The AI controlling the other three members of your squad is pretty dumb, but you earn Experience Points (XP) for reviving them, and it would be too easy otherwise. And even what you would characterise as the game's flaws don't mar the experience – it's not the most polished or lavishly crisp-looking game, but that just brings back memories of Resident Evils 2 and 3. What ensues is deliciously hectic and, in the glorious tradition of Resident Evil, both challenging and scary.
Thus, you get a basic storyline (although there are still – mercifully short – cut-scenes to be found as you hit checkpoints in its missions), over-the-shoulder shooting with a Focus mode that brings up a more or less first-person perspective and the ability to choose between six characters with different attributes – an explosives expert, two all-rounders, a scientist, a medic and a stealth-merchant.įrom these operatives, employed by Umbrella Security Services (that is, the military wing of the company that caused the zombie outbreak in the first place, which has inevitably been your enemy in Resident Evils of yore) you make up a four-person squad, and must make your way through seven satisfyingly long missions surviving the unwelcome attentions not just of zombies and mutants (BOWs or Bio-Organic Weapons in Resi-speak) but also of SpecOps squads. It's Resident Evil, but not as we know it, yet exactly as we know it.Ĭapcom brought in developer Slant Six, best known for the more recent SOCOM games, to make it, so it won't surprise to learn that its gameplay feels not unlike that of SOCOM. Yet at the same time, it feels gloriously familiar, since it takes place entirely in Raccoon City, at exactly the time the events in Resident Evils 2 and 3 were playing out. Gameplay-wise, it's a squad-based third-person shooter, with the emphasis very much on action, so it feels quite unlike the core games to play. Operation Raccoon City, though, is different.
There have been plenty of Resident Evil sub-games in the past, which tended to take place in the game's familiar universe and either deviate from its core gameplay or flesh out hitherto unrecounted parts of the storyline, but few displayed much credibility. If you can't wait until then, you might want to check out Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, which provides an intriguing starter while the main course is assembled. After a three-year hiatus, Resident Evil is well and truly back in 2012, with a positive welter of releases bearing the imprint of the genre-defining survival-horror franchise.ģDS fans have already enjoyed the stupendous Resident Evil: Revelations, and the next full-blown iteration of the series, Resident Evil 6, is due to arrive in November.
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