E3 2012 Hands On: Resident Evil 6

by David 'Hades' Becker [ Tuesday, 12th of June 2012 - 11:04 PM ]

Let me start with the Cross Story play first as it will help explain the four player co-op a bit better. It should be no secret that the game consists of three different stories that all run in parallel with each other in the game world. At some point it should be expected to see Jake and Shelly cross paths with Leon and Helena. Well in RE6 that is going to happen. During the demo I was shown Leon and Helena were wandering through a shipping yard looking for clue when all of a sudden in the story Jake and Shelly come running through with a Ustanak following behind them. There was no mention on what Jake and Shelly were doing before, but it led to them running into the yard as well. Then all hell broke loose with all four characters fighting together to survive.

This leads me to the four player co-op mode that was also announced. During the above scene all four characters could be player controlled. It could be you and three friends or it could be you and complete strangers who happened to be at the same point in the story. So you could for instance find yourself fighting the Ustanak, in this instance, with total noobs or veterans. Or friends for that matter. It is all still handled similar to the way co-op was in RE5, only that when the fight is over Jake and Shelly continue off on their own story path while Leon and Helena go back to theirs. This could lead to some really fun game play.

That was the bulk of what was shown behind closed doors, but that is not where my demonstration ended. I also got a chance to play through a little bit of Leon's campaign and it was a very short section seeing as each of the story portions are estimated to be about 70% of the length of RE5. But what I did see extremely impressed me as well.

I do have to say, and I can only confirm this for Leon's story, it feels like Capcom is really trying to go back to its roots of the franchise and the survival horror genre. It was dark and filled with quite a bit of false "scares" as well as real moments that had me franticly pushing buttons. On top of that, it felt like there is going to be even more of a push on conserving ammo to go along with that. There was one specific point where I was slowly moving through a parking garage to be swarmed in seconds by zombies. Ammo got drained quickly and I had to run hoping to survive. It took me right back to RE4 as well as RE.

Moving away from the game play, the sights and sounds also lent to a real feel of terror and suspense. Darkness and light was used quite a bit as well as background environmental sounds. Even with the basic headphones to listen with, there was still a sense of space when it came to the sounds that had me quick turning many times to see what might be sneaking up on me. Spoiler alert, there was rarely anything there and just my paranoia kicking in.

With everything I saw and played for RE6 it feels like it is going to be the Resident Evil title fans have been wanting as well as the title that will take all those who lost faith in the franchise back to what they originally loved about it. Keep an eye out as Resident Evil 6 is currently looking at a release date of October 2nd 2012 for the PS3, XBox and PC.