A reader makes up for being late to the party by eviscerating Resident Evil 6, and suggesting a much better idea for what it should’ve been.

Resident Evil 6 – getting everything wrong

I know I’m seriously late for putting the boot in, but gadzooks Resident Evil 6 is terrible. I was recently given it as a birthday present as my new girlfriend knew I was a fan of the series, but although I’m only up to the second chapter on Leon’s campaign, I’m almost certain I’ll never be able to get through it all.

There’s no flow to what passes for gameplay, there’s seemingly no sense or intuition to the control set up, dire QTEs are never more than a few minutes away and the levels are nonsensical windy corridors filled with unavoidable death by random and pointless cut scenes. I’ve never seen a game (or anything else come to think of it) try to be and do so much, and fail so hard at any of it.



It feels like a game put together by small children who used to try to play arcade games without putting any money in, just hung off both joysticks and stared up at the flashing images on the screen, who then grew up and thought, ‘I know, I’ll make one of those game thingies, I know how they work’. Resident Evil 5 was poor compared to 4, but next to 6 it’s a master stroke.


After 5 and the slight hints at plant manipulation I had an idea of where I though the story might go. I pictured an American farm community setting, somewhere back of beyond. Plenty of tall cornfields and the like. Remote. Vulnerable. Somewhere shadowy organisations could have tested their latest creations unchecked. I saw a return to the horror roots of old with the evolved action, viewpoints and camera of the new. I saw references to things like Children Of The Corn and that episode of the X-Files with the green bugs that escaped from the logged trees and cocooned people.

I saw a face from the history of Resident Evil, lost, forgotten, living out his days quietly away from those who would have had him court marshalled and imprisoned: Billy Cohen. I saw the trailer. Darkness falling. Billy trying to protect the few surviving townsfolk in the cornfield with a burning torch, setting the corn alight to keep the dangers that lurked in the darkness back, the flames encircling the small group, as the camera pulls back to reveal a burning ‘6’ around them, whilst from every angle hideous things moved in for the kill.

Chris and the others could have come along for the ride. Rolling in in the nick of time and uncovering the gigantic research lab under the ground beneath them and clearing it out once more. Plenty of scope for U.S. wide pandemic from contaminated crops in the food chain. Plenty of scope for action and tense scares in spooky looking farm towns, tightly packed subterranean bases, open forests and fields, even cities and beyond depending on how far they wanted to roll it out.

But no. We get… this shockingly conceived mess. The burning ‘6’ logo I saw in my head looked great. What the world got looks like a woman engaged in an unnatural act with a giraffe, surely a Capcom in-joke that this game sucks.

Thank God for BioShock Infinite’s imminent release, hopefully I can tell her I’m saving Resident Evil for later while I get through that and it’ll keep me going until she’s forgotten she bought it for me and I can dispose of it somehow. I’d trade it, but that means some other poor soul might have the chance to play it…



I do so hate to see a good thing get spoilt and Resi used to be so, so good. Keep up the awesome work GC, thanks for reading.

By reader yourhomeisatrisk (PSN ID)

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