Dull as dishwater and no fun to play.

The shooting sucks, and … that’s basically the whole game! It just feels bad. Your shots have no impact and there's next to no gore or dismemberment, despite, uh, the subject matter.

I guess there's some good stuff in here for big fans of RE lore (yikes) and it's fun to see some of the classic locales presented this way, but it was legitimately hard for me to stay awake through even an hour of this. (Doesn't help that it starts with a retelling of everyone's favorite thrill ride, RESIDENT EVIL 0.)

As a big fan of stone cold classic THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD 2, I know what a good zombie rail shooter looks like and have since the late '90s. Given the series' pedigree, this is a big and marginally tragic whiff.

As a big RE fan, I had fun with Umbrella Chronicles since it provides a different view of story parts across other RE games and adds new segments and certain tie-ins that I personally didn't take them too seriously but had fun experiencing them.

For being an on-rail shooter type of game, it can be quite challenging with certain enemy having limited hitboxes. Trying to find collectibles within the levels can be fun since it makes you pay attention to objects in the background and the game can be fairly detailed.

This definitely gets my vote for other RE fans to give it a shot and experience different parts of other RE games in a new perspective and gameplay type.

Not a horrible game, but not one I'd jump to play again anytime soon, since the game has quite a few glaring flaws, such as: the music being incredibly forgettable - shocking for RE, extremely jarring and poor voice acting for the most part (they butchered my girl Rebecca), unbalanced enemy attack damage and health, and being weak and extremely short retellings of RE0, RE[make] and RE3 to work for 2-player, two of which being beloved entries into the franchise and RE0 being the newest "fixed camera" styled entry. Some mechanics, like the herbs are used weirdly, only healing you up when on screen instead of being stashed like any other RE game and ammo drops being for a specific gun rather than the one you equipped, negating the purpose of the weapon select screen.
What the game does well on however is its new stories like the Fall of Umbrella and the various "backstory" levels and missions, obviously being the main selling point of this game, giving extra content for the games mentioned before (and RE2) which is worth it in my opinion. The backstory missions aren't multiplayer on a first playthrough, so this game isn't too friendly to 2-players, despite making accomodations in the stories to fit them.
Overall, I'd recommend and rather play Darkside Chronicles over Umbrella, since that has better voice acting, story retellings and less infuriating and problematic areas.

Fun game! But not really a true resident evil experience

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is a first person, on the rail’s shooter, light shooter arcade game for the Wii that tells a non-canon recap of the original Resident Evil 0, The Resident Evil 1 GameCube Remake and the original Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. It also lets us play side stories and mission that took place in between these games and a full extra story mode about the downfall of umbrella at the end, which all of those extra stories are considered canon, so before the new “RE2 Remake style REmake” universe started that currently as of the time of writing this includes RE2, RE3, RE4, RE7 and RE8. So, playing these before those came out was a great way to experience the full story in a cinematic way and get extra stories that happen in the universe on the side and although the missions that remake the events of 1,0 and 3 aren’t considered canon they still are a great way to see the old games story without having to buy an old console, of course now you can just download the originals on pc or like I said these don’t really retell the story well anymore considering these games have been getting remakes that seem to fit into their own universe anyways its still great fun to play these if you are into arcade on the rail shooters or just simply want to see these bonus side stories. As on the rails shooter there is no puzzle solving or anything like that, as the player you go along for the ride and see everything from your characters perspectives as they rush though the retold levels of the classic games and shoot at whatever comes on screen. The monsters are mostly all classic versions of creatures from the older games with some new characters and enemies in the bonus missions and the Umbrellas End story is an entirely original story about umbrellas downfall. You have an infinite ammo basic pistol and a weapon wheel of regular guns from the series that require ammo that you can get by aiming over items on screen and collecting them as they come up. The environments are also breakable and allow for you to find hidden objects and healing items. This game can be a bit frustrating towards the end especially if you are playing it alone, so I suggest playing it with a friend, it’s a lot more fun. The way they retell the stories of the original games is pretty spot on most of the time but also has moments where they go off the rails so to speak and do their own thing, but the general story is pretty accurate. One minor thing that irked me was the RE1 remake story in this game just ignores Barry for some dumb reason and doesn’t mention or show him ever even though he’s supposed to be there, and I couldn’t tell you why. I also wasn’t a huge fan of how they told RE3s old story and that’s more of what I’m talking about when I say it goes “off the rails” but again as a shooter game whatever its fun, I’m pretty sure the new universe they are making in the Remakes are what’s canon now anyways. The bonus stories were really cool, and I wish Umbrellas End was its own game but that will probably never happen and as fun as it is obviously the real resident evil games especially a lot of the remakes are much more fun and worth the time but I do wish this game would get a remastered port or a remake or something because I did enjoy it and if you are a new comer and want to experience it unless you have a Wii or a PS3 you probably won’t be able to experience this, though I’m sure it’s probably playable on a PC with the right emulators but I’d much rather get a remastered port for the switch or something. This game did get a sequel called “The Dark Side Chronicles” and I will go over that one next. Overall if you like Resident Evil, on the rail arcade shooters or just have a Wii and wanna experience something new I do highly recommend this game its just not a true survival horror game it’s a fun action shooter like something you’d see at a Dave n Buster or round 1 machine but on a disc.
7.5/10

Es la primera vez que una franquicia como Resident Evil incursiona en una nueva modalidad de juego. The Umbrella Chronicles es el primer Rail Shooter de la saga de los muertos vivientes y nos cuenta los sucesos ocurridos entre el Resident Evil Zero y Nemesis (dejando a un lado la segunda parte) desde otra perspectiva, haciendo énfasis en elementos a los que no se les prestó mucha atención en el pasado. Es un juego que se siente muy bien, con un gameplay clásico de los juegos del género y una historia que ya es bastante conocida. Sus gráficas son buenas teniendo en cuenta la capacidad de la consola nipona y sus escenas cinemáticas harán que los seguidores se sientan complacidos. Es una buena opción para todos aquellos videojugadores que llegaron tarde a la industria y quieran conocer rápidamente la historia de una de sus mejores franquicias. Claro está, que para aquellos que cuenten con más tiempo, se recomienda jugar los originales, que, sin duda alguna, son mejores.

This game is definitely no masterpiece. That said, it's about as good as it could be for a home lightgun shooter. Its representation of different memorable moments from the core games is aesthetically faithful; this is particularly impressive since it is mostly translating lovingly crafted 2d backgrounds into fully 3d environments. Gameplay-wise, it has some consistency problems when it comes to difficulty. Some enemies are just way, way too spongey. Most of the boss fights, however, are a treat, though it'd be nice if more of them felt more puzzley and less like rote endurance tests.

Last note - The reused score pieces from the original games are obviously top-notch, but almost all of the new music is awful. There is this one funky track in particular that just feels wildly out of place -- I get that it's a fun co-op shooter but even Carn-Evil felt spookier than this does most of the time.

I'm a sucker for light gun shooters and while I still found it to be a moderately enjoyable experience overall, it's clear The Umbrella Chronicles could have been much more. When it's at its best, it manages to be not only enjoyable on its own but also a fun romp through Resident Evil nostalgia. At its worst though, it's padded, tedious, and frankly frustrating. The game doesn't have a continuous narrative, but rather multiple sub-scenarios with contained plots. The best of these is easily the Resident Evil Remake scenario, which is probably the most consistently well-designed of the bunch. Revisiting my favorite RE game in full 3D but being able to gun down every enemy that gave me trouble prior was both fun and exciting. Resident Evil Zero's scenario was no slouch either. While Zero was never exactly the most creative or exciting RE game, it's represented well here with great recreations of its locations and solid design. Umbrella's End, the only scenario with an original story is pretty solid as well, featuring a cool Russian location, increased difficulty, and a story that ties into future RE games (though admittedly not too well). All of this sounds pretty solid, and you'd be right, the game's shooting can be good fun and the variety of locations and playable characters means you won't get too bored easily. However, the game is a bit slower than your average light gun shooter, and I think it could have benefitted from being sped up a bit. The main problem with The Umbrella Chronicles is that at some point, developer Cavia just seemingly got lazy. Resident Evil 3's scenario isn't even an adaptation of the game it's supposedly based on. You never visit any of the locations from RE3 nor fight any of the unique enemies from it. Every enemy is taken from the other scenarios, and every map is ripped straight out of Resident Evil Outbreak borderline unchanged, you can't make that up. Nemesis, an antagonist so iconic and imposing that he was in the title of the original game, doesn't even show up until the last of the RE3 levels and you never see him go one-winged angel as he did in the original. All of the smaller mini-scenarios, while they fill in additional lore details that had previously gone unexplained in the mainline games, just reuse areas from the main scenarios and aren't worth playing.

These mini-scenarios do have a narrative line that does somewhat continue through them, however, featuring a new antagonist, Sergei Vladimir, who rivals Albert Wesker for control of the Umbrella Corporation. Sergei is unfortunately a very boring villain, encapsulating almost every evil Russian general trope that every piece of media since the 1980s has repeated ad nauseam. His motivations are to revive the TALOS project, yet another Tyrant offshoot whom he refers to as "beautiful" as all RE villains tend to do, and of course, mutates into a giant grotesque monster at the end. He's as par for the course as they come for the series and his villainy is constantly upstaged by Wesker's cool swagger, only further proving how uninteresting he is. Nevertheless, although The Umbrella Chronicles' original story isn't very entertaining, I will give props to Cavia for attempting to solve previously unanswered questions about certain events in the mainline series, which it does relatively well. It's nothing exceptional, but I can always appreciate fleshing out a pre-existing world in a matter that is consistent with the original works. The framing of each scenario as Wesker writing a report on past events is also rather cool.

I've always said that one of the parts of light gun shooters that appealed to me is that they tended to be rather flashy fun despite their shallow nature, and visually The Umbrella Chronicles mostly looks the part. The environments from RE0 and RE1R are lovingly recreated in full 3D with great accuracy if my memory serves me well. There is sufficient detail in these environments and I love the degree of destruction that the player can cause with their grenades, which makes it feel like your rather simple actions do affect the world around you, and is also just rather satisfying. Enemy models also look the part well enough, however, I am pretty sure most of them are ripped directly from their respective games. However, this is where the positives mostly end, and the rest of the game looks rather cheap. Character models animate rather stiffly, and while this isn't the biggest deal in the world considering the game is primarily in first-person, it looks rather awkward any time the game attempts any sort of cinematic cutscene. As I stated prior, the RE3 scenario quite directly reuses maps from Outbreak on the PlayStation 2, and while I'd argue Outbreak was one of the best-looking games on the platform, it was primarily played from a rather distant third-person perspective. When these maps are viewed up close, their weaknesses, such as absurdly low-resolution textures are revealed and therefore cannot match the fidelity offered by the rest of the game. The pre-rendered CGI cutscenes aren't very good either. While they may look decent in still frames, they animate rather awkwardly and the lip sync is always at least a little bit off. On the flip side, however, the game's soundtrack is more promising. While it does fall into pretty conventional RE territory, it's a very well-produced score that for the most part effectively underlines the mood and tone the game needs to meet. However, there were some points where I felt the music was simply too calm for the action on screen, such as "Raccoon's Destruction" which sounded more like something from a James Bond porn parody rather than Resident Evil.

Although this review seems predominantly negative, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is still a decent time in the right hands. If you're a fan of the series, the game offers quite a lot for you, such as nostalgic recreations of past locations, additional bits of lore that prior games left blank, and a decent amount of replayability as the game has quite a lot of unlockable memos which help expand upon the universe. However, if you're not a fan of the series, you may be turned off by the slower-paced gameplay, the inconsistent scenario quality, and the amount of padding the game can have at points. There are certainly better light gun games on the Wii, but this certainly isn't a bad one by any stretch of the imagination.

I don’t have a ton to say about this game. It’s a relatively fun light gun shooter with Resident Evil theming. Game contains 4 different scenarios: abridged versions of RE1 (2002) and RE0, a very strange faux retelling of RE3 and an original story “Umbrella’s End” that involves Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine giving the killing blow to Umbrella by leading a raid on one of their last facilities. These scenarios are narratively linked in a fun way. They’re all set up as Albert Wesker studying and recounting reports that Umbrella compiled on all of these events. The game also contains bonus missions related to these scenarios that show events not featured in the original games like how Wesker escaped the Arklay facility, what Rebecca was doing in the Arklay mansion before everyone else arrived, how Ada Wong escaped Raccoon City after the events of RE2. None of these added scenarios contribute a ton of new information (probably a good thing) but they’re generally fun levels to play through and can feature some nice character moments like with Rebecca’s added RE1 scenarios.

Don’t have any big complaints about the light gun gameplay. It can be a fun challenge and was entertaining throughout my play through. I even enjoyed going back through a few of the levels to get better scores.

My favorite thing about this game as a fan of the RE series was definitely getting to revisit the nicely recreated locations from RE1 and RE0 from a first person perspective. I would add RE3 to this but this game’s RE3 scenario doesn’t feature any iconic locations from that game except the police station and doesn’t follow the plot of RE3 like the other games do with RE1 and RE0. Unsure why this happened but feels like this scenario got rushed for whatever reason and is definitely kind of disappointing given how much I like RE3.

The retelling of the stories of the games featured is also a little bit disappointing due to how little time gets spent on each game. There are only 3 main levels per game featured so there’s just not enough time to go through all the memorable moments and plot points from those games. For comparison the Darkside Chronicles - the other RE light gun game for the Wii features retellings of RE2 and Code Veronica and dedicates 8 surprisingly long levels to each of them which allows for the space to have a condensed but complete retelling of these stories.

Despite its flaws and the things I wish it did differently this is still a fun light gun game, which is all it really needs to be, and I overall enjoyed my time with it.

Despite the developers clearly being on a tight budget, I had a lot of fun with this game. As someone who enjoys playing these types of games in co-op, I was disappointed by the single-player campaigns. However, the game does a commendable job of adapting the events from the original games, which impressed me. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the RE Zero scenario presented here is the best way to experience Rebecca and Billy's story, considering that the original game itself isn't very good.

Resident Evil is less known for their light-gun arcade games as these are held in public places that are niche hang out spots. The Wii with its remote and Zapper attachment is just begging to be used as a light-gun and many of these games followed and Capcom jumped on the bandwagon. Umbrella Chronicles is one of the more solid light-gun games on Wii, but it must be played co-op or you’re not going to have a good time.

The game has four chapters with each one following bits and pieces from Resident Evil 0, 1, and 3: Nemesis respectively with the final chapter being an exclusively unique section just for this game. Each chapter has three or four sub-chapters and a few side chapters that are shorter and feature an alternate perspective featuring Ada Wong, Albert Wesker, and one Umbrella operative Hunk. Story-wise, don’t expect to get a comprehensive telling of the Resident Evil series as pre-rendered cut-scenes are chopped up and it’s not very cohesive or easy to understand. This is more for people who played the older games before.

Outside of that the shooting itself is rather solid. There are over a dozen weapons in the game with your side pistol having unlimited ammo and various other guns like sub-machine, shotgun, rocket launchers, and hand-cannons making up the majority of the arsenal, but the ammo for these guns is extremely limited, and that’s the first downfall of this game. Why make an action game from survival horror and keep the ammo count low? The pistol does very little damage and just forget about beating a boss with it. Ammo is incredibly scarce and requires you to have a partner as some scenarios and waves just can’t be defeated with only the pistol. Hordes of enemies sometimes over a dozen will spawn in front of you and popping them with 8-10 shots each with a pistol is just not feasible. With a second player, it’s possible, but solo is not. After chapter 3 I had to resort to a partner because it just gets too hard and too demanding for one player.

There are a good variety of enemies in the game with some not appearing until the final chapter, and the bosses are all unique and incredibly challenging and require great reflexes and aim and actual skill. Bosses are recycled from previous games, but fighting them in a 3D environment is pretty awesome. Some bosses have multiple stages, but these repeat in a cycle and can even include quick time events that require button presses or a quick waggle. Quick time events are peppered throughout the game, and thankfully not abused, but they don’t appear on-screen long enough and the waggle ones won’t trigger unless you start waggling the second it appears on the screen. This can lead to frustrating deaths.

Speaking of deaths, if you find a health spray this acts as an extra life and can resurrect you on the spot, but without one, you start at the last checkpoint. There are herbs lying around for health, ammo, grenades, and barrels just begging to be blown up to take out large groups. This is one of the most difficult light-gun games I have ever played, and sadly it’s impossible to finish solo without having unlocked the infinite ammo. The first two chapters have a nice difficulty scale and it just ramps up way too hard on chapter 3 and 4. There’s also an issue with the game feeling too repetitive and not having enough variety like vehicle scenes similar to other light-gun games. It relies too much on just shooting the same enemies ad nauseum.

Let’s talk about production values. Capcom is never one to skimp on a Resident Evil game, usually, and while Umbrella Chronicles looks fine it shows it doesn’t push the Wii in the right direction. It looks like a GameCube game at best with muddy low-resolution textures, but somehow there’s still slowdown when too much is going on. It really could have looked better, even on the Wii as there are better-looking games on the system, but what’s here is fine. The menus are pretty ugly with not much going on and everything looks so blurry and low-res. I need to redact my GameCube comparison from earlier, it’s more like a Dreamcast port, to be honest.

Overall, Umbrella Chronicles is a decent light-gun game that requires a second player or you won’t get very far. The boss fights are bombastic and fun and each is unique, but the same enemies repeat over and over and the scenarios don’t change. You’re just running down hallways or open areas blasting enemies. The game goes on way longer than it needs to with each chapter taking about 30-45 minutes to complete if you include the bonus missions. There is a lack in variety when it comes to other stuff to do to make this game just more exciting to play. The extras aren’t worth unlocking as they require S ranks in each chapter, most of the time, and after finishing this game once there’s no real reason to go back.

Finally one of these Resident Evil lightgun games is an on-rails arcade shooter. I really wish I could have played this as intended on the Wii, but I think I made do with an emulator + mouse & keyboard. What you get here is a retelling of RE Zero, RE1, and RE3, each with additional scenarios showing untold stories of those games. Wesker escaping the mansion before it explodes, Ada escaping Raccoon City before it explodes, Rebecca's actions bridging Zero and RE1. It's some nice bonus stories because the retellings are pretty paired down.
The most egregious is RE3's levels which don't actually recreate any environments from 3 and instead reuse areas wholly from the Outbreak games, and not even the levels in Outbreak that are sourced from RE3. It's a version of RE3 where the game ends at the Police Department and Nemesis only shows up at the very end and sounds like a robot. Booooo.
There's a secret bonus campaign showing Umbrella's final days as Chris and Jill assault their final fortress in Russia. It's at this point that the game throws every non-zombie enemy in fat waves at you. I am no longer scared of hunter or lickers because this game had me slay 20 each just to walk down a hallway. They even reuse the bat boss from RE0.
There's a new Umbrella executive, Colonel Vladimir, who likes to lick knives. He's allegedly Wesker's nemesis in the company and works alongside the Red Queen AI, which I've been told is a character from the movies?
It was at this point that I was glad this was the end of Umbrella because they're no longer compelling villains. They were so much more threatening when they were a cold corporation looking to make a buck with dark experiments, but so much backstory has been laid upon them, with so many insane researchers and soldiers, that they're now a weird hybrid of eugenicists, PMC, intelligence agency, cult, and leech wizards.
As a lightgun game Umbrella Chronicles is fun. Your pistol has unlimited ammo, but you can scour the surroundings for additional weapons and heals, usually by destroying furniture. All the environments are destructible and it's oddly satisfying to blow up these familiar locations. Weapons are upgradable with the points you earn from ranks and eventually you can get every weapons with unlimited ammo.
Boss fights are annoying because they're based around targeting weakpoints and the camera just won't stay still on them for you to do any meaningful damage. The Plant 42 fight is especially awful.
If there's a standout mission it's the Umbrella Chronicles take on the 4th Survivor mission from RE2. Here Hunk's bloody escape from the RPD is overlayed with radio broadcasts from the desperate and dying citizens of Raccoon City.
If I wasn't so nostalgic for lightgun shooters I'd probably be harsher on it.