I don't usually give games ratings this low - a half-star always feels exaggerated in my opinion and very few games deserve to be rated with so much scorn. Umbrella Corps might not be the most frustrating game I've ever played, nor the most broken game I've ever played, nor the most buggy game I've ever played (though it certainly features strongly in each category) but it certainly might be among the laziest, especially in the AAA sphere. While Capcom's recent push for Resident Evil to enter the online multiplayer sphere might seem strange, they've done it before and to great success, with their Resident Evil Outbreak games on the PlayStation 2 both being shining examples of what an RE multiplayer experience can be in the right hands.
Umbrella Corp is not that experience. It's lazy, under-budgeted, lacking in content, poorly designed, and artistically devoid, and for these reasons, its initial player base (which was relatively small for a AAA game, even at launch) has long since abandoned it in favor of better tactical third-person shooters. Every aspect of the game design feels fundamentally poorly thought out, and nothing stands out to me as even acceptable. Movement feels awful, as the player always feels like they're essentially gliding around on ice (without slipping) because there's zero bounce or momentum to player movement. There's zero delay, the player just immediately begins moving and immediately stops and this makes Umbrella Corps feel like a mobile game that I hooked a keyboard and mouse to. The shotgun is unbelievably overpowered in smaller maps (which is most of what Umbrella Corps' maps are) and the game can't even make use of its most conceptually interesting mechanics. Team-neutral zombies within a PvP shooter sounds incredibly cool but this mechanic doesn't even matter because each player comes equipped with a zombie jammer, which makes you practically invisible to them and them nothing more than environmental decoration, almost. The idea is to destroy your opponent's jammer so they'll be attacked and killed by zombies, but the time-to-kill in this game is so unbelievably high that if you destroy the jammer, you typically end up killing your opponent as well, rendering the entire concept that made Umbrella Corps stand out entirely superfluous. Even disregarding all of this, combat just feels terrible, with poorly-placed hitboxes and some of the most busted melee combat I've seen in a long time. The brainer might seem cool in concept, but when engaging another player also wielding a brainer it feels almost like random chance which one gets to lodge the pick into the other's skull. The game features so little in the way of game modes, with only three game modes, two of which are busted beyond belief and were so easy for my friends and I to cheese. The game's FOV is so uncomfortably close with no options to adjust (and no one cares enough about the game to mod it) We were even somehow able to get the game to load us into a PvP round with all of us on the same team...with zero objectives since there were no enemies. It's a true testament to Umbrella Corps' quality as a multiplayer experience.
Umbrella Corps might stink royally as a multiplayer TPS, but even if you're interested in the game, you'd most likely struggle to find players unless you got some of your friends on board like I did. Lucky, or perhaps unlucky for you, the game does have a singleplayer campaign to some extent, though one that consists of doing the same basic tasks over and over again in the multiplayer maps, lacking any meaningful narrative or gameplay progression. Whether it be collecting the data samples, or securing the briefcases, Umbrella Corps's campaign is as short as it is repetitive. After about 12 levels, I tapped out realizing that if it hadn't changed at all by this point, it most likely would not be changing anytime soon. Naturally, this mode is PvE and is simultaneously too easy and too frustrating. While for the most part, gunning down zombies and ganados is fairly simple, things get frustrating very quickly when enemies swarm you all at once with no regard for intelligent AI design, and the crows have to be among Resident Evil's most annoying enemies, as they run right up to you and mercilessly peck you to death while dodging right out of your range of fire. Most of the design faults with the multiplayer carry over here, as the only real difference are the objectives and which enemies you're facing. The only somewhat interesting thing is that the game implies that Albert Wesker, or at least a clone of him, is still alive. Why Capcom decided to shove such an important tease in Umbrella Corps of all things is very bizarre.
Umbrella Corps was made on a shoestring budget and this is most easily reflected in its presentation. While there are some relatively appealing aspects of the art direction on occasion (for example I enjoyed some of the set design in the Tricell HQ), the game could easily pass for a mobile game. The game's asset quality is never up to par, with low-resolution textures pitifully attempting to overcome their lack of quality with overaggressive normalmaps, making patches of hay in RE4's village map look rough and plastic. The game also features god-awful lighting, with RE2's Raccoon City and RE6's China being bathed in this bright red light with the most excessive bloom I've seen in a long time, making these maps look exceptionally flat. The game's lack of anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering also makes the game look cheap, turning moving scenes into a shimmering mess and far-off textures into blurry pixels. While I'm aware both can easily be forced with your video card's control panel, this is not something anyone should have to do in 2016. Graphical fidelity is all over the place, with RE4's village map having been remade from scratch in Unity, but RE5's village using assets and textures ripped right out of MT Framework means that the game can look like it's from two entirely different console generations at times. Umbrella Corps also has some of the worst skyboxes I've ever seen in a game, being so close to the player that you can easily observe the houses made from four polygons each.
I'm also not a fan of the soundtrack, it's primarily electronic, dubstep, and techno which while not inherently bad never stood out to me. It blended into the background but not in the way you'd want ambient music to, but in the way that boring, uninteresting music would. It never makes the game feel atmospheric, it never gets my pulse pounding and ready for action, and it isn't even all that fun to listen to on its own.
Umbrella Corps will go down in history as one of Capcom's greatest failures. While they've made some of the most highly regarded, influential games of all time, they've also made some extremely high-profile flops and I'm sad to say that Umbrella Corps is among the worst. With its lack of content, broken gameplay, pitiful campaign, unflattering visuals, boring soundtrack, and most importantly dead player base, this should be of interest to absolutely no one.
Umbrella Corp is not that experience. It's lazy, under-budgeted, lacking in content, poorly designed, and artistically devoid, and for these reasons, its initial player base (which was relatively small for a AAA game, even at launch) has long since abandoned it in favor of better tactical third-person shooters. Every aspect of the game design feels fundamentally poorly thought out, and nothing stands out to me as even acceptable. Movement feels awful, as the player always feels like they're essentially gliding around on ice (without slipping) because there's zero bounce or momentum to player movement. There's zero delay, the player just immediately begins moving and immediately stops and this makes Umbrella Corps feel like a mobile game that I hooked a keyboard and mouse to. The shotgun is unbelievably overpowered in smaller maps (which is most of what Umbrella Corps' maps are) and the game can't even make use of its most conceptually interesting mechanics. Team-neutral zombies within a PvP shooter sounds incredibly cool but this mechanic doesn't even matter because each player comes equipped with a zombie jammer, which makes you practically invisible to them and them nothing more than environmental decoration, almost. The idea is to destroy your opponent's jammer so they'll be attacked and killed by zombies, but the time-to-kill in this game is so unbelievably high that if you destroy the jammer, you typically end up killing your opponent as well, rendering the entire concept that made Umbrella Corps stand out entirely superfluous. Even disregarding all of this, combat just feels terrible, with poorly-placed hitboxes and some of the most busted melee combat I've seen in a long time. The brainer might seem cool in concept, but when engaging another player also wielding a brainer it feels almost like random chance which one gets to lodge the pick into the other's skull. The game features so little in the way of game modes, with only three game modes, two of which are busted beyond belief and were so easy for my friends and I to cheese. The game's FOV is so uncomfortably close with no options to adjust (and no one cares enough about the game to mod it) We were even somehow able to get the game to load us into a PvP round with all of us on the same team...with zero objectives since there were no enemies. It's a true testament to Umbrella Corps' quality as a multiplayer experience.
Umbrella Corps might stink royally as a multiplayer TPS, but even if you're interested in the game, you'd most likely struggle to find players unless you got some of your friends on board like I did. Lucky, or perhaps unlucky for you, the game does have a singleplayer campaign to some extent, though one that consists of doing the same basic tasks over and over again in the multiplayer maps, lacking any meaningful narrative or gameplay progression. Whether it be collecting the data samples, or securing the briefcases, Umbrella Corps's campaign is as short as it is repetitive. After about 12 levels, I tapped out realizing that if it hadn't changed at all by this point, it most likely would not be changing anytime soon. Naturally, this mode is PvE and is simultaneously too easy and too frustrating. While for the most part, gunning down zombies and ganados is fairly simple, things get frustrating very quickly when enemies swarm you all at once with no regard for intelligent AI design, and the crows have to be among Resident Evil's most annoying enemies, as they run right up to you and mercilessly peck you to death while dodging right out of your range of fire. Most of the design faults with the multiplayer carry over here, as the only real difference are the objectives and which enemies you're facing. The only somewhat interesting thing is that the game implies that Albert Wesker, or at least a clone of him, is still alive. Why Capcom decided to shove such an important tease in Umbrella Corps of all things is very bizarre.
Umbrella Corps was made on a shoestring budget and this is most easily reflected in its presentation. While there are some relatively appealing aspects of the art direction on occasion (for example I enjoyed some of the set design in the Tricell HQ), the game could easily pass for a mobile game. The game's asset quality is never up to par, with low-resolution textures pitifully attempting to overcome their lack of quality with overaggressive normalmaps, making patches of hay in RE4's village map look rough and plastic. The game also features god-awful lighting, with RE2's Raccoon City and RE6's China being bathed in this bright red light with the most excessive bloom I've seen in a long time, making these maps look exceptionally flat. The game's lack of anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering also makes the game look cheap, turning moving scenes into a shimmering mess and far-off textures into blurry pixels. While I'm aware both can easily be forced with your video card's control panel, this is not something anyone should have to do in 2016. Graphical fidelity is all over the place, with RE4's village map having been remade from scratch in Unity, but RE5's village using assets and textures ripped right out of MT Framework means that the game can look like it's from two entirely different console generations at times. Umbrella Corps also has some of the worst skyboxes I've ever seen in a game, being so close to the player that you can easily observe the houses made from four polygons each.
I'm also not a fan of the soundtrack, it's primarily electronic, dubstep, and techno which while not inherently bad never stood out to me. It blended into the background but not in the way you'd want ambient music to, but in the way that boring, uninteresting music would. It never makes the game feel atmospheric, it never gets my pulse pounding and ready for action, and it isn't even all that fun to listen to on its own.
Umbrella Corps will go down in history as one of Capcom's greatest failures. While they've made some of the most highly regarded, influential games of all time, they've also made some extremely high-profile flops and I'm sad to say that Umbrella Corps is among the worst. With its lack of content, broken gameplay, pitiful campaign, unflattering visuals, boring soundtrack, and most importantly dead player base, this should be of interest to absolutely no one.