Resident Evil 6 is a genuinely bad, dull, and bloated game that is somewhat redeemed by a very solid Mercenaries mode. The game's main problem is the lack of any significant level design. Capcom gives the player zero agency, railroading them through area after area, and while they may seem varied at first it quickly becomes clear that they're all the game design equivalent of straight corridors. This is at odds with the game's oddly deep movement system, which encourages players to flip stylishly, dodge roll, slide, dash, and generally maneuver around the game's combat arenas, which largely get very little use considering the aforementioned overly restraining levels. While Resident Evil 5 didn't offer the same level of exploration as prior games, it at least had combat arenas that you could move and position yourself in strategically, which 6 lacks. The combat loop isn't particularly satisfying either. Melee attacks are way too powerful, meaning you can practically punch the majority of common enemies to death, which can be further upgraded to do even more damage. Quickshots allow almost instant kills, which while surprisingly fun, do trivialize many enemy encounters by practically guaranteeing staggering the enemy without having to aim. Many enemies are downright annoying too, with the sniper and rocket launcher J'avo spawning in the middle of large hoards and stunlocking you while you're busy with other enemies. What makes all of this even worse is how this is spread out throughout four five-hour campaigns, each of which varies somewhat in quality but none of which is even passable. Leon's campaign is generally the fan favorite but I found it to be a largely dull enterprise without much to comment on. Chris's campaign felt the most in tune with what the game wanted to be, and I felt the J'avo worked better with the movement than the zombies did, but despite that, it's still a rather mind-numbingly boring enterprise.
Jake and Sherry's campaign has possibly the worst level in the entire game, with the "open-world" snowbound segment being an excessively large key hunt with annoying ice physics and a lack of real landmarks. It does improve the moment Ustanak shows up, but the extreme linearity of the game means that he never lives up to the high standards of Nemesis, coming off as a pale imitation. Ada's campaign was perhaps my least favorite, being essentially Separate Ways 2, of which I was already not a fan in Resident Evil 4. It's just a rehash of the other campaigns, reusing multiple boss fights and level setpieces, making it perhaps the most boring stretch of an already boring game. The game becomes a soul-sucking slog by this point and I was questioning whether I even wanted to finish it, but I forced myself through it hoping it would impress me even a little. These campaigns are overly long, bloated, poorly designed, and worst of all, downright unmemorable, and represent the worst elements of the 7th gen gaming industry.
The reason I can recommend this game at a heavy discount, however, is The Mercenaries mode. I've always loved Mercs as a side mode, I find it to be the perfect compliment to these games that never fail to addict me. I put about 25 hours easily into this one with friends, and while it's probably my least favorite of 4/5/6's Mercs modes, it's still absolutely worth putting time into. The movement system actually works here, as the large arena levels allow you to use your advanced maneuverability in ways that genuinely feel fluid and fun. There's a ton of content here, with possibly the most load-outs in the series for any singular Mercs modes. Part of why it's not my favorite in the series (aside from just generally preferring the gameplay loop of 4 and 5) is the relatively inconsistent map design. While I really enjoy quite a few of the maps, there are a few that I'm not particularly fond of, such as Requiem for War with its tight corridors and The Catacombs for the different ways enemies can gang up on you. Ada Wong is only unlocked by storming your way through the campaign, which does limit how well it works as a standalone experience, if to a minor degree. She can be unlocked by playing the Survivors DLC, but when your only two options are playing the worst campaign or buying awful DLC, its a poor situation. If you attempt to play Mercs with anyone else, you can only use maps that you both have which is ridiculously frustrating and also a massive time waster for people who just want to jump in without having to unlock things themselves. Nevertheless, despite these strange issues, it's still a mode with a lot of fun to offer and was seemingly the only part of the game I actually enjoyed.
Although I wasn't particularly impressed with RE5's storytelling, finding it bland and impossible to take seriously, RE6 might take it to another level. The story is unnecessarily hard to follow due to largely being told in medias res and out of sequential order. This makes things unnecessarily confusing for no real reason than continuing the game's mystery, which is easy to predict and makes the entire narrative framework feel entirely pointless when the extremely stupid plot twist is revealed. The plot itself isn't the stupidest I've seen, even for this series (Revelations is probably far stupider), but it follows a very strange narrative through line that I find an incredibly strange direction to take the series and not in a way that feels fresh or interesting, but rather perplexing from a creative standpoint.
The characterization is very weak for the most part, with Leon lacking much in the way of any interesting dynamics, Chris having a poorly-plotted Shadow the Hedgehog arc that lasts for all of two chapters, and Ada having zero development since RE4 making this a fairly boring affair for such beloved characters. There are two bright spots however: I actually found myself quite liking Piers, as he didn't put up with any of Chris's bullshit and helped to snap him back into a sensible soldier. His death scene was genuinely emotional and well done, especially with how mutated Piers never once spoke, further isolating Chris's pleas. I also liked the little characterization we got between Jake and Sherry, but unfortunately, there are maybe a handful of scenes with them bonding, so that element feels woefully underutilized. RE6's writing is just a mess of poor plotting, underbaked or underutilized characters, and messy structure that very understandably ended up becoming entirely inconsequential to the greater Resident Evil world setting.
In regards to presentation, I found RE6 to be oddly enough a major step back compared to RE5. While RE5's color grading is a controversial choice in the fanbase even today (I personally quite like it), I find it hard to understand why RE6's extreme contrast look was a better choice. Black levels are absurdly deep and easily give Doom 3 a run for its money in terms of "absurdly dark", while white levels bloom painfully, with there being almost zero middle ground in terms of color saturation. This not only makes the game excessively dark, now allowing the player to survey their environment, but it also means it can affect gameplay visibility at points too. The monster designs are incredibly boring, with certain monsters being obvious expies of monsters from prior games or other franchises. The bloodshots are self-admitted expies of the lickers, and the whoppers and shriekers are simply Left 4 Dead ripoffs. I dislike how a lot of the j'avo mutations, while conceptually interesting, always have to work around them still being able to use guns, somehow. The game also features surprisingly significant tech downgrades too. Character models feature less detail and complexity than they did in RE5, with Chris's model, in particular, featuring a flat block for hair instead of the realistic tufts from RE5, among other things. Texture quality is much lower, too, with giant walls in plain sight featuring extremely low-res textures without even a normalmap to simulate depth. Environmental detail is far lower, with a few areas which would stick out like a sore thumb even in Revelations. The area in which Jake and Sherry are captured and tortured has such little detail and low-res textures that it would look bad on the PS2. However, that's not to say there aren't positive aspects. Facial animation is a huge improvement over RE5, being much less cartoonish and more expressive. Shaders can actually be quite nice, with sweat on characters appearing very realistic. All in all, it's not an awful-looking game necessarily, but it looks average at best for the time, with its visually appealing aspects buried under a mountain of odd downgrades compared to its 2009 older brother.
Another major disappointment is the soundtrack, composed by a variety of people both within Capcom's internal sound team as well as outside commissioned musicians. RE6 represents a major musical shift from previous games, replacing the James Horner inspired horns and pounding percussion with a score composed almost entirely of strings. Percussion is oddly minimal for an action game, so the music doesn't push the action forward, nor does it ever deviate from this to be suitably atmospheric. The often pulse pounding music of RE5 especially propelled the player into a world of white-knuckle action, and RE6 doesn't give the same results. Unfortunately, RE6 just has zero musical atmosphere, preventing any real immersion into the game. There's no equivalent "save room" track (RE5 and Revelations didn't have save rooms proper, but they still had similar safe haven tracks), and any ambiance the game provides is weak. It primarily, no matter the situation, sticks with its strings, which isn't strictly a bad thing in concept, but the actual musical composition is bland, uninteresting, and sometimes annoyingly repetitive. The track that plays when Chris and Piers fight the helicopter is especially irritating. I listened to the majority of Capcom's official album, trying to see if perhaps the game's mind numbing action prevented me from properly appreciating the music, but no, it is still bland both in and out of context. There's one bonus though, and that's Heat on Beat 2012, the game's Mercs track. While I genuinely miss the individual character themes from RE4, HoB is an energetic, pulsing electronic track that keeps the pace up without getting tiring.
I went into Resident Evil 6 knowing that it wasn't going to be much of a horror game. I was still wanting to give the game a chance, as considering my moderate enjoyment of Silent Hill Downpour, it wouldn't be the first time I've appreciated something that didn't connect with the majority of players. Unfortunately, not only does RE6 not contain anything I enjoy out of Resident Evil as a franchise, but it's also just a poorly designed third-person shooter in its own right. With its overly long campaigns, restrictive level design, underutilized mechanics, unengaging story, mediocre visuals, and boring soundtrack, it stands, for me, as the worst mainline Resident Evil game (even if there were worse RE games that came out the same year). The Mercenaries mode is very good, and if you can find the game for about $5, it's worth checking out just for that if you won't be missing Ada. It's a game that seems confused of its own audience, and it certainly didn't find one in me.
Jake and Sherry's campaign has possibly the worst level in the entire game, with the "open-world" snowbound segment being an excessively large key hunt with annoying ice physics and a lack of real landmarks. It does improve the moment Ustanak shows up, but the extreme linearity of the game means that he never lives up to the high standards of Nemesis, coming off as a pale imitation. Ada's campaign was perhaps my least favorite, being essentially Separate Ways 2, of which I was already not a fan in Resident Evil 4. It's just a rehash of the other campaigns, reusing multiple boss fights and level setpieces, making it perhaps the most boring stretch of an already boring game. The game becomes a soul-sucking slog by this point and I was questioning whether I even wanted to finish it, but I forced myself through it hoping it would impress me even a little. These campaigns are overly long, bloated, poorly designed, and worst of all, downright unmemorable, and represent the worst elements of the 7th gen gaming industry.
The reason I can recommend this game at a heavy discount, however, is The Mercenaries mode. I've always loved Mercs as a side mode, I find it to be the perfect compliment to these games that never fail to addict me. I put about 25 hours easily into this one with friends, and while it's probably my least favorite of 4/5/6's Mercs modes, it's still absolutely worth putting time into. The movement system actually works here, as the large arena levels allow you to use your advanced maneuverability in ways that genuinely feel fluid and fun. There's a ton of content here, with possibly the most load-outs in the series for any singular Mercs modes. Part of why it's not my favorite in the series (aside from just generally preferring the gameplay loop of 4 and 5) is the relatively inconsistent map design. While I really enjoy quite a few of the maps, there are a few that I'm not particularly fond of, such as Requiem for War with its tight corridors and The Catacombs for the different ways enemies can gang up on you. Ada Wong is only unlocked by storming your way through the campaign, which does limit how well it works as a standalone experience, if to a minor degree. She can be unlocked by playing the Survivors DLC, but when your only two options are playing the worst campaign or buying awful DLC, its a poor situation. If you attempt to play Mercs with anyone else, you can only use maps that you both have which is ridiculously frustrating and also a massive time waster for people who just want to jump in without having to unlock things themselves. Nevertheless, despite these strange issues, it's still a mode with a lot of fun to offer and was seemingly the only part of the game I actually enjoyed.
Although I wasn't particularly impressed with RE5's storytelling, finding it bland and impossible to take seriously, RE6 might take it to another level. The story is unnecessarily hard to follow due to largely being told in medias res and out of sequential order. This makes things unnecessarily confusing for no real reason than continuing the game's mystery, which is easy to predict and makes the entire narrative framework feel entirely pointless when the extremely stupid plot twist is revealed. The plot itself isn't the stupidest I've seen, even for this series (Revelations is probably far stupider), but it follows a very strange narrative through line that I find an incredibly strange direction to take the series and not in a way that feels fresh or interesting, but rather perplexing from a creative standpoint.
The characterization is very weak for the most part, with Leon lacking much in the way of any interesting dynamics, Chris having a poorly-plotted Shadow the Hedgehog arc that lasts for all of two chapters, and Ada having zero development since RE4 making this a fairly boring affair for such beloved characters. There are two bright spots however: I actually found myself quite liking Piers, as he didn't put up with any of Chris's bullshit and helped to snap him back into a sensible soldier. His death scene was genuinely emotional and well done, especially with how mutated Piers never once spoke, further isolating Chris's pleas. I also liked the little characterization we got between Jake and Sherry, but unfortunately, there are maybe a handful of scenes with them bonding, so that element feels woefully underutilized. RE6's writing is just a mess of poor plotting, underbaked or underutilized characters, and messy structure that very understandably ended up becoming entirely inconsequential to the greater Resident Evil world setting.
In regards to presentation, I found RE6 to be oddly enough a major step back compared to RE5. While RE5's color grading is a controversial choice in the fanbase even today (I personally quite like it), I find it hard to understand why RE6's extreme contrast look was a better choice. Black levels are absurdly deep and easily give Doom 3 a run for its money in terms of "absurdly dark", while white levels bloom painfully, with there being almost zero middle ground in terms of color saturation. This not only makes the game excessively dark, now allowing the player to survey their environment, but it also means it can affect gameplay visibility at points too. The monster designs are incredibly boring, with certain monsters being obvious expies of monsters from prior games or other franchises. The bloodshots are self-admitted expies of the lickers, and the whoppers and shriekers are simply Left 4 Dead ripoffs. I dislike how a lot of the j'avo mutations, while conceptually interesting, always have to work around them still being able to use guns, somehow. The game also features surprisingly significant tech downgrades too. Character models feature less detail and complexity than they did in RE5, with Chris's model, in particular, featuring a flat block for hair instead of the realistic tufts from RE5, among other things. Texture quality is much lower, too, with giant walls in plain sight featuring extremely low-res textures without even a normalmap to simulate depth. Environmental detail is far lower, with a few areas which would stick out like a sore thumb even in Revelations. The area in which Jake and Sherry are captured and tortured has such little detail and low-res textures that it would look bad on the PS2. However, that's not to say there aren't positive aspects. Facial animation is a huge improvement over RE5, being much less cartoonish and more expressive. Shaders can actually be quite nice, with sweat on characters appearing very realistic. All in all, it's not an awful-looking game necessarily, but it looks average at best for the time, with its visually appealing aspects buried under a mountain of odd downgrades compared to its 2009 older brother.
Another major disappointment is the soundtrack, composed by a variety of people both within Capcom's internal sound team as well as outside commissioned musicians. RE6 represents a major musical shift from previous games, replacing the James Horner inspired horns and pounding percussion with a score composed almost entirely of strings. Percussion is oddly minimal for an action game, so the music doesn't push the action forward, nor does it ever deviate from this to be suitably atmospheric. The often pulse pounding music of RE5 especially propelled the player into a world of white-knuckle action, and RE6 doesn't give the same results. Unfortunately, RE6 just has zero musical atmosphere, preventing any real immersion into the game. There's no equivalent "save room" track (RE5 and Revelations didn't have save rooms proper, but they still had similar safe haven tracks), and any ambiance the game provides is weak. It primarily, no matter the situation, sticks with its strings, which isn't strictly a bad thing in concept, but the actual musical composition is bland, uninteresting, and sometimes annoyingly repetitive. The track that plays when Chris and Piers fight the helicopter is especially irritating. I listened to the majority of Capcom's official album, trying to see if perhaps the game's mind numbing action prevented me from properly appreciating the music, but no, it is still bland both in and out of context. There's one bonus though, and that's Heat on Beat 2012, the game's Mercs track. While I genuinely miss the individual character themes from RE4, HoB is an energetic, pulsing electronic track that keeps the pace up without getting tiring.
I went into Resident Evil 6 knowing that it wasn't going to be much of a horror game. I was still wanting to give the game a chance, as considering my moderate enjoyment of Silent Hill Downpour, it wouldn't be the first time I've appreciated something that didn't connect with the majority of players. Unfortunately, not only does RE6 not contain anything I enjoy out of Resident Evil as a franchise, but it's also just a poorly designed third-person shooter in its own right. With its overly long campaigns, restrictive level design, underutilized mechanics, unengaging story, mediocre visuals, and boring soundtrack, it stands, for me, as the worst mainline Resident Evil game (even if there were worse RE games that came out the same year). The Mercenaries mode is very good, and if you can find the game for about $5, it's worth checking out just for that if you won't be missing Ada. It's a game that seems confused of its own audience, and it certainly didn't find one in me.