Through ingenuity and guile by others, I was able to get my hands on the Resident Evil 6 Xbox 360 early access demo. My impressions of this demo were surprisingly positive.
Resident Evil 6 features multiple “campaigns” and the demo gave us a taste of each. The first was Leon’s campaign which featured the hero of Resident Evil 4 and his inability to protect the President. His campaign showed the slower crawl through a dark mansion. It showed some promise for a horror atmosphere but it wasn’t nearly the kind of scares or unease found in the Resident Evil remake. But it was a promising start.
Next on the list was Chris Redfield’s campaign but I decided to skip over it and go to Jake’s campaign. I didn’t select Albert Wesker’s son though; I chose Resident Evil 2’s child star Sherry Birkin. Her and Jake’s campaign was a boss battle — the kind of boss battle I expect from a modern day Resident Evil game. There was a lot of running, 180 spins and shots at exploding barrels.
I completed the demo with Chris Redfield’s campaign which showed off the cheesiness of Resident Evil in full force with a drunken Chris in a bar. Having just finished Max Payne 3 and Rockstar’s rendition of a drunk, it was tough not to find Chris is “problems” amusing. The rest of Chris’ campaign was filled with lots of shooting, punching and face smashing. I had fun despite the lack of challenge. I had a good time shooting knees, closing the gap with a quick dash and finishing with a Chris Redfield patented super fist.
They took awhile but Capcom finally added the ability to walk and shoot. But to make up for being so late, they added the ability to slide on the ground and then shoot. I don’t know how useful it will be but it does lend itself well to the action focused direction of this franchise. Now if only they figured out how to get cover controls to work like normal third person action games.
At the end of the demo, I realized that Resident Evil 5 may have been the Windows Vista to Resident Evil 6’s Windows 7. I now know what to expect with Resident Evil 6. With a number of minor improvements here and there, Capcom seemingly made their established Resident Evil 5 formula work. I hope the final game figures out a way to blend together what was put forth into a cohesive product and not just three distinct campaigns. Oh and I sincerely hope they they abolish the screen tearing and fix the camera in closed areas.
Resident Evil 6 launches on October 2, 2012 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.
For more information, visit the official website.
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