My review of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City
Written by: Ikarrus
Overview:
Killing Zombies, but this time as a bad guy working for the Umbrella Corporation or for the U.S special Forces. You can choose from twelve different characters, six from the Corporation ,and six from the Special forces. There is four player CO-OP play which sort of saves this game from being completely unplayable. Its hard to make a bad zombie slaying game when you can slay along side friends on ventrilo. The single player is a another story. The game takes you back to the Resident Evil 3 time frame where you are trying to control the T-virus outbreak. You are sent on missions to help “Cover up” the outbreak and help to prevent it from spreading. There is alot of stuff thrown in the game for fans of the story line (old enemies, locations, ect).
The Bad Stuff:
- After playing the single player portion of the game and feeling VERY disappionted, I set out to see if anyone else felt the same way. It appears as though I am not alone because I found many many reviews that feel the same way I do. This part of the franchise takes the game in a new direction. I have never really been a fan of team based shooters like Ghost Recon and the like, but in this case, they just did a terrible job. The AI might be the worst I have ever seen in any modern game. Your teammates do absolutely nothing to help you out, and in fact hinder you along the way by running into walls and setting off mines. The AI for the enemies is the same way, weather it be the zombies, or the human opponents, they all act the same. Even the Bosses give the phrase `mindless bot` new meaning. The other problem I had with the “Team Based” game play is the lack of features to control your squad which is very very frustrating. When your teammates do decide to help out in combat, they are terrible. They fight sometimes, and just stand there other times. They also love setting off traps that are obviously in front of them.
- Allthough it is hard to fuck up a CO-OP zombie slaying game (Killing Foor did it somehow also), Raccoon City tried real hard to make it happen. The CO-OP was still enjoyable, but certain things made it painful. The lack of resources available made the each level feel like a race to acquire the finite resources available for yourself and ruined what could have been a great experience. At the same time, they made it way too easy. There is really never a threat or any suspense, but just a race for those resources. The suspense and hectic firefights are what make a good CO-OP in my opinion, and they just did not deliver on that. I still have to give them credit because there is a serious lack of CO-OP games on the market and even less with zombie slaying in it.
- Aiming and Damage is volatile to say the least. Sometimes it takes an entire clip to kill an enemy, sometimes its a one-shot kill.
- The “Cover System”. They implemented a Ghost Recon style cover system in the game, which is a first for this series. It is unreliable and frustrating. There were two or three times in the entire game when it came in handy, the other times it was accidental and even got me killed a few times.
- Multiplayer is the standard Deathmatch and Survival style gameplay which, with the horrible aiming and targeting has no fun value whatsoever in this game.
- The Story line had the potential to be excellent. I love the idea of trying to prevent the initial outbreak, but they really screwed it up with bad decisions and sloppy execution
The Good Stuff:
- The Graphics are really pretty good in this game. It played well in single-player and in CO-OP and maintained 50 to 60 FPS even during the hectic times (which were few and far between). I played it on a GTX460 Video Card which is kind of outdated by today’s standards and it handled it perfectly. The Models were very good, and the background scenery is great.
- Four Player CO-OP, although very bad in comparison to Left 4 Dead or even the Two-player CO-OP of the last Resident Evil, was still CO-OP and had some entertainment value
In Conclusion:
The single-player game was completely destroyed by the horrible AI and lack of suspense that I expect from a Resident Evil Game. The Story could have made this game one of the best, but they squandered the opportunity with bad decisions. The whole game felt Bland and there was never really any excitement. The CO-OP is the only thing that makes this game worth anything, and even that is bad. I only say it saves it because there is a serious lack of CO-OP games on the market and almost no new Zombie Genre style CO-OP games. There were moments in the CO-OP that was exciting, but very very few. I would not recommend this game unless you have nothing else to play and you love CO-OP games as I do.
