We’ve seen Resident Evil cover so many angles now; games, comics, films and novels have all had some light in the almost unkillable series. But has Resident Evil 6 put the nails in the coffin? Well, I certainly think not – actually I really liked Resident Evil 6! Despite some sites claiming it’s the worst received in the series.
Let’s think about what the game began as, way back in 1996 we saw Resident Evil. It did very well and became a legendary game, so we saw more, and more of them. It wasn’t until Resident Evil Survivor that they really tried to change the formula, sure we saw a little bit of action in Resident Evil 3 but it was still highly devoted to the survival horror theme. And in an almost apologetic way, we saw the sequel to survivor – code veronica which pulled back onto the creepy survival horror theme.
But as gaming became more popular, the developers and publishers became more daring, (or lazy) and changed it all around, you don’t need me to tell you what the Resident Evil games are like now. But, let’s run over everything they’ve tried in the series:
Multiple characters – this worked well, different weapons and endings, but this became less of a significant thing the more the series progressed. However, we still see characters having certain abilities and weapons.
We’ve seen quick time events, even on the gameboy colour, but they seemed to work well. Doesn’t mean they should appear in every single game though.
We’ve seen light gun games from them too, I really don’t know what to even say about that. I do like a good ol’ light gun game but not at home, save it for the arcade.
The first Resident Evil game to have online multiplayer was Resident Evil outbreak, this feature was removed because the objective was to survive the longest, but players didn’t cooperate with each other enough. And ended up leaving each other to fight hordes. Players apparently argued that Resident Evil was scary due to the lack of multiplayer and having to face hordes by themselves. So pull back a second – they listened to feedback and thought “This doesn’t work” so they removed the feature (From PAL versions – at least).
Come the release of Outbreak File 2, they put in multiplayer again. And this time it was there for good. However, it seemed to work pretty well with Resident Evil 4. But this is where things got a little messy. They began to push in more and more extras, they all worked fine.
We saw Deadly Silence, the Resident Evil 1 remake, and Umbrella Chronicles – another light gun game, that actually played nicely on the wii. But something dark was on the rise, competition.
2009 gave the public Resident Evil 5, but at this stage gaming was a mainstream, huge media. And from then on we’ve seen co-op up to 4 players, interweaving stories (On a much higher level) online team swapping, and the ability to kill off main characters, so I’ve been speculating what could they do next?
What is interesting is that despite the game now having a heavy co-op focus, they’ve removed a feature online, the ability to swap ammo, the feature is still around on split screen. But online you don’t share pick ups, split screen you do. However, both online and split screen do not allow you to split piles. So, say I have 50 pistol rounds, I can only give my partner 50 pistol rounds.
What would be interesting is a game where there are 4 players, however they only meet up very occasionally, but you still share ammo and pick ups. Kind of like a very deep interweaving story that has heavy impact on the game. Imagine having to work your way through a huge mansion, only being able to dip in and out of communication with team mates and having to help each other through huge boss fights, puzzles and then right at the end, it turns out you want opposite things. Everything each player has done will have an effect on the end, if one player reached a computer and got vital information before the other, that would change the story a lot.
What do you guys think? What would you like to see in the next Resident Evil? Or at this point do you think it’s pretty hopeless?
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