PC owners deserve better. Resident Evil: Raccoon City was hardly a
quality game on consoles, but you'd hope that developer Slant Six Games
might have given the PC platform at least a little respect. Alas, all
the signs of a sloppy port are apparent from the moment you boot up the
game. Ridiculous menus that only half-support the mouse and quick-time
events that indicate to wiggle the C key like it's an analog stick are
just a couple of these indicators. Capcom, the game's publisher, earned a
reputation for careless PC ports years ago with games like
Onimusha 3 and
Resident Evil 4.
It now carries on that dubious tradition with Raccoon City--only this
time, the game it's debasing is one that was never worth your time in
the first place.
These problems are a shame, considering the possibilities. The game puts
an intriguing spin on events you might have already witnessed in
previous Resident Evil games. You're a member of Umbrella Security
Services' special Wolfpack team in the infamous Raccoon City, where the
T-virus has turned the population into voracious zombies, and mutant
dogs lurk in shadows, ready to ravage the defenseless. From this new
perspective, you face a glowering Nicholai Zinoviev and watch Ada Wong
wilt in Leon Kennedy's arms. You infiltrate storied locations like the
Raccoon City police department, and fight off zombies in front of the
Kendo Gun Shop. Some of these regions are legitimately atmospheric: city
streets are awash in a neon red glow, and ominous-looking equipment
hints at the atrocities that occurred within Umbrella's underground
laboratory.
You might miss some of the more subtle touches, however, given how dark
Raccoon City is. This is a Resident Evil game, so you expect to push
through pervasive gloom. But environments are poorly lit, everything
cloaked in a dim cloud that obscures your vision without ramping up
tension. (Compare this visual design to the infinitely superior
Left 4 Dead 2,
which provided proper visual contrast and still elicited your innate
survival instincts.) The problems don't end here, though: Resident Evil:
Operation Raccoon City drowns in its own faults, many of them so basic
it's a wonder they appeared in a final product.
These faults infest the gameplay from the very beginning, and remain to
the very end. Consider a battle versus the infected William Birkin,
which takes place in the very first mission. At first, you can't turn
and run; all you can do is slowly back away and shoot. If you brought a
shotgun to this unexpected battle, sorry: you really should have brought
an assault rifle if you wanted to be effective here, assuming you have
enough ammo in the first place. Eventually, you're allowed to flee, but
the game doesn't tell you that, and so you back into the streams of
flame bursting from the corridor's walls. Want to run past the beast?
There's an invisible barrier on either side. You'd suppose that
AI-controlled teammates might help, but they're not even in view,
apparently filing their nails in the corner while you get caught in an
inescapable series of knockdown attacks.
That entire scene is absurdly bad, as if the game is actively working to
make you hate it. But the problems aren't just specific to individual
encounters; some invade the entire game. One such problem is the cover
system, a core component of third-person shooters like Raccoon City.
Here, you don't need to press a key to take refuge behind a wall or
curb. Instead, you lumber up to it and automatically stick--a fine idea
in a world where games are able to read your mind. Raccoon City, sadly,
does not exist in such a world, and so you slip into cover when you rub
against a shelf, or fail to stick to a wall that, for some unknown
reason, won't let you take cover at all. You may seek to pop out and
take potshots, but instead slide around the corner, as if volunteering
to become a targeting practice dummy.
The shooting model is functional, at least, each weapon handling more or
less as you expect it to. There's little joy to the shooting, however,
because the weapons don't feel particularly powerful. Normal zombies
twitch and lurch based on the impact of your bullets, but enemy forces
and larger monsters like hunters don't always react to your shots, so
you don't get that sense of power you expect from a shooter. It doesn't
help that enemies are bullet sponges. It takes seemingly forever for
certain foes to die, so you and your teammates pump out clip after clip,
hoping that it's enough to take down that nasty T-103. Well, you might
expect a tyrant to take such a beating, but when it's a bunch of lickers
absorbing all this damage, the action stops being fun and becomes a
slog. How perplexing, then, that the game would be so stingy with
ammunition, considering how much you have to waste on these foes. You
find yourself without ammo frequently, and scavenging environments for
bullets so you can shoot your guns is far less entertaining than
actually shooting them.
There's a reason that co-op shooters like
Syndicate
and Left 4 Dead have comprehensible rules regarding the placement of
ammo stashes; the resulting ebb and flow allows you to focus on the
shooting and gives teams a moment to refresh and regroup. Raccoon City
has no such rules in place; you are never sure whether there is ammo
nearby, or where it might be found. Of course, we should want our games
to rethink traditional mechanics in interesting ways, but developer
Slant Six's deviations come at the cost of fun. One such example: you
can't tumble out of the way of a charging hunter, but you can sprint
forward and belly flop--always a treat when you wanted to run toward a
health-giving herb, but then leap on top of it rather than consume it.
Another example: for some reason, you have to shoot the locks off of
special weapon containers before you can collect the gun within. Perhaps
this was meant to deliver some tension, but it just feels like a waste
of time and ammo.
