The Last of Us (PlayStation 3) (Naughty Dog, Sony Computer Entertainment, 2013)

The Last of Us, one of the last significant PlayStation-exclusive titles of the seventh generation, is not the most innovative of games. In both design and narrative, it treads familiar territory. Its gameplay is a mix of survival horror, stealth action, and cover-based third-person shooter, while the storytelling is conventional, relying heavily on scripted encounters and non-interactive cinematics. And yet it is a rare case in at least one way. It's a new IP whose release was anticipated with enormous triple-A expectations. From the moment its first trailer debuted at the Spike Video Game Awards 2011, fanboys and the press alike, without any idea yet how the game was even supposed to play, latched onto the confident maturity of the presentation and Naughty Dog's pedigree as developer of Uncharted, Sony's flagship series on the PlayStation 3, immediately pegging it as future Game of the Year. Gaming is a culture where serious criticism is all but nonexistent, reviews are increasingly a pointless exercise, and most consumers make up their minds on whether to buy a big-budget game well in advance of its release. And so, as the months counted down to release and anticipation built, enthusiasts, having already committed their money and emotion, were depending on this game being one for the ages. Remarkably, faced with such lofty expectations, The Last of Us mostly delivers, numerous perfect scores and Game of the Year awards giving testimony to Naughty Dog's achievement. I don't know that I'd call it "Game of the Generation," but I also wouldn't argue with anyone who would.

Coming into the PS3 generation, two of my favorite game series (which I haven't enjoyed quite as much lately), were Resident Evil and Metal Gear. In a lot of ways, The Last of Us plays like the best Resident Evil ever AND the best Metal Gear ever.

As a survival horror game, The Last of Us plays much more faithful to the classic Resident Evil formula than do Resident Evil's own PS3-era sequels. It's one of the more truly unnerving games I've ever played, as well as one of the most unforgiving high-profile titles in recent memory, the two points being not unrelated. The "infected" in this game are at first scary for the reasons that zombies usually are; they are grotesque in appearance and manner yet eerily resonant, their blighted forms still recognizable as something once human, and embodying our fears of what we are one day to become, when we reach our own expiration dates.

In the Resident Evil series, zombies have become less and less frightening with each installment, because, once you see through their threatening facade, they rarely pose a legitimate danger. Consider Capcom's most recent entry, Resident Evil 6, where Leon S. Kennedy is able to carve a destructive swath through a horde of zombies simply by kicking and punching them to smithereens. This is in sharp contrast to the original PS1 Resident Evil, where every encounter could be a mentally and physically draining exercise, as you had to consider your approach—fight or dodge—and then grapple with the clunky controls to try to execute, understanding that even a single mistake could be very costly.

The Last of Us marks a return to those classic Resident Evil days, as the stage-3 infected "clickers," in particular, pose a serious threat to player character Joel, able to cause instant death if they get their hands on him. This is true even on the easiest difficulty, and the clickers are introduced fairly early on in the campaign, before the player is likely to have the tools to effectively combat them. Segments that task you with navigating through rooms full of these monsters, when even a single one could mean the end of you, are psychologically exhausting, requiring intense concentration and patience, as you observe their movements and plan your approach accordingly. Perhaps, after silently shanking two of them in separate, very carefully planned and executed maneuvers, you'll decide, with only one left to take out, that you'll try to conserve your shivs and bet instead on your common brick to brain the last one, hoping that the somewhat clumsy melee combat doesn't let you down, and understanding that, if that three-hit combo doesn't go off according to plan—if, say, the erratic clicker lurches the wrong way just as you're about to strike—there's a very real chance that you'll end up having to replay the entire sequence over again from before the first kill. The game thus brutally conditions you to react with dread at the distinctive rattle that signifies the presence of one or more of these creatures in the vicinity.

As menacing as the clickers are, eventually you learn to dread encounters with enemy humans even more. The human foes in The Last of Us are just as disturbingly malevolent as the infected, and, although they cannot cause instant game over, they are often packing firearms, and, unlike mindless zombies, they will summon reinforcements and work together to try to flank you. The game does possess some third-person shooter DNA inherited from Uncharted, if you choose to go that route (and there are segments where you have no other choice but to shoot it out), but, with no regenerating health here, and with weapons and medicine in short supply, firefights in The Last of Us feel a good deal more desperate than in typical cover-based shooters. A stealthier approach is advisable through most of the campaign, and this is where the tactical side to The Last of Us shines through.

Again, the player has a lot of decisions to make on how to proceed through a room full of hostiles. Do you have enough ammo to try to fight your way through? Are you even confident enough in your mastery of the crude firearms at your disposal to wage a gun battle? If not, which guys might you be able to safely slip past, which had you better take out, and can you possibly strangle them stealthily, rather than using your noisy guns and melee weapons, which would be sure to attract other guys and escalate matters into a very hairy situation indeed? You also must adjust your strategy depending on whether you're dealing with humans or with infected, which adds a nice bit of variety. While humans rely primarily on sight, clickers and other higher-level infected are blind and depend on their enhanced sensitivity to sound to track you.

Aiding your decision-making process is the "Listen Mode" mechanic, functionally equivalent to the Soliton Radar from Metal Gear Solid, which lets you sense foes through walls, so that you can better observe their patterns as you formulate your strategy. No explanation is ever given for why Joel's senses are so superhumanly acute in this game that otherwise so aspires to realism, and things get even more ridiculous when Ellie becomes the player character and possesses the same ability. Use of it is optional, of course, although I personally feel that playing without it reduces the tactical component immensely, since you're often left flying blind and having to scramble in its absence.

The combat does become progressively more manageable as Joel learns to craft more useful items, such as the Molotov cocktail and the nail bomb. Even so, the stealth gameplay never takes on the mischievous bent of the Metal Gear Solid series, which has always encouraged the player to somewhat sadistically experiment with all the ways one can lethally prank dopey guards (I mean, distracting them with dirty magazines—really?). In The Last of Us, staying hidden is about survival, and those interminable moments when you're holding your breath, crouching behind a desk, waiting anxiously for the clicker or well-armed human lingering on the other side of it to just move along already, rate among the all-time nail-biters I've experienced in any stealth game. So too is the sense of relief incomparably exhilarating, when such moments finally pass without incident.

Even if the enemies don't intimidate you, it still behooves you to always maintain the element of surprise for as long as possible, picking guys off quietly one at a time, so that you can conserve your resources, which, in classic survival horror fashion, are scarce and must be managed judiciously. The constant scavenging of the environment for items is, for me, one of the more tiresome aspects of adventuring in video games, but at least, in The Last of Us, whatever supplies you may find are almost certain to be something you'll be low on and in need of.

The player's examinations also reveal, through notes and journals left behind, and just through the game's intricately detailed environments, a secondary narrative about how the infection has ravaged civilization, and how humankind has responded to this new order, whole societies pushed out of the towns and cities, which nature has now reclaimed in their absence. A particularly compelling subplot, explored only through environmental storytelling and Resident Evil-style documents, concerns the harrowing journey of a group of civilians, who, for a time, managed to band together into a sustainable underground community. From the remnants of their sewer settlement to their abandoned former houses in the nearby town, the player is able to follow these ghosts backwards through the unfortunate circumstances and tragic decision-making that led to their ultimate downfall.

It is the main story of Joel and Ellie, however, that will leave the biggest impression for most players of The Last of Us. Although, as I mentioned, the story is conventional in presentation, linear and frequently non-interactive, it is nevertheless superbly written and acted. The material is uncompromisingly, but never gratuitously, adult. The characters inhabit a dark and ugly world, that idea of "survival" taken beyond the genre's gameplay conventions to heavily inform the narrative's tone and theme. The brutal methods that enemy groups mean to employ against the player throughout the game are all strongly implied to have been tactics utilized by Joel himself many times before to survive. Our grizzled player character is clearly not a nice guy, but as the relationship between Joel and Ellie, eventually a surrogate daughter to him, grows and deepens, the player comes to understand and identify with his ruthlessness that seems merely a necessary evil to protect the things we hold dear.

Much of the experience hinges on how the player responds to the character of Ellie, and it is greatly to Naughty Dog's credit that they have managed to craft a child character who doesn't come off as one of those "annoying whippersnapper" types (as are most child sidekicks in movies and TV). A typical teenager, she can be irreverent but also approaches the world with a fresher set of eyes, providing some necessary levity and gusto to balance out Joel's stoicism and the overall bleakness of the story. Part of it is that actress Ashley Johnson, who voices the character, is, unlike the character, not an adolescent but an adult with decades of experience. That's one of the advantages that a video game can have over a live-action film or TV show. In a live-action movie, you would need a kid to play a kid, when, the truth is, most kid performers can't play much of anything. Beyond that, Naughty Dog was clearly determined that Ellie be not a mere tagalong kid to get in the way and periodically need rescuing, but a full-fledged co-protagonist, who can carry the story together with Joel, and potentially even without him.

This transfers over into the gameplay, as, even with the player having one or more AI companions at almost all times throughout the campaign, no part of it ever feels like an escort mission. Although failing to protect Ellie can lead to a game over, this actually doesn't happen, in practice, nearly as often as it realistically should. Ellie and the other AI companions mostly disappear during combat (or potential combat) situations. They can be of limited assistance, sometimes pulling an enemy off Joel, but their bullets seem to be made of rubber, and so it takes forever for them to actually put an enemy down. But they also don't get in the way and are surprisingly adept at avoiding detection during sneaking segments. Or, rather, it is, by design, impossible for enemies to notice AI companions until the player is spotted first. Occasionally, this can lead to absurd instances where the computer-controlled Ellie might take cover in the wrong spot, ending up out in the open, right in front of an enemy, but, so long as the player remains hidden, the enemy will walk past her as though she is invisible. This happens fairly regularly and is hard to ignore, as it totally breaks the spell of the game. But I take it, along with Listen Mode, as one of those concessions to gamey-ness that is in service to the player. I think it's fair to accept these advantages to balance out such an equally absurd convention as, for example, enemies who have seemingly unlimited ammo when they are shooting you, but who then leave none behind after you kill them.

The gunplay in The Last of Us is not its strongest suit, and the handful of sections where the player is forced into exchanging fire with enemies from behind cover, while competent, are unremarkable, feeling like any generic third-person shooter. At least most every gun feels distinct and has a use, and a nice touch is that Naughty Dog actually shows where on his person Joel is carrying each of his many weapons, thereby avoiding the common issue of video game heroes presumably carrying grenade launchers in their pant pockets. I do find the game suffers somewhat from a clumsy interface that makes it tricky to switch to the right weapon in the middle of a firefight. I would have preferred a simple wheel system to cycle left/right through all of the guns (and another, vertical wheel for explosives).

Naughty Dog has purposefully limited both Joel's selection of firearms and his ability with them, as a way to dictate, not only how one plays the game (stealthily, rather than aggressively), but also how one feels while playing (desperate, rather than like a badass killing machine). As someone who has played and enjoyed a lot of more straightforward shooters this generation, this feeling of gun inadequacy in The Last of Us could be frustrating for me at times. The upside to it, however, is that, because the game so conditions you to scraping by while feeling under-equipped, consequently it is that much more satisfying when it does throw you a bone.

Toward the very end of the game, with only a few rooms of guards standing in my way along the home stretch, I grew impatient with sneaking and decided finally to just go in loud, whereupon I quickly found myself hilariously outgunned and shredded by flack jacketed goons armed with assault rifles. Before I fell, however, I did manage to take a few of them down with me, and, for a split-second, as I stood looking down upon a slain foe's body, right before my own character collapsed, I glimpsed a button prompt indicating that I could pick up the fallen soldier's rifle. And so the new plan solidified as the game reloaded me into the mission. I used smoke bombs to cover myself as I rushed that soldier, took him out immediately with my hatchet, then, as quickly as I could, claimed his gun as my own and immediately swung it around, opening up on my pursuers. There was not a second to spare in execution, but everything went according to plan. Once I had that assault rifle, the tables were turned, and I quickly gunned down three of them in as many seconds. It was one of the most thrilling and empowering moments in gaming. Truly, having that gun in my virtual hands made me feel like a god. What's silly is that, really, that rifle was a weaker version of the most basic weapon in Gears of War, a series I've toured four times and never felt as much a badass in. But, because nothing else like it existed anywhere in The Last of Us, once I was finally able to wield a fully automatic weapon, after some fifteen hours spent making due with less effective handguns and shotguns, of course it felt glorious.

The same could be said of the combat as a whole. Make no mistake, combat does constitute the majority of the experience in The Last of Us, but there are also regular stretches where you're just investigating your surroundings, looking for items or working on simple puzzles (e.g. where does the wooden plank go?), and, during these quieter moments, Joel and Ellie will often walk and talk, and you can enjoy the scenery. And the game is surprisingly sparing in its use of the infected, saving clickers from ever becoming commonplace and ho-hum.

The Last of Us deserves no accolades for innovation. It's not a new experience in any significant way, although I can't, offhand, think of any game before so unflinchingly and soberly mature (and I don't just mean that it's violent, or that there are swear words). In this still-young medium, where enthusiasts are always looking for the next great idea, what truly is the contribution of this prospective "Game of the Generation" to the evolutionary arc of the form? Personally, I do feel The Last of Us is a masterpiece, one of the great games of its generation, or ever—not a turning point, no, but a culmination of the entire three generations of PlayStation that preceded it. Playing it, I was reminded not only of Resident Evil and Metal Gear and Uncharted, but also Enslaved, Army of Two, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, Syphon Filter, Vagrant Story, even a bit of Final Fantasy X. I'm not saying that Naughty Dog was necessarily influenced by each of those titles, only that its members are clearly ardent disciples of game, having assimilated from across the canon to craft their own brilliant synthesis of potent ideas. The Last of Us is, if not a bold new invention, nevertheless a crowning achievement in the form. For me, playing through it was like embarking on a journey through some of my favorite memories of games past, as valid and vital as ever.

Resident Evil 6 - Jake Campaign (Capcom, 2012)

Newcomer Jake Muller's campaign in Resident Evil 6 is, at least in the marketing, distinguished by two gimmicks: 1) a persistent antagonist that pursues players throughout the game, and 2) Jake's penchant for hand-to-hand combat, powered by his superhuman abilities. In practice, neither of these ideas is very well-realized, but Jake's mode still manages to be the most interesting and varied experience in Resident Evil 6.

Much as the Leon campaign was meant to evoke the classic survival horror gameplay of the original Resident Evil, Jake's campaign frequently channels Resident Evil 3: Nemesis in its inclusion of a recurring and seemingly unstoppable enemy that hunts the players relentlessly. And, much as the Leon campaign actually felt almost nothing like the game it was meant to evoke, the chase segments throughout Jake's campaign never really resemble the experience of running from Nemesis in Resident Evil 3. What made Nemesis so effective a feature in Resident Evil 3 was very much tied into the core survival horror design of the early games, where, instead of progressing mission-to-mission in a one-way linear fashion, you would explore a single maze-like environment for the entire story, with only limited direction on what path to take. The emphasis was more on adventure than on action, but the added twist in Resident Evil 3 was that, as you made your own way through the environment, there was a chance that the fearsome Nemesis might arrive in pursuit without warning, instilling panic to interrupt the normally mild pace of your exploration, perhaps even at locations you had already passed by previously without incident, subverting old assumptions about when an area could be designated clear and safe.

In Resident Evil 6, the action, no matter the campaign, always abides by mission-based shooter conventions. You always know once a room is clear and you are safe, and you'll usually have a pretty good idea when the next action sequence will commence—most likely, it will be triggered by opening a door or stepping forward into a space that appears conspicuously staged for something to go down. The scripted chase sequences in the Jake campaign are no different. The triggers are the same as for any other action sequence, so you always know when one might be coming. It's never startling or unexpected, as crossing paths with Nemesis in Resident Evil 3 could be. And, when it happens in Resident Evil 6, the arrival of the "Ustanak" (sort of a "Nemesis 2.0") is always further punctuated by some attention-grabbing cut scene, allowing you ample time to brace yourself for what you know you'll have to do next, which is run like hell. Furthermore, in the context of a mission-based campaign, the chase sequences in Resident Evil 6 can't change how you approach the entire game in the way the inclusion of Nemesis did in Resident Evil 3. Sure, running from Ustanak is a different experience from exchanging fire with a squad of grunts in the Chris campaign, but the game also includes vehicular stages and other on-rails segments. Like those other novelty stages, the finite chase sequences, rather than being transformative like the ever-present Nemesis, just offer the occasional change of pace between stretches of more conventional action gameplay. It's also stupid that, during the chase sequences, the characters will insist that they must not be caught by the Ustanak (and, indeed, failure to outrun it results in an instant death and game over), but then there will be other times when the characters will decide to stand and fight the Ustanak, and, during these boss battles, it will be far less deadly, no longer able to perform one-hit kills. No explanation is ever given for why it might be holding back at times; it's just the game arbitrarily deciding that Ustanak will be sometimes invincible and other times merely tough.

The other signature feature of the Jake campaign is Jake's superhuman prowess in hand-to-hand combat. Cut scenes show him taking out groups of enemies with just punches and kicks, but, once into gameplay, Resident Evil 6 remains very far from being a competent brawler. Jake possesses more and better melee moves than the characters in the other campaigns (Jake's partner, Sherry Birkin, meanwhile, wields a stun rod, which is functionally equivalent to, albeit more limited than, his advanced hand-to-hand), but the experience is no more sophisticated than the melee combat in the Chris and Leon campaigns. There is little finesse involved; you just mash away and rely on the crude auto-targeting to clear crowds. Against most of the same enemy types as faced in the Chris campaign, I did find myself going hand-to-hand far more frequently in the Jake campaign, but I don't know that that was exactly a wise choice on my part, as I also died a lot more while playing as Jake.

Despite its failures, I still found the Jake campaign the most interesting in Resident Evil 6. Not as tedious as the Leon campaign, and not as monotonous as the Chris, Jake's game features the most variety. The largest portion of the action resembles the shooter gameplay of the Chris campaign, but there are also the aforementioned chase sequences, some vehicular stages, and a lengthy stage where Jake is unarmed but for his fists. There's even a pretty great stealth stage, where you must sneak around and hide in dumpsters to avoid being found by the Ustanak. Scrambling toward that dumpster after tripping an alarm, then peeking out through the crack beneath the lid, to watch as the Ustanak hovers seemingly interminably about your hiding place, before finally it moves on, evidently unaware of your location—for me, that ranks among the tensest moments in the series.

But, above all else, what makes the Jake campaign more engaging than Chris and Leon's is, surprisingly, the characters. In the other modes, Piers and Helena come across as underdeveloped sidekicks to Chris and Leon. Helena has some sob story involving her sister, and then afterward becomes this uncomfortable third wheel, while Leon chases after/flirts with Ada Wong. Piers is just some generic white guy soldier, about whom we never really learn anything. Sherry Birkin, however, is Jake's legitimate equal and co-protagonist. Their relationship is the driving force in the story, and the two of them, perhaps because they are much younger than Chris and Leon, seem more vital, more invested, more conflicted, and overall more multi-dimensional. They're not classic characters, by any means, and the story is still incomprehensible nonsense. But at least these characters give you something more to latch on to than just Chris's muscles or Leon's hair.

Having already played through two full-length campaigns of Resident Evil 6, I wasn't sure, going into Jake's story, whether I'd be able to stomach any more. Surprisingly, this third trip was the most enjoyable for me. Part of it may be that, 10+ hours with the Resident Evil 6 mechanics later, something just finally clicked. There was more recycled content this time around. Whereas Chris and Leon's campaigns only briefly intersect at one point, Jake crosses paths with both of them. Yet even those sections I found more enjoyable this time, at least partly because I knew better what I was doing. I still feel the action is on the sloppy and shallow side, and the game is unequivocally the worst of the modern (post-Resident Evil 4) installments in the series. But, on the strength of the Jake campaign, I'm happy to upgrade Resident Evil 6 from a game I might before have actively advised against playing to one that I would now rate as "pretty decent."

Resident Evil 6 - Chris Campaign (Capcom, 2012)

Whereas the Leon campaign in Resident Evil 6 was intended to evoke the series' 32-bit survival horror roots, the Chris campaign reflects the shift, ever since Resident Evil 4, toward action as the prime element. Chris's campaign, in fact, doesn't actually feel very much like even Resident Evil 4 or 5, as it carries the series considerably deeper into full-blown shooter territory. Well, maybe more like half-blown, as the end result is quite the trade down from Resident Evil 5's unique, albeit quirky, identity within the action game landscape to now the mediocre and generic third-person shooter that Resident Evil 6 offers in its Chris campaign.

Mechanically, Resident Evil 6 adds to the series several standard shooter functions, which were also available in the Leon campaign, but which are vastly more relevant in the Chris campaign. You can move while shooting now, roll to evade attacks, take cover, and also perform a Gears of War-style "roadie run." These are all important in the Chris campaign, because, unlike in Leon's game, where the most prevalent enemy was the classic lurching zombie, Chris Redfield and his partner, Piers Nivans, face foes that are, more often than not, packing firearms, which includes automatics and sniper rifles. Players encountered the occasional gun-toting B.O.W. (Bio Organic Weapon) in previous games, but here at last we arrive at the point where Resident Evil becomes an experience primarily composed of firefights.

That doesn't have to be a bad thing. I'm not one of those people who cries "betrayal" simply because a property I've enjoyed ventures into a different direction from what it used to be that I enjoyed. I liked the earlier survival horror games (really a subset of the adventure genre), and I also liked the more recent action installments. The only things they had in common that Resident Evil 6 lacks was the level of quality. Resident Evil 6 is not, unfortunately, a very good shooter. It's not the worst thing ever, but, keeping in mind I don't wade too deeply into the obscure recesses of the genre, it does rank closer to the bottom than to the top among those I've personally played. In some ways, it reminds me of Square Enix's Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII (2006) for the PS2, which was similarly a mercenary attempt by a Japanese developer to appeal to the larger Western market with an ultimately asinine take on a genre that they understood was successful here but which they themselves had no palate for. It feels like a shooter developed by people who don't even play many shooters, let alone make them.

The Chris campaign consists of a lot of repetitive room-clearing gameplay, where enemies, either already waiting in place for you or emerging seemingly out of nowhere, mostly stand there and soak up the bullets you unload into them. Eventually, after I don't know how many bullets (gone are the days of having to count and conserve your number of shots, but it feels like a lot), your target will go down, either to disintegrate into ash or annoyingly reemerge as a stronger, mutated form, which, again, mostly just stands and shoots or advances toward you in a linear fashion while absorbing bullets. On the normal difficulty, the game is not especially hard or especially easy, but it's always more frustrating than challenging. Chris and Piers hit the ground hard any time they get shot, which feels not only annoying but also unfair when you find yourself targeted by multiple deadeye snipers while simultaneously getting swarmed by guys on the ground distracting you from getting a bead on the snipers. Getting through most firefights, however, doesn't take a lot of skill or tactics, just a lot of patience and bullets. One oddity, I suppose, of Resident Evil 6 is that, whereas, in other shooters, your sidearm is typically a last resort, the handgun remains, even in the Chris campaign, your primary weapon. This is especially so when you play as Piers, who never even gets an automatic weapon. This doesn't mean much in practice, because there's not a lot of precision aiming in this game.

It's hard to quantify, but, regarding the feel of this game, the action just doesn't "make sense" in the way that Resident Evil 5 did. When I consider the 2-D action games of my childhood, the well-made ones always had responsive controls and felt very tight and consistent. An enemy might surprise you the first time you faced it, but, once you familiarized yourself with all its moves, winning the game became simply a matter of reading patterns, maintaining focus, and honing your manual skill. When you lost, you understood why. It was because your reflexes were a touch slow, or because you lost track of the pattern and responded incorrectly. The old games "made sense" in that way, and I felt that Resident Evil 5 had a lot of that same arcade DNA in its design. Its pace was measured and deliberate. Enemies always behaved in a consistent manner, and, once you learned to read and react to their animations, they would never betray your expectations. Resident Evil 6, on the other hand, feels like most shooters today, in that the action feels much more nebulous. There probably are patterns you can learn (although a lot of the better modern shooters purposely eschew arcade-style pattern-based gameplay as too simplistic or unrealistic), but the game never requires or encourages you to do so. It's much more efficient to just spray your way through the roughly 5-10 hours that the campaign lasts, all the while never looking back. The gameplay consequently never feels very rewarding, because it almost never evolves beyond you performing the bare minimum action of any shooter, which is to aim at the body and pull the trigger.

Well, actually, one other quirk of the Chris campaign is that the player characters' melee attacks, already super-juiced in the Leon campaign, are even more so here. The more evolved B.O.W.s that Chris and Piers face are more resilient than the zombies in Leon's game, but they also tend to be less numerous, which means that Chris and Piers can more often clear an entire room with just melee attacks without running out of stamina. Since the shooting action is so clumsy in this game, it is often more effective just to melee everything. It is not any more fun that way, however, since you're just spamming the melee button.

I'll say that one thing this campaign has over most other shooters is that it's actually kind of empowering taking on the roles of two admittedly conventional yet charmingly guileless, never crude or amoral action heroes as Chris and Piers. The stars of Resident Evil have never been the most outstanding in the pantheon of video game characters, and newcomer Piers is maybe the most blandly generic player character in series history (until a cheap yet memorable twist late in the story), but at least they have more personality than the average point-of-view character in a shooter. Soap MacTavish, star of Activision's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) eventually becomes a cool character, but not until the sequels, when he becomes the player character's AI-controlled commanding officer. In the first game, where you actually spend most of your time playing as Soap, he's just your typical faceless, voiceless first-person shooter protagonist. Chris and Piers, meanwhile, bring not just skills but also their convictions and badass attitudes to the story, and this rare male-male partnership (I believe the only other times this has happened in series history have been short sections in Resident Evil: Revelations (2012)) makes for an extra testosterone-heavy play session.

Compared to the Leon campaign, the Chris campaign feels more generic. On the other hand, if you're playing cooperatively with another person, it's a more streamlined and therefore better co-op experience than the Leon campaign can offer. Also, despite the whole game's many failures, it is nonetheless worth admiring once again just how much Capcom put into this project. The Chris and Leon campaigns converge for only one brief section. Disappointingly, that means Chris and Leon never actually meet in any playable segment, but it's also impressive that, within a single release, here are two full-length campaigns with virtually no recycled content. Quantity does not make up for lack of quality, but it's not that Capcom wasn't trying or that it spread itself too thin. The game is just held back by some rotten mechanics at its core.

The Chris campaign is, as I said, a generic and mediocre third-person shooter. It's serviceable, not terrible, but, for a franchise with such a strong history, that's disappointing enough. Remove the name and the incomprehensibly zany story, and there wouldn't be anything to distinguish this from any among dozens of other forgettable second-rate shooters.

Resident Evil 6 - Leon Campaign (Capcom, 2012)

Resident Evil 6 is, if nothing else, gargantuan by action game standards, comprising three full-length campaigns (plus an unlockable fourth) with very little overlap in content, and each distinguished by some unique gameplay mechanics and design philosophies.

I started with Leon's campaign, which is clearly intended to be evocative of the classic PS1-era survival horror games, although it's not ultimately very much like them at all. The early proceedings do present the illusion of a more deliberately paced adventure. Starting out indoors in a mansion-esque environment, you're trudging through the building, searching for the way forward or for anything useful to pick up. It's actually quite a long stretch before there's any action, and you're more just exploring the area. It is all an illusion, however, because, whereas the classic mansions were fully realized environments that allowed you some leeway in your exploration, only nudging you (via locked doors limiting your possible paths) in certain directions, RE6 always progresses along effectively a straight line, with only the occasional side room along the way toward triggering the next event or objective. You can scavenge around for items, but there aren't any documents to pick up. If you just want to get to the next cut scene, you can even call up arrows (on top of the already busier-than-ever on-screen display) to point you in the right direction.

When the action does commence, Leon's campaign again tries to channel the classics by bringing back zombies as the primary enemy type. They're more mindless than the infested of the last two numbered installments—not as organized or dexterous at handling weapons, they just lurch toward you—but, honestly, it's not that pronounced a departure from the recent games. Combat is similar but, in my opinion, inferior to RE4 and 5. You can move while shooting now, there's finally analog walk/run control, and melee attacks can be performed at will, but it all feels very imprecise, not nearly as methodical and strategic as previous games. The old RE4 mechanics, though sluggish compared to modern shooters, were very thoughtfully engineered, involving care and consideration on the player's part, every time you took aim at a particular body part on a target, either to line up the head shot or to set them up for a contextual melee attack. With RE6, on the other hand, it feels like the designers just looked at what shooters were popular on the market and then responded by putting out a generically average one. The action is faster and the enemies more reckless, so you end up spraying fire or, at least early on, spamming the obscenely juiced new melee attacks.

It's rather ridiculous that the heroes' kicks and pro wrestling maneuvers can crush zombies far more efficiently than bullets can put them down, but what's even more ridiculous perhaps is the arbitrary stamina meter, which regulates how much you can use your melee attacks. Spam that melee button, and watch as your character tears through a crowd of zombies as though a god of war . . . until your stamina runs out, at which point your melee transforms into a pained and pathetic limp slap. The meter will automatically refill after a bit of time, and I suppose this is meant to encourage strategic management of your resources—not just bullets anymore but also your stamina—but it just feels so unusually contrived to have this arbitrary limit to the number of kicks you can perform.

Elsewhere on the gameplay front, the menu system has been overhauled, and there are new dodge/roll maneuvers. The problem with all this is that the controls, while theoretically simpler and faster than the dated and clunky systems of RE5, are still not exactly intuitive, and if, like me, you only play games once a week at most, there's a good chance you won't remember each time how to quickly use these systems to your advantage—assuming you even remember that they exist!

The camera was also an issue for me. It was positioned way too close in on the player character, leaving me with huge blind spots that led to me constantly getting ambushed by unseen enemies. I understand that Capcom actually patched the game specifically to add options for adjusting the camera angle, which is commendable, although I haven't yet tried out the post-patch camera to see if the options actually fix the issues.

As for the experience of Leon's campaign specifically, after those first twenty-or-so minutes of pretending to be classic Resident Evil, the game settles into frantic action, big set pieces, and over-the-top cut scenes. The first chapter ends in spectacular fashion with a sequence echoing the barricade cabin from RE4. The cabin, the first time I played it, was probably one of my top 5 experiences in gaming, and this sequence, wherein the player characters and a few AI allies in a gun shop try to hold the fort against a zombie siege, comes as close to replicating that "Battle of the Alamo" experience as anything I've played. It's not as well-paced, and it doesn't have that cool bit of pushing the shelves in front of the windows, but, on the other hand, you can play it co-op this time, and it ends in much more satisfying fashion, with your party actually having to make a desperate escape, instead of the enemies just relenting after you kill enough of them.

Alas, there are four more chapters after that, and it's all downhill from there. It's a lot of stumbling through generic and dimly lit caverns, the only other notable sequence being a chase through a Chinese street market, where you're pursued by a uniquely freaky enemy that can split itself into multiple parts and is determined to literally cram itself down your throat to burst you from the inside-out.

The story crosses over at points with the other campaigns, but the long-awaited in-game meeting between Leon and Chris Redfield is only a non-playable cut scene. Also, the way Capcom has chosen to present the story results in each campaign basically spoiling what happens in the others, even when they don't seem to have a lot to do with one another. For example, sometimes a thread will move from one campaign to another, but you won't be able to follow along, and when it eventually rejoins your campaign, they'll explain what happened but, in the process, rob you of the chance to actually experience the events firsthand without foreknowledge of their outcome. I wish they had opted more for a Suikoden III-style system, whereby you could switch between characters' perspectives after each chapter, instead of having to play through each entire campaign one at a time. Oh well. The story's pretty terrible anyway, and, once I play the other campaigns, maybe I'll find I didn't miss out on much at all.

So ready to go digital

So Resident Evil 6 is getting totally savaged on Metacritic--critics and users alike. I myself played the demo and didn't like it. Even so, I picked it up at retail day-one because . . . well, let's be honest, I'll buy crap just to have it, so long as it has "Resident Evil" on the cover.

To be specific, I even paid the $30 premium for the "Archives" edition for 360, which bundles in Resident Evil Code: Veronica X HD, Resident Evil 4 HD, Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition, and the Resident Evil Degeneration movie. Degeneration is dreadful and, on its own, not worth paying for at any price; you can just consider it a bonus in this package. But each of those games normally goes for around $20 (about $10 too much for CVX), so if you don't already have more than one of them, then the bundle is not a bad deal (that is, provided you still want and intend to play RE6 itself sooner rather than later).

That said, Resident Evil 6 Archives is surprisingly quite the opposite of a conventional "collector's edition"--probably not the sort of item you'd be happy with if you're buying things just to have them. If it proves to be rare, then I suppose that in itself will make it a collectible. But it's a very unattractive and cheaply put-together package. RE6 already has some of the more boring box art in recent memory, and the Archives cover is a possibly even less inspiring grayscale version of the same, only with the words "Archives" and "Includes" above a list of all the titles included. At least it has a slipcover, though it's the same and just as tacky as the front of the case.

Among collectors, the bigger gripe (or at least equally bad) is that CVX, 4, and 5 are all strictly digital; the box just includes download codes for the approximately 13 gigs' worth of content. Degeneration is a standard-def DVD, which may well be the greater offense. So, basically, Capcom pressed an extra batch of RE6 discs, generated a bunch of download codes, and tossed in leftover Degeneration DVDs (of which they probably have thousands lying around), all thrown together in a package with a cover that looks like a placeholder image. There's not even an instruction manual included! What total crap! (The standard edition of RE6 reportedly doesn't come with a manual either.)

So, yeah, it all sounds pretty disgusting, doesn't it?

Well, the package makes for an unquestionably lame collectible. On the other hand, I'm lately starting to feel that, price being equal, the digital versions of games in many ways hold more practical value for me than physical media. The convenience of being able to load games right off the hard drive, instead of popping discs in and out of the tray every time you want to switch games, is not to be underestimated. Yes, essentially, not only am I a wasteful spender, but I'm also lazy. But the reality is that the majority of the games I've played on the 360 over the last year have been off the hard drive, and that comfort is certainly something I've come to appreciate. Also--and I'm being completely serious here--I've had multiple occasions when, on a whim, I would load up a game on my already-on 360. Meanwhile, walking over to my games shelf, picking out a game, and then inserting it into the console is not something that I would ever do on a whim. And, as I am these days an increasingly more casual player, my gaming almost depends primarily on whims to initiate.

I'm actually glad that the included RE4 and CVX are digital rather than physical copies. Knowing myself as I do, I know that I would never pop in disc versions of either of those games into my 360. On the other hand, there's a chance, however slim, that I might one day, on a whim, load RE4 off the hard drive. That possibility also makes my spending seem less wasteful than if I were paying only for a disc to gratify my sense of collector's vanity. And, since I already have RE5 on disc, it's nice to also have a digital copy now. (Of course, it would be even better if, when I bought the physical copy, they would just include the downloadable version free, but that's obviously a pipe dream.)

In fact, I honestly wish that the included RE6 were a download as well. Certainly, the overall cheapness of this bundle makes me wish they had simply gone all the way and made it nothing but codes on a sheet inside that crappy box. Even setting aside the underwhelming physical component to this specific release, however, going all-digital is something that, more and more, I feel I can really get behind. It's convenient, saves shelf space, and is more secure in a way, since you can usually re-download even if your hard drive fails, whereas if something happens to your disc, you're screwed. Sony made a big deal recently of its being able to offer downloadable versions of RE6 and other major titles simultaneous with their retail releases. Had that been an option on the 360, I would seriously have considered it for RE6. Aside from my collector's mentality, which is largely mooted here by the lame cover art and lack of manual, the only real argument for the physical version is that Archives is the better value and, ironically, only available at retail.

On that note, it's worth mentioning that, for the same price as Archives, you can get its PS3 counterpart, Resident Evil 6 Anthology, which swaps out CVX and Degeneration (the weaker parts of Archives) for downloadable PS1 versions of RE Director's Cut, RE2, and RE3. Outside of this bundle, those games would collectively cost you about the same as CVX + Degeneration, but they're probably more worth your time.

No, Darkside Chronicles doesn't count . . . .

In case you haven't seen it yet, Capcom recently released an extended version of Blur Studio's Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City short:

I wouldn't expect the actual game to be anywhere near as cool as this movie. Honestly, I don't even really expect the game to be good. Even so, just hoping for a lot of fanservice, I'm probably looking forward to it more so than to any other releases scheduled for this year. At least, I was until today's Resident Evil 6 reveal:

Trailer is fairly incomprehensible, obviously not as slick as the Blur video. But, hey, it's got Leon and Chris in the same game, at long last. That's gotta be worth something . . . .

Resident Evil: Afterlife

Saw this in 3-D.  Nothing amazing, but I honestly enjoyed the 3-D better here than in any of the animated features I've seen, save for Beowulf.  Paul W. S. Anderson does not waste the tech on subtle effects; his idea of 3-D means bullets and axes flying toward the audience.  Even so, there are lengthy spaces without any noticeable 3-D, and I suppose, on the bright side, I can say that, during those moments, I honestly forgot that I was wearing the glasses.  In other words, whenever the glasses were not enhancing my experience, at least they were not detracting from it either, as has been the case in the past.  Perhaps I'm just getting accustomed to them.

As for the movie itself, it was what I wanted and more than I expected, which is not to say that it was very good or very surprising.

The first Resident Evil was a movie that I enjoyed more so than I would like to admit that it was good.  In fact, it was not very good, but its appealing lead actress and basic laundry list of zombie, sci-fi, and thriller tropes kept things sufficiently entertaining.  The second and third films then gave Milla Jovovich telekinesis, becoming very ugly superhero flicks in the process--a bit like Blade but with none of the wit, stunt work, or costuming.  They were wretched.

Afterlife sees Paul W. S. Anderson back in the director's chair for the first time since the original (though I don't know if that's actually significant, since I'm pretty sure he's never directed a good film).  More inspired by the latest games, it's much more a straight action affair.  There are still zombies, but there are also tons of bad humans, and Wesker, the main antagonist, is basically the superhuman Wesker from the games.  Milla, meanwhile, loses her own special abilities early on, becoming just a regular, albeit ideal, human, overcoming her enemies with skill, experience, and attitude, instead of conveniently timed and vaguely defined superpowers.  Thus freed of its predecessors' most unbelievable element, the movie is by far the most exciting in the series, with action set pieces on a par with the Blade trilogy's.  In my opinion, Milla is also better-dressed and better-armed this time, and the whole affair just looks cooler all around.

I had fun.  In fact, 3-D or no, I enjoyed it more than The Expendables.  And between these movies and Ultraviolet, I'm ready to declare Milla Jovovich the most exciting action star of the last ten years, probably her only rival being Angelina Jolie.

My Top 5 Video Game FMVs

Yes, we've arrived at that point in this blog's life.  No more joking, I now make "Top 5" lists in earnest.  It's either that or I start playing weekly games of Madden 11 . . . demo (Colts vs. Jets all day!) and posting the play-by-play box scores.

Anyway, I was inspired after recently viewing the cinematic trailer for DC Universe Online.  DC Universe Online, being an MMORPG, held no interest for me as a player, but I am now glad that it exists, if only because it has resulted in the commissioning of Blur for this amazing mini-movie that will surely be the best thing about the entire game.

Blur may not be a household name, but it is one of the hottest computer animation and design studios around, its skills allegedly commanding per-minute charges in the $1 million range.  Blur does a lot more than just video game work, but its CG talent is undeniably a perfect fit for gaming, and it has done much to class up a number of otherwise mediocre products.  Before DC Universe Online, the studio caught my attention with a pair of similarly awesome cinematic trailers for the similarly yawn-inducing Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Well, Blur may be the king now--frankly, it doesn't have a lot of competition, as many developers have opted this generation to rely less on pre-rendered assets--but I thought I'd take a moment to reflect on the past and pick out five of my favorite pre-rendered video game cinematics.

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis - Opening

The Resident Evil 2 opening movies were, in their own time, the most technically impressive CG FMVs on console, and Code: Veronica's roller-coaster intro is always a crowd-pleaser, but my personal favorite Resident Evil cinematic is the opening for Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.

RE2 allowed us to play in the aftermath of Raccoon City's fall to the zombie apocalypse, describing in journals how it all went down, but here we finally got to see the citizens making their hopeless last stand.  No longer contained within some mansion in the woods, the zombies were taking over the city streets, and the nightmarish spectacle was consequently more real than ever before.

Kingdom Hearts Final Mix - "Deep Dive"

The famous "Deep Dive" video was a secret movie contained in the Japan-only "director's cut" of Kingdom Hearts.  As a teaser for Kingdom Hearts II, it was as oblique and enigmatic as you would have expected from a Tetsuya Nomura production--even four games later, fanboys are still trying to decipher all its hidden messages.  But it also established another Nomura signature.

Considerably darker and more violent than anything else in the game, it was also plain cool.  Its significance to the story would remain unclear even hours into Kingdom Hearts II, but this non-interactive movie surprisingly provided more meaningful clues as to how future games would look and play, with its near-weightless style and balletic combat.  Here also were planted the seeds of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, and you can even follow the lineage onward to the upcoming Final Fantasy Versus XIII.

Kingdom Hearts II - Opening

Many Kingdom Hearts fans, drawn to the series for its high production values and exciting combat, understandably skipped Chain of Memories for the GBA.  That posed a bit of a problem for players hoping to jump directly to Kingdom Hearts II, however, because although not a lot happened in Chain of Memories, the story definitely did not end in the same place it began.  To get these players up to speed, the beginning of Kingdom Hearts II recapped the story thus far in virtuosic music video form.

Actually, as a recap, it was almost useless to anybody who hadn't played the previous games.  But it was gorgeous, full of inventive imagery and editing (especially in the Chain of Memories section), and it rewarded players of Chain of Memories, bringing their imaginations to life by highlighting resonant moments that the GBA simply could never do justice.  My favorite part has got to be the shot of Sora and company racing up a staircase while Riku progresses upside down along the underside--a sublimely literal representation of their parallel journeys through the castle.

Onimusha 3: Demon Siege - Opening

This one requires little introduction, as it is regularly at or near the top of almost everybody's list.  The Onimusha series was originally conceived of as a cinematic game, and all of the core Onimusha titles have had ambitious opening movies, but Onimusha 3's by Robot remains the best.

I think all of the videos on this list are ones that I come back to because they are so replayable and stand well even out of context. Onimusha 3's intro, better than everything else in all of the Onimusha games combined, is the epitome of that--essentially a CG short film with its own complete and perfectly self-contained narrative arc.  Indeed, you would be best off just watching this and then skipping the rest of the game.  Not only is it all downhill from here, but nothing that follows even has anything at all to do with what is seen in this video.

Mortal Kombat: Armageddon - Opening

Bringing together almost every fighter ever to have appeared in MK up to that point, it was the slugfest to end all slugfests.  In my opinion, this is even better than the DC Universe Online video, for the sheer number of distinct characters that it is able to juggle.  If you were ever into the series, this was a glorious celebration and culmination of its entire history.  Even if you couldn't name even half the characters, it was just an awesome battle royal, rendered in astonishingly accomplished CG that was probably more than MK and Midway deserved.  Also, as will likely be the case with DC Universe Online, watching the opening movie is vastly more exciting than actually playing the game.

Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition

I played through Resident Evil 5 four times, which is the most time I've spent on any single Resident Evil. This surprises even me, because I very rarely play through games more than once. I don't think I've ever encountered a game that is so deliberately user-unfriendly in its controls and basic mechanics while also being so addictive and replayable by its mission design. I know it's not to everyone's taste, but I do love that game. And yes, I did play through it in both co-op and single-player (the latter on Veteran difficulty, in fact). That was all months ago, of course, but I was able to enjoy one last hurrah with the game recently in the form of the new Gold Edition content.

The first piece of new content, "Lost in Nightmares," is a prequel scenario starring Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine. Set in a mansion environment that is completely new to and unlike anything else in RE5, it is a lovingly packaged homage to the classic pre-RE4 survival horror games. You spend most of it reading documents, solving simple puzzles, collecting limited supplies, and fetching keys and turning cranks, before confronting a boss enemy that cannot be defeated through direct means. "Lost in Nightmares" also included the one moment in all of RE5 that genuinely scared me (although I wonder how scary it would have been if I had remembered to turn on the RE5 mini-map). There is even a nifty trick to switch the perspective to the classic fixed camera mode, so you can remind yourself where the series came from and see just how far it has come. Alas, it does not restore auto-aiming, rendering the perspective highly impractical (well, more so than usual) once the shooting starts.

With tons more nods and references, "Lost in Nightmares" is wonderful fanservice for veterans, but its brevity makes it more of a nostalgia-driven novelty than an independently rewarding experience. Lasting one short sitting (you cannot save your game in the extra missions), as opposed to several nightly sessions scheduled before bedtime, it's missing the rewarding narrative arc, from hopeless nightmare gradually to hopeful dawn, that was so essential to old-school Resident Evil. It also makes apparent just how poorly suited cooperative multiplayer is to the old survival horror design. I've discussed this before, but the more intimate adventure style of Resident Evil is not something that gets better with more players. When it is just you and your player character journeying through that mansion, it is easy to become immersed in the exploration and bond with the game itself. When you add another live human being to the mix, you become anchored in the real world, unable to drift into the fiction. Without that immersion, all this scanning of objects and flipping through pages in lengthy files becomes just a tiresome exercise.

On the other hand, when I collected a key item that I had no idea how to utilize, it occurred to me that maybe I was never very good at these games. As I read aloud the clue, however, my partner was able to recall an important detail that led us in the right direction. Had I been on my own, I'm sure I would have just wasted several minutes rechecking every object in the environment. Unfortunately, the presence of another player could not help me to make sense of the cryptic documents, some of which seem barely relevant to either RE5 or past games. Perhaps they are the first clues to the story of the next game.

The other new chapter is "Desperate Escape," which is set during the events of RE5. The name evokes "Last Escape," the Japanese subtitle for Biohazard 3, which was the last game chronologically to feature Jill Valentine as the main player character. Jill is back as the player one character here, but "Desperate Escape" is more of a distillation of the action elements of RE4 and 5. It is probably the most intense chapter in all of RE5, constantly tossing overwhelming numbers at you and forcing you to keep on the move. Of course, you still can't move while shooting, so the resulting action is maybe the finest example in RE5 of the series's trademark engineered panic. For reference, the hairiest chapters in the main game require taking out as many as 60 enemies to earn an S rank for the stage. At the end of "Desperate Escape," my partner and I finished with over 150 enemies routed. Each.

The highlight for me was a sequence that, more than anything else in the game, truly reminded me of Black Hawk Down. Armed with a sniper rifle, I was forced to take shelter in a crumbling shed. With three walls and only one window, it was the most fortified position available. I quickly found myself against the back wall and essentially prone as I covered the two entry points. As packs of enemies stormed both sides, I was pretty much locked in scope mode any time I wasn't frantically reloading. Occasionally my partner, packing a puny automatic, would charge out to collect ammo. Certain that I would not survive long out in the open with a sniper rifle, I had to remain behind and watch him shrink in the distance and wander off screen, perhaps never to return.

Both chapters are well worth experiencing if you are a fan of the game or series. "Lost in Nightmares" is a very novel experience that shows how the old survival horror formula could still work with the newer camera. "Desperate Escape" is an action-packed scenario that serves as a short encore for the experience of RE5 as a whole. They are not entirely satisfying, but I don't see how post-game downloadable content of this sort can be. Although both chapters are comparable in length to those found in RE5's campaign, as standalone chapters they don't carry the feelings of consequence that come with progressing through a full game. "Lost in Nightmares" feels especially insubstantial and "Desperate Escape," even as hectic as it is, feels a tad anticlimactic. Like the Wizards Jordan, it lasts just long enough to remind you of the great times you had before, but it's over all too soon and the payoff isn't quite there this time. Even so, I'm glad to have had this one last dance.

The final piece of Gold Edition is Mercenaries Reunion, which is a huge disappointment. It is just the regular Mercenaries mode with barely reworked stages and eight new characters to play as. Unfortunately, instead of simply plugging the new characters into the existing mode, Capcom decided to include Mercenaries Reunion as a completely separate mode, despite the fact that it is obviously 99% the same code. Thus, none of the original Mercenaries characters are playable in Mercenaries Reunion, nor are any of the new characters playable in plain Mercenaries. This only really matters when playing co-op, but it means that you cannot, for example, team up Wesker with Barry Burton. Less significant but still annoying, your old scores and progress also do not carry over to the "new" mode. I can speculate as to the reasons, but there really can be no good excuse for this.

Chubby Rain

Gotcha, suckas! It's actually heavy rain!

Yes, let me tell you all about Heavy Rain, David Cage and Quantic Dream's much-ballyhooed PS3-exclusive really-not-a-game work of interactive fiction. I don't have it and won't be playing it until long after the horse is dead and devoured. Obviously, these last few months have been unusually packed with hot new releases, and so my plate is presently full. But I did find time to check out the Heavy Rain demo, and I know you're all just dying to hear my impressions.

In the first part of the demo, you play a private investigator, asking questions and looking for leads. As you walk the short and direct path to your one destination, the feel evokes old-school Resident Evil, complete with tank controls and fixed camera angles. The scene concludes with an action sequence that is like a less cheap version of the knife fight from RE4--essentially a branching string of pre-choreographed cut scenes, with the player only having to press the right button in time at each cut to come out ahead. As was the case with Resident Evil, it's a questionable design choice to communicate such dark and serious material through the most hilarious mechanics imaginable. In fact, Heavy Rain is even more slapstick, since virtually every action, from opening a door to engaging in dialogue, is handled through a fiddly quick time event sequence.

Nevertheless, I actually did really enjoy this part. It felt almost like the developer made Heavy Rain as a movie first, then just added button prompts any time the protagonist was supposed to do something. That's a gross oversimplification, but I don't know if I would even object to that sort of interactive movie game anymore. I do enjoy an action-intensive session of Bayonetta or the occasional numbers-heavy RPG, but my stamina is not boundless, and there are times when I would welcome something less technically demanding. And I personally don't really mind QTEs. As frustrating as it was, I truly believe that the RE4 knife fight could not have been done any better. The interactivity was sufficient to convey the unforgiving tightrope walk that was their combat, and the scene would have lost a lot of impact, had the sophisticated stunt choreography been replaced with repetitive gameplay animations. Moreover, Heavy Rain shows off the versatility of the QTE as a mechanic that can be applied to any action, allowing for gameplay experiences that do not rely just on pressing buttons to make characters attack. In the future, this could lead to character-based games in genres other than action. Of course I'm not advocating a future full of interactive movies, but maybe Heavy Rain is the sort of casual game that I could appreciate in moderation.

The second half of the demo is much rougher. This time, you play a different detective as he investigates a murder scene. It is here that Heavy Rain reveals itself as an adventure game in the vein of Deja Vu. Whereas the first segment basically proceeded on rails, this second part leaves you on your own to thoroughly scan your surroundings and pick up clues. Of course, Resident Evil was basically an adventure game with limited action elements, and I can still enjoy Phoenix Wright, but Heavy Rain seems to combine the worst elements of each--the directionless tedium of point-and-click investigation with the uncooperative controls of Resident Evil. It's a rather jarring switch to this from the interactive movie of the previous segment, and it kind of made me want to stop playing.

After too many minutes of meandering with no idea what they want you to see, it's enough to make you throw up your hands and admit finally that, yes, these controls really are terrible, and, yes, pointing and clicking would be better. And it's all too much and you find yourself just running away, no idea where you're headed, and it comes to you staring down a dark and dirty alley, ready to fall, to succumb, to embrace oblivion. But there is no embrace, no gentle fade to black, but the most violent, senses-shattering slap to the face, so that all becomes just the budda-budda-budda of the still-racing heart they tore out of you. And the controls don't respond and the console doesn't respond and finally you just have to shut it down the hard way. And that, my friend, is love Heavy Rain.

Now bring on Super Street Fighter IV already. I wanna play as that oily guy.

Mercenaries Reunion

Famitsu (scans at biohaze.com) has revealed the final two playable characters for Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition's "Mercenaries Reunion" (as well as the significance of the mode's title). Get ready to welcome back Chris and Jill's original sidekicks, Rebecca Chambers and Barry Burton!

I believe "Mercenaries Reunion" is just the old "Mercenaries" mode from RE5, but Capcom is adding eight new playable characters. Previously, they had revealed Excella (Wesker's female partner) and Josh Stone (Sheva's mentor). Four other "characters" were actually two extra costumes each for Chris and Sheva. For the last two slots, I was expecting something lame, like another pair of alternate outfits, though I had my fingers crossed for Leon and Claire. This reveal may actually be even better than that.

Within the series timeline, Rebecca has not even been mentioned since the original Resident Evil. Barry was last seen briefly in RE3, but then he was seemingly written out of continuity in Umbrella Chronicles. Series devotees have been waiting a long time for Capcom to reveal whatever happened to these two. Unfortunately, this being just a silly bonus mode, there won't likely be any answers here.

Of course, the real attraction of Gold Edition is probably the "Lost in Nightmares" scenario, a new chapter expanding upon and making playable the flashback sequence that had Chris and Jill tangling with Wesker in 2006. Maybe at some point during the mission, Chris and Jill will reminisce about old times with Rebecca and Barry, leading to a flashback within a flashback.

That's not very likely, but this is still cool news. Really, it's kind of what I wanted out of RE5's "Mercenaries" in the first place. Back in RE4, the surprise guest appearances of HUNK and Wesker were genuine crowd-pleasers, and they and Krauser had unique signature moves (HUNK's neckbreaker, Wesker's thrust punch, Krauser's infected arm) that provided very different experiences from playing as Leon. In RE5, Jill and Wesker were compulsory inclusions. They were still cool and did have a few unique weapons and skills, but every character had moves for every situation (neckbreakers, stomps, etc.), so nobody felt quite so distinct anymore. I don't know if Rebecca and Barry will possess any amazing techniques, but at least they'll bring the fanservice.

Interestingly, unlike RE5 Chris and Jill, HD Rebecca and Barry are instantly recognizable as the same people from the GameCube games. In fact, without any direct comparison shots, I could almost mistake them for the same models. I don't know whether this is a deliberate artistic decision or just laziness. Regardless, the Rebecca render is especially awesome (although I sadly don't expect there to actually be any dual-wielding going on).

Man Without a Face

I was playing Resident Evil Code: Veronica X a few years ago, when my brother walked in, picked up the game case and asked, "Who the hell is this guy?"

He could be forgiven his skepticism upon my answering that the generic-looking white dude on the cover was Chris Redfield, original Resident Evil leading man. This was after the release of the Resident Evil remake for GameCube, and this Chris bore hardly any resemblance to the one we knew from that game:


Of course, the original Chris was actually this guy:


It is a bit of a shame that the stars of Capcom's biggest franchise seem to lack consistent identity across the generations. People sometimes make fun of Tetsuya Nomura's designs, but the reason Cloud Strife's hair is like that is so that you can always identify him, no matter how drastically his face changes over the years. Leon S. Kennedy has a bit of that, but the other RE protagonists have at times been recognizable only by the colors they wear (Chris-green, Jill-blue, Claire-red). It wasn't until Code: Veronica on the Dreamcast that the characters could even have actual faces outside of cut scenes.

Then, realizing that the GameCube could do better, Capcom scrapped all that and seemed to have finally set out to establish a consistent look for the characters across the remake, RE0, RE4, and later even Umbrella Chronicles for the Wii.

Then came the first promotional image from RE5:


I still remember forum fools misidentifying him as Carlos Oliviera from RE3, or even Bruce McGivern from Resident Evil: Dead Aim. I could not believe I was hearing such ridiculous suggestions, but most people (those who actually cared about the characters of Resident Evil) thankfully had sense enough to see, as I did, that it was obviously Chris.

Of course, it was obvious only by the process of elimination--it was clearly a guy, and it definitely wasn't Leon, so it had to be Chris. Capcom was not even close to announcing a release date for RE5, and it wouldn't have chosen just some random spin-off guy or minor supporting character to be the image to get fans pumped up in the meantime. But if that shot had been handed to me with no context or exposition, then no, I wouldn't have guessed that that was Chris. Capcom had again reset the designs of the characters, leaving many fans scratching their heads over what they were even looking at. He wasn't even wearing his signature green color.

By the time the game actually came out, this was what RE5 Chris looked like:


Comparing him against the GameCube Chris, maybe RE5 Chris inherited some of the brow and jawline. Better hardware added some stubble and better definition to the hair. But I could understand if people had a hard time recognizing him.

Although Chris would not have a large role in Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, one of the things I was actually most curious about was how, in essentially last-gen graphics, they would handle his character design in light of his new RE5 look. What form would this potential missing link between GameCube Chris and HD Chris take?

As it turns out, Darkside Chronicles Chris is pretty much just GameCube Chris:


But again my brother was left shaking his head. I suppose this time it was the 'roided-out RE5 Chris that he had grown accustomed to.

When you get right down to it, only Wesker really endures as the face of Resident Evil.

Anyway, here are some bonus clips of Chris Redfield to close things out:

Although he is traditionally regarded as the tank among RE protagonists, he is not without moves!

Of course, sometimes muscle is what's called for, and Chris has got what you need. What could Leon have done to get out of this one?

Wentworth Miller from TV's Prison Break will be playing the live-action Chris in the next Milla Jovovich movie:

I would have thought Leon a more suitable role for Wentworth, with Chris being more a Dominic Purcell kind of character, but Miller's face is not too far off here (not that I expect movie Chris to resemble game Chris in any way).

Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

The much anticipated (at least by me) followup to 2007's Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, The Darkside Chronicles is a predictably similar yet very much superior experience.

Umbrella Chronicles felt slapped together as a package, liberally reusing assets from Capcom's GameCube releases to cash in on the popularity of the Wii and the resurgent Resident Evil brand. Darkside Chronicles, inspired by the success of Umbrella Chronicles itself, is again an on-rails shooter that retells the events of previous core titles in the franchise. This time focusing on the adventures of Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield, Darkside Chronicles covers Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil Code: Veronica, the two chapters that Umbrella Chronicles omitted, almost certainly because there were insufficient GameCube-era assets to draw upon. Without all the old art and movie files to recycle, Darkside Chronicles feels much fresher, with far more effort put into it, despite ultimately running off the same simple mechanics as its predecessor.

Darkside Chronicles is still an on-rails shooter using the infrared pointer capability of the Wii Remote to crudely mimic a light gun. The accelerometer is used to reload by shaking the remote or for swinging the knife, although occasion for the latter is minimized compared to Umbrella Chronicles. Actually, I found that the gameplay of Darkside Chronicles felt slightly simplified overall compared to the last game. For better or worse, it's an easier, more accessible game, boss battles aside. Zombie packs are never as large or in-your-face as in the hairier stages of Umbrella Chronicles, and critical headshots seem to occur with greater frequency. The number of weapons is also much smaller this time, although players are now able to access the inventory mid-mission via the pause menu. The game no longer scores you on how many destructible objects you shoot, which gives hardcore players one less grade to measure themselves, but the many items hidden about the environment still compel you to fire constantly at everything.

The most significant change to the mechanics may be that the player can no longer control the camera at all, and my greatest concern, based on pre-release footage, was that it might go overboard with the shaky cam technique, robbing players of the joy of lining up shots precisely. As it turns out, that's not a concern at all, as there are still plenty of things to shoot at during the course of the game, which, at about ten hours, is, like Umbrella Chronicles, uncharacteristically full for its genre.

What really makes Darkside Chronicles so much better, however, is its story presentation. Although Umbrella Chronicles purported to retell the stories of Resident Evil, Resident Evil 3, and Resident Evil Zero, in practice it conveyed very little of those games' plots and would have been largely useless to anyone who hadn't already played the original titles. Covering the most story-intensive entries in the series, Darkside Chronicles thankfully does a much better job of actually filling in Wii-gen newcomers to the series on what they've missed.

The Resident Evil 2 chapter fares the better out of the two. The Darkside Chronicles take understandably trims and excises subplots here and there, but all major events are retained, and what remains is a complete and self-contained story. And it's surprisingly better than a B-movie!

It is helped along by much higher production values than Umbrella Chronicles. Whereas that game reused character models from the GameCube games and even included the same movie files from Resident Evil Zero, Darkside Chronicles takes many characters not seen during the GameCube era and features them in a story paced by a large number of new pre-rendered cinematics. The real-time graphics are fairly consistent stylistically with the GameCube games, but even many of the elements that could have been recycled, such as the Raccoon City Police Department from Umbrella Chronicles, appear brand new and better than ever. Meanwhile the cut scenes are quite nice and help to raise the game's look above the Wii standard.

The Code: Veronica chapter is a little less coherent, as it cuts most of Chris Redfield's journey and downplays Wesker's role, perhaps because we got enough of those characters in Umbrella Chronicles and Resident Evil 5. To be fair, the original Code: Veronica was already by far the looniest installment in the series, and in Darkside Chronicles, the best bits survive mostly intact, with the one notable exception of the portrayal of Steve Burnside, which I found to be a bowdlerization that rather missed the point of the character.

(HIGHLIGHT BELOW FOR SPOILERS)

In Code: Veronica, Steve was, at first glance, an annoyingly cocky punk, but his poorly supported facade of cool repeatedly broke down in more genuine moments of fear and weakness, revealing one of the most human characters in video game history. Rather than being the hero himself, he was one of the tragedy's victims whom I wanted to protect, and, believe it or not, that was one of the first cases that convinced me that being a video game hero might entail more than just killing things. When I was ultimately unable to save him, and instead he was the one that finally accomplished something heroic, I felt defeat unlike any "game over," but I also felt like he really fought for it and earned that moment.

Darkside Chronicles presents an initially intriguing take on a Steve who, when taunted by the villain, responds with a fury beyond reason, such that even Claire seems a little frightened. He is clearly using anger to escape having to deal with other emotions, but when the story finally sets him face-to-face with what he's been running from, the release is nowhere near as cataclysmic as one might expect. He deals with it a little too easily, and even as terrible things continue to happen, the bravado never really ceases. In other words, this Steve trades human warmth for the distant coolness of action heroism.

Again, this won't affect anyone who didn't play the original Code: Veronica, and what matters most now is that players of Darkside Chronicles can enjoy themselves without feeling like they have to go back a decade to get the full story.

Like Umbrella Chronicles, Darkside Chronicles also includes one chapter of new material, again set during that six-year gap between Code: Veronica and Resident Evil 4. Detailing Leon's history with Jack Krauser as hinted at in RE4, it's nothing revelatory, nor even as significant within the canon as the "Umbrella's End" scenario from Umbrella Chronicles--whereas the story of the fall of Umbrella was the major attraction of that game for hardcore followers of the Resident Evil mythology, "Operation Javier" in Darkside Chronicles feels more like an afterthought to flimsily tie together the flashbacks to RE2 and Code: Veronica within one narrative--but as with all the other stories in Darkside Chronicles, it's better-executed than anything in Umbrella Chronicles.

The only truly disappointing thing about Darkside Chronicles, compared to Umbrella Chronicles, is the lack of any bonus chapters, such as the Rebecca and Wesker missions that added new perspectives to established stories. Umbrella Chronicles also had the two RE2 side missions starring Ada and Hunk, so maybe there wasn't as much left for Darkside Chronicles to explore, but this should have been the time to finally address persisting questions about Sherry's fate or Ada's true employer. At least there is still plenty of Resident Evil fan service in the form of collectible files, including some cool audio recordings that reveal a bit about some of the villains and supporting characters.

The completionist in me also would have liked to have seen a chapter based on Degeneration, especially as I believe an on-rails shooter could make better use of that material than the movie did. The optimist in me hopes that Capcom and co-developer cavia are saving that for a third Chronicles game, which I would be all for.