ustanak, that is following them. You get separated and fight some regenerators, and then you meet Chris Redfield who's very angry at Ada and wants to kill her. Together with him you find an Ada, that has different clothes(purple dress) than the previous Ada(red jacket and black pants) and acts more evil, but you convince Chris to not kill her because you trust Ada. Somehow after that the whole city gets infected from a C-Virus missile that is launched on it and is full of zombies. Then Simmons gets infected too, and he becomes a huge monster that you end up defeating with the help of the first Ada(the red and black one) before she disappears, ending the campaign.
This was a bit confusing, because it was. In the first campaign you don't know why Chris is so mad at Ada. Also, it's weird that Ada keeps switching between two outfits, but Leon or Chris never analyze this further. Also, it was a bit anticlimactic to kill the big bad guy in the first campaign. A problem this game has is that we've run out of Albert Wesker as charismatic bad guy, so they had to introduce random ones and pretend they had control over a global conspiracy while also being quite easy to track and kill in the end. And this push of being bigger and bigger and bigger, started in RE4, makes it hard and ridiculous because stakes are higher and higher, crazy people want to basically destroy the world for no apparent reason and well, doesn't makes much sense what's their ultimate goal, really. Having said that, this campaign has a creepy vibe that is much welcomed, with proper zombies and dark and mysterious areas and catacombs, stuff that is actually creepy and I like in a horror game.
So, second campaign: You are Chirs Redfield again, more buff and gorilla-like, angrier and more soldier-like than before. You're joined by another soldier, your second-in-command, called Piers. You seem to have forgotten something that happened and are just drinking somewhere, and you're brought back to commanding a squad to fight J'avos in china leading a new platoon. In the process you somehow finally remember a previous situation like that some months ago, fighting J'avos, where your platoon discovered some C-Virus lab. You cross paths with Sherry and Jake, and Sherry has the mission to bring Jake back so you let them go even if you and Jake get all alpha-male on each other and seem to want to fight (blergh). You end up finding a lab, and in there there's Ada Wong (purple one), that betrays you and infects all your squad with the C-Virus, turning them into horrible monsters, except Piers and you. After this flashback you go back to current time, where you again loose all your squad except Piers to monsters and are following the purple Ada. You find her, but Leon stops you from killing her because he trusts her (by now it's clear there's two Adas, the original red-and-black and the doppelganger, which seems to be the one you saw emerging from the cocoon, but Leon and Chris didn't understand this and cannot tell them apart even after seeing one in different clothes minutes ago.). Things get confusing, and you follow her again to an aircraft carrier (both Adas are there but you don't notice the difference) where the purple one gets shot to her apparent death in a very anti-climatic way. You travel to some sunken platform where a superweapon is being created, and also discover that Jake is the son of Wesker, he's immune to C-Virus and his blood can be used to make a cure, and you again fight stupidly with him, just saying you killed him and kind of taunting him to kill you in an unnecessary way. You split ways in the end and as him and Sherry go away to extract the cure you and Piers stay to stop the super-weapon. The super-weapon seems to be some type of giant skeleton/mutant/zombie thing that emits C-Virus stuff, and Piers ends up getting infected. However this just means he gets cool superpowers, and together you defeat the monster. Piers sends you away while remaining in the sinking lab, and giving the final strike to the monster and dying together. You survive and are seen again about to lead another platoon of soldiers on some other mission.
Ok, this clarifies some things, while others remain as obscure as ever: Why exactly is Neo-Umbrella creating a giant zombie that infects everything? I mean, what's the benefit of that? Apart from being able to cackle maniacally, of course. And why is Chris still doing missions when he clearly has a horrible case of PTSD? Also, the fake Ada is killed so easily and it's also not clear what exactly she expected to gain from her actions. This campaign starts to have over-the-top action too, although the plane crash on the previous one was pretty exaggerated (and how you survive it so easily). The different timelines crossing is fun, but the plot is still an absolute mess. Also, Piers was clearly conscious enough, maybe he'd be able to control the virus, but he stupidly decides to kill himself for some reason when he had cool superpowers. Sure he was ugly, but well, he's a soldier and shouldn't care that much about that, should have seen if he could be stable and have powers, that'd be cool. But the writers of this one were too conventional to let that happen, that's clear. This campaign felt a bit like a drag after the second half, I have to admit. But well, we deciphered some other aspects of the plot, while still having some doubts (ignoring the ridiculous parts that are just bad writing).
Let's move to the third campaign: You're Jake and Sherry. Jake is a mercenary that has been infected by C-Virus but doesn't transform, and Sherry is tasked with rescuing him and convincing him to give a bit of blood. He accepts for some ridiculous price, and joins her into leaving an area infected with J'avos. You cross paths with Chris and Piers, play a bit together and then you go separate ways. At this point you meet the Ustanak, that seems another version of Nemesis in charge to capture Jake to avoid him giving the cure for the virus. You avoid it as much as you can, and it's revealed that Sherry can regenerate from wounds thanks to the infection with G-virus her father gave her in RE2, or something like that. There's some discussion about bad fathers, of course, and you end up being both captured for some months. You're not killed so in the end you escape. In the process you're mysteriously saved several times by a shadowy figure (it's clearly the good Ada, even if you don't see her right away), and meet Leon and Helena. You fight the Ustanak again but now from their perspective, and somehow after this and some more plot about Simmons you get captured again and send to the secret platform. In there you again escape, find Chris and Piers and go your separate ways. As you're exiting the place, you have a final confrontation with the Ustanak and you finally kill him for good. Jake decides to help for less money, and accepts his father was a kind of bastard in the process but that he doesn't have to be.
So, this campaign ties up the cure subplot, but apart from that doesn't introduce much else. I think it's the one that felt more like a chore, because it has a lot of areas that you already explored with other characters. Also you fight J'avo, which are more annoying than zombies. There's also the fact that this campaign exaggerates a lot the action, even more than in previous ones, with car-riding through houses, impossible jumps, surviving falling from helicopters, etc... However, the biggest "sin" this campaign makes is that has been labelled as "Jake" campaign. Jake is a new character, a rather selfish person, clearly an anti-hero, and not even as half as interesting as Sherry! Sherry from RE2! I wanna know what happened to her, how she discovered she's almost immortal now, regenerating from horrible wounds as if it's not a big deal, how is she working against the monsters that plagued her as a child, if she kept in touch with Claire too...I mean, I have so many questions about Sherry! And guess what? The game doesn't answer any of those. They focus on Jake. That's, to me, the biggest, worst problem of RE6, the blatant sexism in this campaign in particular, the inability to see that we don't need more stupid male protagonists, we have already lots, we could have explored this other character a lot more. I mean, of course I played as Sherry, but the focus of the campaign is Jake, and it's the main thing in RE6, the introduction of this guy. There's also the fact that we haven't heard anything else from Jill or from Claire, and that would also be interesting. RE games do have a good list of interesting female characters, and they could have split the game between them, really. But well, in RE6 we did get a little treat, the last campaign.
In the fourth campaign, you play as Ada Wong. The real one, in red and black. You play alone of course. First you start in a submarine full of J'avos, a submarine that proceeds to sink, quite a cool section actually. In there you find proof of the other Ada, which puzzles you, and you don't know what's going on. Then you go to the research facility Leon and Helena also visited, and you help them fight Helena's sister. At this time when Leon asks whats going on and Ada says she doesn't have time to explain, now it makes sense: Ada, you, have really no idea either and are just investigating. You discover the video with the fake Ada, and you go to China to investigate too. You find out about Jake and Sherry and decide to help them a bit, saving them from the shadows, what we experienced in the previous campaign without knowing who saved us exactly. You follow the fake Ada to the aricarft carrier where Chris and Piers are too, and they confuse you with the fake one and chase you. You see how the fake Ada "dies", but this time you manage to talk to her, she infects herself with more C-Virus and turns into a giant face monster that you need to kill, a better end for her, considering she was the other evil guy in this game, apart from Simmons. You figure out she was another person, a research partner of Simmons that turned into a copy of you for some reason and to blame you on stuff, so you go back to where Simmons is and help Leon and Helena in killing him, as in the first campaign.
Ada's campaign was the most enjoyable I'd say, because even if she did outrageous action stunts, it had quite original settings plus she was the smartest character of them all, really. The others could be quite stupid, but Ada being herself means she was more aware of the general plot, and it's nice to play as a character that is actually intelligent enough. It was also nice to help others, and in general her campaign felt shorter and more informative and tying all general loose ends. It seemed easier too, somehow. The only problem is that at the end, instead of getting some little video of Ada doing something, they show Jake killing some random monster-guy, which is again a wasted moment to show more of whatever Ada was doing next. But oh well.
So that's RE6. The campaign was very ambitious, a bit too much, and it goes into exaggeration. The different timelines crossing is a bit confusing but not bad, although repeating scenarios does get tiresome. It's main problems were the need to make everything bigger, the stupid over-the-top action, Chris' evolution and the focus on Jake instead of Sherry, but the 1st and 4th campaign were quite solid and it went back to being more scary, which I find I prefer.
Since they had gone that big, they had to do something for RE7 to change the trend or they would have run into issues. So, for RE7 they re-analyzed the situation and took some risks. We'll talk in the next post, but I loved what they did in RE7.
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