SDCC 2012 : Resident Evil 6 - Hands On Impressions

I won’t be covering the basics of the franchise, I assume everyone already knows what Resident Evil is, and with the upcoming Resident Evil 6 coming out, there is already plenty of coverage on it. Now an important thing to note is that recently a demo came out for Resident Evil 6 for xbox and playstation for those who bought Dragon’s Dogma. However the demo and San Diego Comic Con is not the same and features 3 completely new levels, one for each of the 3 protagonists Leon, Chris and Jake.

Unfortunately I only had 30 minutes to play and I was only able to get through Leon and Chris’ levels. I didn’t get enough time to get to Jake’s level. Like other previews have stated, Leon focuses more so on survival horror, while Chris involves more FPS, style of gameplay.

In general, each character controls rather similarly. You look around from a third person perspective, and you’re also able to switch which shoulder the camera is looking over the character on the fly. To aim your gun, you have to hold one of the left triggers and to shoot you press one of the right triggers. You can also use melee attacks if you aren’t currently aiming. This can help save bullets but what I noticed from the demo is that it looks like you can only hit one enemy at a time, where as in other games melee attacks could just knock a row of opponents away. This makes it so you can’t just run up to a huge mob and wail away at them.

Resident Evil 6, like Resident Evil 5 has coop, and does so in each of its 3 campaigns. Unfortunately I was not given the option of using any character’s partner for this demo. I also didn’t get the chance to do any partner sensitive actions besides just opening doors as a checkpoint to have both characters together.

Walkthrough - Leon

Leon S. Kennedy

Leon’s took place in a college campus. I was immediately put into the middle of the area, with only a handful of bullets. Walking throughout the campus, I was able to pick up a few supplies by exploring, finding some much needed ammo as well as medicinal herbs to heal. I was only equipped with a pistol so the ammo was limited to that gun.

The atmosphere was very dark, with few lights scattered around to make the room more visible and illuminate nearby zombies. The beginning area was easy enough and still rather creepy and eventually made my way to the outside where I needed to find a key to get through a door. I made my way towards where the key might be found and suddenly zombies exploded through the windows.

I also became trapped in the hallway I was currently located, with only my gun between the zombies and myself.  The ammo I picked up became very important now but there were just so many zombies that I was running out, making the event pretty intense. Thankfully I still had access to my melee attacks and used them to keep close zombies at bay to conserve ammo until I was able to hold out and get out of there.

Soon enough I got back to the door where the key was needed and entered inside. I then proceeded to foolishly walk through a metal detector with gun in hand. I’ve a feeling I actually could have gone through without setting it off, but its impossible to tell without another playthrough. The alarm went off and zombies charged at us from behind. I made a run for it, having to hoard my way through a few zombies that were still in our path and made it to a police car. Some intense quick time events followed and I was able to get away in the police car before flipping over because of a zombie. The demo for Leon pretty much ended there.

What I liked about Leon’s section was the atmosphere. So far it was pretty scary, though not nearly as frightening as the earlier resident evil games. I still had a sense of empowerment in being able to use melee moves and overall be able to move faster and less tank like in Resident Evil 5, but the scarcity of ammo still made my character feel vulnerable. If I had to run into any of the deadly monsters of Resident Evil besides zombies, than I definitely would have been even more frightened, due to my lack of ammo.

Walkthrough – Chris

Chris Redfield

Playing as Chris was definitely different. Though there were enemies with weapons in Resident Evil 5, they weren’t that many of them. However in this demo, which took place in Eastern Europe with snow blistering around in a city, was an urban warzone. I followed behind armored cavalry, while machine gun fire rained down from above by zombie soldiers. Yes I had to face against zombie soldiers with guns. It essentially turned Resident Evil into a FPS. In fact one of Chris’ unique quirks is that he is able to use cover, when aiming next to a piece of viable cover. (It’s also possible Leon can do this but I never tried to aim next to a wall like that. He wouldn’t have much use for it though anyways).

I played terribly but fought my way up, shooting and melee-ing nearby enemies next to my partner and other allies. Unlike Leon who had access only to a pistol, I had a pistol, assault rifle, knife and grenades. Ammo was much more plentiful this time around, with almost every other enemy dropping a box of ammo for handguns or for pistol. The action was definitely far more fast paced, with much more deadly enemies all around due to their possession of machine guns and other weapons.

Eventually I fought my way on top of a wall to find a giant B.O.W (Bio Organic Weapon), a monster that towered above all the surrounding structures, climbing over a rooftop and heading straight my way. It was a massive enemy that reminded me much of a Brumak from Gears of War in it’s appearance. It eventually broke the wall, forcing my character to leap away. From there I had to run away and find a good position to shoot it and hold out till reinforcements arrived.

I am not sure if it was a time event or if I finally did enough damage, but it took forever for the cutscene to get me out to occur. I ran out of ammo for a while, unable to shoot at it’s vulnerable, fleshy… sac. Thankfully some enemies spawned around my safe area so I could kill them for ammo. Eventually the cutscene did trigger though and it was chased away by allied armored vehicles. From there I continued to follow behind the armored vehicles, encountering more zombie soldiers along the way until, unfortunately my demo time ran out and I had to leave.

It definitely gave me a good impression of how Chris would play, pretty much like a FPS, but Resident Evil style. The atmopshere for Chris was much brighter, much more packed with action and explosions. It aims to recreate the intensity of some of the action in Resident Evil 5 and pretty much leave behind the horror portion of Resident Evil for his campaign. 

Final Thoughts

Jake

The overall the atmosphere and gameplay in Chris and Leon's campaigns is very different and Capcom has been able to capitalize on highlighting those differences. Unfortunately I didn’t get to play Jake to see how much different his campaign was but maybe if I have another shot at the demo booth I may. Overall the Resident Evil 6 Demo ws really good and provided a great sample of the playstyle and environments in the campaigns.