Resident Evil 6 is a beautiful trainwreck. It is rough in a lot of ways, but I couldn't tear myself away until I had completed it. I played the Steam version on Normal mode, Offline, and in Solo play.

This game goes all in on the bombast and spectacle. While previous installments in the series certainly had exciting set pieces, they also knew when to incorporate downtime into the experience. For the most part, RE6 is constant action without a break, which can become exhausting. I enjoy dumb fun, but sometimes it is too much. The game is very large, bloated, and unfocused. The four campaigns prioritize different things and have unique problems as a result, in addition to some issues that crop up in all of them. I cannot help but sense that there is a feeling of “too many cooks in the kitchen” with RE6, which if the 600 person development team is any indication, likely has some truth to it. There are a lot of problems, but the game does some things very right, as well. I played through the campaigns in the recommended order of Leon -> Chris -> Jake -> Ada, and I will cover them in that order.

Leon’s campaign appears at first to be a callback to the older entries in the franchise. The first environments are moody and dark. The university, graveyard, city, cathedral, and lab are interesting, spooky spaces. Zombies are back after RE4 and RE5 went in a different direction with the Plagas creatures. The opening is slow paced, frankly, too slow paced for my tastes. The forced walking sections seem to want you to soak up the atmosphere, but I found myself wishing things would go by faster instead. When I was finally given full control over Leon, I was pleased to find how enjoyable combat was, which I will further elaborate on later.

The Leon campaign’s story is, much like the rest of RE6, complete nonsense, but unlike the later campaigns there are very few tantalizing character moments to enjoy. Helena is a bummer of a story partner, as she is overly secretive for the vast majority of the campaign for seemingly zero reason. I understand she might not have the complete picture of the type of person Leon is at the beginning of the game, but he would obviously have still helped her get to the cathedral even if she spilled the beans on her predicament. The best character moments in Leon’s campaign are the crossovers with Chris, Jake, and Ada. Seeing Leon and Chris go toe-to-toe is neat. Watching Leon’s silent approval of Jake taking care of Sherry is cute. Leon being a complete doormat around Ada is hilarious as always. His characterization is pretty good in his campaign aside from the aforementioned following along with Helena for too long without answers. He is still the lovable dork from RE2 and RE4.

The highlight of Leon’s campaign is the lab. It is genuinely the creepiest the game ever gets. The atmosphere is foreboding, with cocooned humans in tubes signposting the way further in. I did not read up much on RE6 before playing it, so I had no idea what the cocoons might be when I encountered them. Seeing the tape of Ada Wong being “born” from a cocoon added to the intrigue and terror. Was this a retcon, showing that the Ada we know and love was artificial all along? Was this a clone? Was this an experiment done on Ada to give her superhuman abilities? Very cool stuff in terms of presentation. Unfortunately, this is basically the most intrigue there will be in all of the game’s campaigns, and the mystery of Ada’s tape is resolved fairly quickly within Leon’s own campaign if you are paying enough attention.
After the slow start, the campaign kicks into gear with some cool settings that I previously mentioned. The city section is a fun reminder of RE2 and RE3, even if the gameplay is still mostly wave based shooting, and not survival horror-like at all. The clash between the seemingly intended tone and the action gameplay was not unnoticed. Continuing on with the campaign, things start to go really downhill after the lab section. The ancient American temple is a baffling section of the game in terms of suspending my disbelief, and the gameplay is not particularly fun, with lots of forced running sections, collapsing structures, an unfun boss fight, and minecart sections that are somehow very unfun despite RE4 nailing similar sections years prior. The rest of the campaign is just set piece after set piece, with the remaining story consisting solely of “let’s kill Simmons” which is a very boring, rote revenge plot. The horror nods were neat, but Leon’s campaign ends up being quite disappointing overall.

The Chris campaign does not follow Leon’s, and throws you into the action right away, which I appreciated. This campaign is not even pretending to be a horror game anymore, it is all action, all the time, and I can respect it for knowing what it wants to be. Chris gets the best set pieces in the entire game, including the giant fight in Edonia, and the snake fight in China. There are still some annoying sections in his campaign, mainly involving forced running and collapsing buildings, but for the most part it is a pretty fun, straightforward time. This campaign introduces the J’avo, infected humans who can still use weapons and tactics. Enemies have used guns in previous RE games, but never like this. I personally don’t mind this addition. The J’avo are quite fun to fight, and I like their semi-random mutation ability that spices up fights. It is clear that RE6 has gotten very far from the series roots with this enemy, but as an action game foe they are pretty great. Chris has some of the best weapons in the game, with the Grenade Launcher and his personal Assault Rifle being very fun to use.

The story works a lot better than Leon’s campaign. Chris has an actual arc that resolves by the end of the story. He is introduced as a drunken shell of the man he once was, bitter over the loss of so many compatriots. Over the course of the game he returns to being the “superhero” that he was in RE5, with the help of series newcomer Piers Nivans. I quite liked Piers. He clearly has a great admiration for Chris, but he is not afraid to call him out on his bullshit when needed. I thought the relationship between the two of them was very well done.

The worst part of the Chris campaign is sadly the final boss. It has a cool design, but the fight is clearly built for co-op, with only Piers getting access to unlimited ammo for the fight. It was a very tough and annoying fight to do solo, and put a damper on the campaign. Thankfully the ending cinematics are quite good afterwards.

Jake’s campaign is very frustrating. More than any other campaign, it is a hodge podge of various ideas that don’t seem to fit together very well. Making this all the worse is the amazing, unique melee system that is exclusive to Jake himself. It is extremely fun to utilize these additional melee options, but the opportunities to do so in the campaign are few and far between. There are so many gimmicky set pieces and sections. There are stealth sections, a forced snowmobile driving section, chase sections. There is a slow-paced maze-like exploration section that felt the need to add a map. This is the only part of the game with a map. I feel like if you needed to add a map for a specific section of the game, it probably should’ve been redesigned or removed from the game. The Nemesis-like stalker, Ustanak, does not actually do very much stalking at all. He is relegated to boss fights and specific sections involving him. He cannot actually chase you around levels, which was the part of Nemesis that was most cool, in my opinion.

Jake is a fun character. He is a little shitlord who refuses to take anything seriously and thinks he’s hot shit. Over the course of his story he grows to care for Sherry and supports her kind heart and just mission to support the less fortunate. It’s quite sweet. Their interactions are very cute. The game pushes them as a couple but never completely goes through with it. I hope he and his fun melee abilities will return in a future RE game one day.

Ada’s campaign is my least favourite, which is a shame as it is the one that “ties up the loose ends.” In actuality, there are very few actual reveals in Ada’s story. It turns out she didn’t really completely know what was going on either, when you encountered her in the other campaigns. Her campaign is short and unsatisfying. It consists mostly of repeated sections from other campaigns. The few new sections are mostly terrible stealth segments. Ada has a couple of new weapons. Her SMG is awful, with terrible accuracy and damage. I’d much prefer literally any other pistol in the game. On the other hand, her crossbow is an extremely fun weapon. It does a ton of damage and is very satisfying to use. Ammo is plentiful enough that you never really need to conserve. Ada has a unique and very creepy “final” boss fight that I enjoyed, but when you beat them you return back to the events of the Leon campaign story and have to fight boring ol’ Simmons again. Ada’s campaign was a let down overall.

The 4 campaigns are very different, but they share a few core issues. RE6 is constantly trying to wrench control of the player. Between the set pieces, the QTEs, the running sections, and the vehicle sections, RE6 doesn’t seem to want you to engage with the core gameplay too much. If you meander about too much, you’ll be hit with an instant death. The running sections often have set camera angles reminiscent of the old tank controls installments, which I found super cool. However, if you stop to smell the flowers during these sequences, you will die very quickly. This is a massive shame, because the combat system is actually phenomenal. It might not be quite on the level of the kings of the genre like TLOUP2, Max Payne 3, and MGSV, but RE6 is a third person action shooter that is a joy to actually play. When the game actually lets you play it, it really sings. The Mercenaries mode is the best example of the combat system being excellent, which feels like a complete developmental blunder to me. Playing the main campaigns should showcase the incredible combat system, but it really doesn’t. There are tons of cool moves like rolling, diving, sliding, floor kicks; an extensive melee system with different stagger states; and more, that are never tutorialized or required to progress. Flipping around and meleeing enemies is extremely fun, but you can slog through the entire game with guns if you don’t know better. This is absolutely a failure in design, even if the combat system itself is great.

Much like RE5, the game is designed as a co-op experience first. Unlike RE5, this game is much more pleasant to play solo. Your AI companion is way smarter than Sheva ever was. They cannot die except for very specific sections, and they don’t have an inventory or use ammo. They stay out of your way for the most part, but can still be helpful when taking down enemies.

To conclude, I enjoyed my time with RE6 overall. I think it is a better game than RE5, at least certainly in solo play. The plot is nonsense, but the individual character moments are what make the cutscenes worth watching. The gameplay is excellent, even if the level design is lacking. The Mercenaries mode alone probably added an extra half star to my total score for this one. I would recommend RE6 to action game fans who don’t mind turning their brain off for a silly story.

Revelations is a brief, budget take on the Resident Evil series. I played the Steam version on Normal mode. The port was great, it ran well and I experienced zero technical difficulties.

The game very much feels like a 3DS game. The graphics are fine, though by 3DS standards they are phenomenal, likely among the best on the system. The game is comprised of cramped corridors and small rooms, with loading rooms between sections. You never see a loading screen, but you'll be trapped in these rooms until everything loads in. The tight areas are a result of the hardware limitations, but they do well to contribute to the sense of horror. At the time of its release Revelations was seen as a return to the Survival Horror genre after experimenting with action. I think this is very much still an action game, but the scares and inventory management do seem to be emphasized more than in RE4 and RE5. The character models still look quite nice by today's standards, but the animations, particularly in cutscenes, are lacking. The environments are low poly but make good use of shaders to simulate depth. The cruise ship is a very cool setting for this series, as evidenced by it being attempted multiple times including Gaiden and Dead Aim. The atmosphere on the ship is pretty great, and the music is nice.

The controls feel like an evolved version of RE5. You can now move while aiming for the first time in the mainline series. Gone is the run button, replaced by analog movement on the stick. Slightly tilting results in a walk, while pressing forward all the way results in a jog. The top speed feels slower than the equivalent running speed in RE5, though this is understandable given the technical limitations. There are no on-foot stealth sections or perilous platforming challenges, so you will be moving at full speed most of the time. The only time the movement speed is really bothersome is when you are backtracking for secret items. There is a new dodge move that doesn't work particularly well. What is it with RE games starring Jill and poorly implemented dodge moves? Otherwise, the controls feel quite similar to RE5. The aiming is markedly worse than the prior game, likely due to the console hardware lacking a right stick without the Circle Pad Pro attachment. The aiming feels almost digital, rather than analog, and it can be imprecise lining up headshots with a controller. It wasn't a huge deal overall and didn't significantly affect my playthrough, but from a game feel perspective it was a bit lacking. Another thing inherited from RE5 was constantly having an AI partner. Thankfully, unlike Sheva, these partners do not share ammo or healing items, do not get in your way, and I didn't have any partners die the entire playthrough. I don't know if they actually even can die.

New to Revelations is the Genesis scanner. This scanner transitions you to a first person view, where you can scan enemies to get healing items, as well as find hidden items in the environments. The scanner is a neat way to prioritize inventory management. Ammo is scarce if you don't regularly use the it. I enjoyed scanning every room in the game for hidden items and collectibles, though I think this would negatively affect replay value. I don't particularly want to re-scan everything.

Another new game mechanic is the ability to swim. There are a few swimming sections interspersed throughout. These sections aren't very difficult. There are plenty of air holes around to refill your air gauge. While there are enemies underwater, your health meter and air gauge seem to be one in the same. You only take air damage underwater, and when you resurface you seem to refill back to full, like in Super Mario 64. I was unable to experiment and see if taking damage from enemies out of water would be healed by diving and resurfacing, but the scenarios in which this would be useful in the game are very limited, anyway. Enemies underwater can be dispatched via QTE or with a special grenade type that can be used underwater. The swimming sections do a good job at changing up the pacing, and are never too long. There is one baffling swimming section right before the final boss that contains a sort of stealth section with an instant kill. This was a very strange place to put this section. It was not a terribly difficult section, though it was frustrating and cost me a few lives. I did not die much in the game otherwise.

The game is much less linear than RE5, which I liked. You are rewarded for carefully scouring each area, and returning to past areas with new keys. The weapon customization part system worked well enough, and resulted in collectibles worth finding. Finding a strong part tucked away was always a joy. The game's story will have you returning to past sections whether you want to or not, but new enemies and events always kept things feeling fresh.

I liked the new enemies featured in this game, the Ooze. Though their grey colour scheme is a tad generic, they looked suitably creepy and were mostly fun to fight. Enemies can be stunned and followed up on with melee like in RE4 and RE5, and have weak points that can result in instant kills if your guns are properly powered up. The boss battles were quite good overall, though I found the final boss to be unfun to fight, as it teleports around and forces you to engage with the crappy dodge mechanic. There is one strong "stalker" type enemy who keeps popping up and is fun to fight each time, as they are usually encountered when you are under a strict time limit. Defeating them will offer new and exclusive gun parts, but defeating them within the time limit can be a challenge.

The plot is bonkers. The quantity of nonsensical plot twists far surpasses typical RE titles, and starts getting into Kojima territory. It's a fun story to turn your brain off to and enjoy the ride. I liked most of the newly introduced characters, particularly Parker, Raymond, and Jessica. Parker and Raymond start as pretty stock tropes but end up having some depth to them as the game goes along. Jessica in particular is a really interesting character, as she is essentially the opposite of Jill in nearly every way. She is scantily clad, nonserious, and mains the Sniper Rifle. She constantly hits on Chris, who always stonewalls her, which I found absolutely hilarious. I was pleased to find after finishing the game that the developers had gone on record in saying that was indeed the case, she was intended to be an "anti-Jill." The plot is nothing special but I found it entertaining. The characters have fun banter with each other and the constant ridiculous plot twists were fun to follow along with, wondering what crazy thing will happen next.

Resident Evil Revelations is a fun, goofy rollercoaster ride that does not overstay its welcome. It does not reach the peaks of the best installments in the series, but I had a good time with it.

Don't play this port of the game.

This is an awful port of a mid game. Bugs and glitches plagued my time with the Steam version of Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition. I slogged through the entire thing solo, with AI Sheva, on Normal mode.

A pervasive and well-known bug I encountered, was the inability to trade weapons with your partner. This made inventory management much more frustrating than it had to be.

Apparently the pathfinding for enemies and Sheva is bugged in this PC release. I could believe it, as it was often very terrible. Enemies getting stuck on walls, Sheva being unable to dodge laser traps, Chainsaw Majini being stuck in the crates they spawn in. Sheva seemed to constantly take damage from enemies she had no business being near, whether she was set to "Cover" or "Attack" mode, and then she consumed all our healing items to fix it. I got several game overs because of Sheva's poor AI. I often had to babysit her, to make sure she could keep up. I'd rather have played Chris alone, or even had RE4's Ashley. Sheva was a detriment the entire game. The only thing she was good at was her aimbot. I gave her a machine gun and a sniper rifle and that worked out okay weapon-wise, although I often found she would not attack enemies, whether she was set to "Attack" or "Cover". She would be carrying around 2 full stacks of rifle ammo and a full clip in her rifle, and just stand there. When she would attack enemies, at least she could get headshots and kill them fairly quickly.

Another brutal bug was the ineffective flamethrower during the second Uroboros boss battle. It seems it doesn't work at higher framerates than 30 fps, which I only googled and found out after failing to do any damage to the boss and running out of ammo, on two separate attempts. I was running the game at 120 fps, at it is an older game and runs fine at that framerate everywhere else. Jokes on me I suppose. I ended up just using the rocket launcher to defeat the boss as I couldn't be bothered to turn the fps down to 30 and defeat it the intended way.

As for the game itself, beyond the shoddy port job? It feels as though Capcom attempted to just make RE4 again, but they failed to achieve any of the things that made RE4 such a masterpiece. The linear, claustrophobic maps of RE5 don't work well with a co-op partner constantly getting in your way, a far cry from RE4's meticulously designed environments. Upgrading your guns is not nearly as fun or satisfying when you can replay levels to your heart's content to rack up money, unlike in RE4 where you need to carefully choose how to allocate your funds. The game's stiff controls work to its detriment, as enemies are fast and often airborne. There are so many one-hit kills in this game, way more than I ever remember RE4 having. The stop-and-pop rhythm of combat feels completely off compared to RE4. The set pieces are not as fun. The bosses are often more annoying than anything, being incredibly spongey. The enemy variety feels lesser, with most of them returning from RE4. I understand this is designed as a co-op experience first and I did not play it that way, but co-op is not going to magically fix the problems with this game. Any game can be fun when playing with the right person, even shitty ones. The controls and gameplay of RE5 are fun, as they are mostly just copied from RE4, but the implementation of them within the design of the game as a whole is lacking.

Beyond the incredibly overt racism and weird white saviour undertones, the story is fun nonsense, very much being classic Resident Evil style. I like how the viruses/parasites followed up on RE4's storyline. Wesker hamming it up is highly enjoyable. Sheva is really neat as a character if you can get over her terrible in-game AI. Josh was a delight and stole every scene he appeared in.

The graphics and animations are actually quite nice for their time, if you can get over the piss filter. The characters are nicely stylized and the environments are so small that they can afford more polygons than wider zones might have afforded.

I also played the included DLC campaigns, Lost in Nightmares and Desperate Escape. Lost in Nightmares was a nice surprise. It is a short and sweet puzzle-focused affair with minimal combat. It is moody and appeals to RE1 nostalgia. The mansion you explore is similar enough to the original Spencer Mansion that you will notice callbacks to certain rooms and sequences, but it is of course much smaller. Chris and Jill's banter throughout the experience is very charming. I might like this DLC more than the main game. If it was a little longer, with a bigger mansion and some actual zombies shuffling around you could fight, it would be a real winner. Desperate Escape is more of an "extra level" type DLC, with an additional score attack focus. Getting to play as Jill and Josh is cool, but there's not much else there beyond that.

I would not recommend playing solo RE5 to anyone except the most die hard Resident Evil fans who have to experience every mainline game, like myself. If you want to play this game, definitely do so in co-op, and don't play the Steam version, at least not without some nice fan patches.