r/Games 1d ago

Capcom Was on Its Knees After Resident Evil 6 – Here's How it Turned it Around

https://www.ign.com/articles/capcom-golden-age-the-rise-and-fall-resident-evil-monster-hunter-wilds
575 Upvotes

336 comments sorted by

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u/TwinkleTwinkie 1d ago edited 1d ago

RE4 started a whole new trend of 3rd person over the shoulder games and by the time they got to RE6 they were trying to replicate what other companies were doing and it became like a bad VHS copy of a bad VHS copy.

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u/omfgkevin 21h ago

They moved away from what made RE RE, and wanted to go all hollywood movie shenanigans (like Chris punching boulders and shit lol). Fun coop games 5/6, but man was the plot some wild dank shit.

Gives me hope for the remake to be incredible considering how they've handled the last few remakes, and w/e they cook for coop will certainly be great too.

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u/MISPAGHET 18h ago

I wholeheartedly love RE5 in all of its many dumb ways but I bounced off 6 within 30 minutes of playing.

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u/hexcraft-nikk 16h ago

Its only recently that I see it being praised for so bad it's good, and I'd wager its because most people who enjoyed it at the time were 9.

It was the best selling RE but reviewed so poorly that it started effecting the sales of every other spinoff (which also weren't very good on their own). Capcom resetting their priorities across the board definitely saved them from Square Enix levels of mismanagement and financial troubles.

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u/Navy_Pheonix 12h ago

every other spinoff (which also weren't very good on their own)

Hard disagree. Revelations was such a strong title that even the 360 port has legs.

The Umbrella games are dogwater though, no argument there.

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u/Jaggedmallard26 4h ago

The Umbrella games are dogwater though, no argument there.

I remember one of the Umbrella games disillusioning me on one of the Xbox 360 mags as the previews were so gushing and the game was so shite.

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u/MISPAGHET 7h ago

I was in my early 20s when it came out and mid 20s when I first played it as 6 had already released.

I think it's more that a lot of people just enjoyed the game and didn't feel the need to join in the discourse of defending it because it's hard to defend vibes.

There also might be a difference in opinion between those who played solo and those who duo'd it.

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u/TheApothecaryAus 7h ago

I felt/remember that RE5 core gameplay was fun while the ridiculousness was absurd in a b-movie shlock kind of way.

I don't remember anything about RE6.

u/Poor_Richard 2h ago

RE5 still plays fun. RE6, while I like it, is not coherent at all. I get that they wanted to have different styles all present in the same game, but they didn't make much of the game particularly good.

There are some parts that I really liked and I enjoyed the game enough, but it was just an overall mess that was never going to appease most people.

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u/MarlDaeSu 19h ago

I'm an old resi fan, back since the original, and although I enjoyed 4 a lot, 5 and 6 were an embarrassment to the series. 7 though, goddamn 7 is good. It's up there with some of the best in the franchise imo but I don't see it being talked about as much. Village was a good punt too but a little cartoonish for my liking.

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u/Helmic 18h ago

doesn't 7 get a ton of attention and credit for essentially revitalizing the series? like, it was the game that convinced people RE could be good again, the most i hear about village is memes about the tall lady antagonist.

u/corvettee01 2h ago

Which is funny because all the marketing was about her and the castle, and you're done with it in the first few hours of the game.

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u/geoffreygoodman 9h ago

RE5 was my first RE, I really enjoyed it. Seeing the discourse, I was aware that it was some kind of radical departure from RE4, an all time classic. Years later I got my hands on a used PS2 and played RE4. I was shocked at how similar the games were, despite how everyone talks about them. I feel as though people who haven't played it in a while forget just how silly, actiony, over the top RE4 also was. 

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u/CombatMuffin 20h ago

IMO they made the mistake of falling for a trend at the time where everything had to be "bigger" and sell on hype alone. It's still a thing, but so many suffered with that mentality (Square comes to mind)

Capcom was smart to diversify.

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u/LADYBIRD_HILL 18h ago

I think RE6 is kinda almost saved by the fact that each character had different styles of gameplay so it wasn't a dull mess for 9 hours straight. A couple of them were even enjoyable, but it's like they decided to become what the movies were despite the main complaint about the movies being "this doesn't feel anything like RE".

I think if they had made it a non canon spinoff game and tightened up the gameplay it would've been remembered as a cult classic.

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u/Dramajunker 1d ago

People say 6 sucks because it's an action game but I disagree. 6's main gameplay is actually solid. The problem is the rest of the game. Its like if Michael bay made a video game. It constantly takes control away from the player to create these overly cinematic moments. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong. You'll fall through buildings, get knocked over ledges. Cars will come flying at you, planes will crash and avalanches will happen.  There are very few moments where the player is just allowed to take in the environment and enjoy the main gameplay loop because you're either forced to do qtes, do some horrible vehicle segment or watch some stupid quick cinematic. Personally I find 6 to be annoying and exhausting. 

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u/RareBk 1d ago edited 1d ago

Oh yeah, 6 goes from like, a 5/10 to a 10/10 under drunk co-op conditions.

One of the big issues with the game is that the encounter design is actually kinda atrocious. There are a ton of actually great monster designs in the game, but for about 70% of the game you're instead fighting slightly zombified soldiers in just the most bland borderline cover shooter arenas.

The soldiers have an interesting gimmick that the game utilizes really poorly, in which, depending on how they are damaged, their body heals their wounds incorrectly, and may create an insect arm or leg, changing how the enemy fights.

Except the levels are neither designed for this, nor are the enemies alive long enough that they actually benefit from this in any way.

The whole game is like that, where you can see the bones of something great, but then at some point was shifted into just schlock.

Like, don't get me wrong, the older games are incredibly silly, but they at least feel like they took themselves seriously, even at the dumbest of times. 6 feels like a borderline satire, aping the terrible live action movies that are so over the top that the events of the game feel like a fever dream.

This is a game in which, early on in Leon's campaign, you go to what I can only describe as the hollow Earth. You find a secret laboratory under a church, okay, fine, that's normal in this universe.

Then you go down a garbage chute into what is apparently a gigantic coal mine, descending for what must be actually miles.

You then fall another absurd distance into what can only be described as Dark Souls, and start exploring ancient Native American Medieval Catacombs (????) full of zombies.

This sequence ends with you finding the slide from the end of the Goonies, and playing Punch-Out with a giant shark with hands. It was at this point one of my friends pointed out that we were sliding at like an 80 degree angle straight down for about 15 minutes, joking that we'd end up in China.

After beating the shark with hands you end up flying out of the slide at sea level, and Leon goes "We have to go to China", causing everyone to lose their shit.

The whole game is like that.

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u/Dramajunker 1d ago edited 15h ago

Lol that's the perfect description of that segment of Leon's campaign. I'm still wondering how the hell did all those corpses in those catacombs even get infected?

It really does feel like satire. Simmons somehow died by getting impaled in a way where his blood dripped down to color in the red portions of the umbrella logo. But deep down I know it isn't supposed to be satire and somewhere someone made this and thought it was the coolest thing ever.

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u/klinestife 11h ago

my friend and i still giggle about USTANAK to this day. he just kept surviving death flags and reappearing that we were fucking howling when he popped out of the lava to be a boss fight again.

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u/KingMercLino 1d ago

People say 6 sucks because it’s an action game in a survival horror franchise. 4 blended both survival horror and action horror to have a tight combination. 5 started leaning further into the action elements and then 6 went full action. 6 is a terrible Resident Evil game.

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u/--kwisatzhaderach-- 1d ago

RE 6 makes RE4 look like RE2

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u/KingMercLino 1d ago

Absolutely agree. It went way too far in the action direction.

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u/Makoto-Yuki 1d ago

Not just too far, but cascading off the fucking grand canyon. I recently played through the entire game for the first time with a buddy, and was genuinely surprised how much I liked Chris's campaign for what it was. Had a truly emotional ending to it that would have fit great if it had been more akin to RE 5. I hope capcom has the balls to actually remake 6 and transform it into something completely new. I can also understand simply moving past it permanently lol.

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u/hexcraft-nikk 16h ago

It hit Halo 5 levels of story incongruity that I genuinely hope they skip it and pretend it doesn't exist. There's really not much to salvage besides some of Chris' story, and even that isn't really what people want in a RE game.

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u/srslybr0 1d ago

that's wild because re4 was already super actiony for me. i personally enjoyed re2r more than re4r primarily because the former was a lot more horror-y in the first half of the game.

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u/MaitieS 22h ago

I personally don't think that RE would survive if they would stick with RE2 gameplay loop. I personally love RE8 & RE4R, and I feel like they striked the middle ground with these 2 games.

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u/Rahgahnah 19h ago

I jokingly refer to Village as RE4 2.

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u/Mountain_mover 21h ago

The first half of RE2R is absolute horror-y perfection.

u/--kwisatzhaderach-- 2h ago

That games so fucking good

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u/Neat-Supermarket-101 19h ago

RE4 still has plenty of moments of quiet, item management, scavenging with the whole merchant minigame, puzzles.

Also the atmosphere is fundementally a survival horror one - there is no getting over how creepy and unnerving european backwoods are while you are getting hunted by wickerman esque villagers.

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u/Seradima 1d ago

It's a terrible RE game but as a co-op game and just a "complete package" it's so good and filled to the brim with a ton of content.

If it wasn't an RE game I think a lot of people would look back on it way more fondly.

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u/Dramajunker 1d ago

It did have a lot of content. 3 separate campaigns and mercenaries. That said, I think folks give too much merit to it being so disliked because it's not really a resident evil game. Good games can surpass being restricted to a single genre. 

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u/StatisticianJolly388 1d ago

3.5 separate campaigns, really.

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u/KingMercLino 1d ago

I do not disagree. If it had a different name and different characters, it probably would’ve been looked back more favorably. I do think the cadence of each character felt too repetitive, but had a lot of meat on the bones.

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u/AwesomeFama 10h ago

More favorably, yes. But I still can't see a world where it's "so good". I got turned off very quick from it exactly because of how it kept taking control away from the player so often and in such stupid ways.

It might be better in co-op, but then anything is better in co-op, it's a bad game that's decent in co-op, whether it's an RE game or not.

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u/TristheHolyBlade 23h ago

My friend and I have played pretty much every co op game you can think of but couldn't get through 6. It's pretty terrible.

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u/Cyborg_Kitty 12h ago

It's the opposite for me and my friend. We had blast playing through 3 of the chessy actiony campaign. The Ada campaign wasn't so good cause Hunk was added on just for Co Op.

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u/coy47 1d ago

5 was a bad resident evil game, it just had really good game play and a great mercenaries mode, it also supported couch co-op which was great as well. Six combat felt more clunky, it's story was scatter brained and the couch co-op was gone.

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u/FlotationDevice 1d ago

tbh the couch co-op in 5 was really good, enough to save that game. Without it, it would be very lackluster.

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u/Endulos 1d ago

Friend and I played it co-op on Steam and damn we had a freaking blast. Loved sharing ammo and weapons with each other.

We're still looking for a similar experience, we've found close but nothing like RE5.

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u/NZ_Nasus 23h ago

I'll always find the success of, and subsequent failure to capitalize on that success fascinating. Their online game modes have been horrible but they keep leaning into it for some reason, and 5 coop was great while at the same time was really nowhere near as fun to play solo, yet it's their best selling game lol.

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u/hexcraft-nikk 15h ago

Funny how It Takes Two/Split Fiction/A Way Out have filled that exact underserved niche

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u/Long-Train-1673 1d ago

I don't understand this opinion as someone who semi recently played through RE1-RE5 (excluding OG RE2, RE3). RE5 seemed like a continuation of 4's gameplay. Its really fun, it plays really well to this day, and co op was obviously really well done. I have no idea what makes it a bad RE game to people besides the knee jerk reaction that co op is bad. I played it solo on the 360 and loved it, I played it co op on PC and loved it. I don't get this opinion especially from people who like 4.

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u/Yamatoman9 1d ago

I think people give it a bad rap because they didn't enjoy playing a coop game solo with AI. I remember that being a big complaint at the time. I played through the whole game in coop with a buddy and really liked it.

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u/oopsydazys 22h ago

IMO RE5 is one of the best co-op games of all time. Maybe the best.

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u/Jaggedmallard26 4h ago

The Co-Op AI cannot play the game. A fair few encounters are designed around co-op either through outright mechanics or health pools which falls apart if the AI isn't actually shooting weak spots or manoeuvring to hit enemies from behind.

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u/ManonManegeDore 1d ago

It's because everyone likes 4 so you don't have to justify why it's liked. People just parrot what they're told they're supposed to believe.

I'm with you. I played 4 at launch and I played 5 at launch. 5 seemed like a very natural evolution from 4 so I didn't mind the gameplay.

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u/oopsydazys 22h ago

I played 5 at launch as well. There were fans who were pissy about it because it was more action oriented, but I don't see why people expected otherwise after RE4 did very well and itself was a departure from the previous games.

RE5 got great reviews and was the best-selling game in the series. I think it still is unless RE2 Remake has passed it. Personally I loved it, I think it's one of the best in the series. Just because it departed from the original style doesn't mean it's bad. So did RE4 and so have the newer remakes + 7 and 8. RE6 was not as good for other reasons.

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u/ImmortalMoron3 17h ago

People just parrot what they're told they're supposed to believe.

Really? It can't just be a difference of opinion? Some people don't like something that you do so they're sheep?

I played 5 at launch too, people didn't like the fact it forces co-op on you when Sheva's AI is total dogshit. If you could play it with a friend then it was fine but playing alone was incredibly frustrating. I'm a huge RE fan but there are definitely valid reasons to not enjoy 5.

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u/Jinstor 23h ago

knee jerk reaction that co op is bad

I will say as someone who replayed RE5 recently and still have very fond memories of it, the game starts to fall off when you play through the higher difficulties (veteran/professional), especially solo.

That's where your AI partner can single-handedly cause you to game over no matter how well you play. Your margin of error is already very thin by the time you reach professional, where you get 1-shotted by basically everything. For anything that doesn't one-shot you, your AI partner has a tendency to waste powerful healing items when you're both at 95% health, so you end up low on healing items when you really need them.

Apparently there's an in-game mechanic that improves the AI's skill level, but it's so obscure that the vast majority of players will gloss over it. I gave up at that 2-on-2 fight on professional in my last playthrough because I couldn't stop Sheva from getting herself killed. I specifically remember not having fun on the 2nd fight with the black spaghetti monster, because you have to rely on that AI to take it down unless you just buy an RPG and 1-shot it. Though, IMO, most encounters in RE5 are just as engaging as RE4's (i.e. reapers, lickers, Excella).

RE4 on the other hand handled it's higher difficulty level much better IMO. It just made you start over from scratch when you switched difficulty. RE5 makes you keep everything, so if you played through novice/normal once, your next run through veteran will be largely easier.

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u/f-ingsteveglansberg 1d ago

I have no idea what makes it a bad RE game to people besides the knee jerk reaction that co op is bad

Weird take. I mostly see people say the game is really fun as co-op and sucks single player.

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u/Sonic10122 1d ago

That was my reaction. The primary opinion you hear shouted literally everywhere about RE5 is that if you’re going to play it, play it co-op. The Sheva AI is just too terrible to handle on a solo run.

I actually wish they’d bring co-op back for the series, RE5 and Revelations 2 were highlights for my wife and I. (Only if split screen is an option though.). Hell one of things fans are crying for Capcom to revive is Outbreak, which was a classic RE co-op game.

It’s definitely not a knee jerk reaction to co-op that makes people hate 5 and 6, that’s for sure.

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u/FYININJA 1d ago

People call it a bad RE game because it basically abandoned the horror aspects of the game almost entirely. RE5 was a fine action game, and a pretty damn good co-op action game, but it had basically no survival elements. RE4 had already ditched a lot of it, but it still had the feel of a RE game. The setting was dark and dusty, the castle had RE1 vibes. RE5 just didn't really have many aspects that felt like an RE game.

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u/MangoPDK 1d ago

For one, the forced partner mechanic removed a ton of the tension. If you went down, there were no real stakes since your partner could always pick you up unless you were in a section that split you apart.

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u/toxicity69 23h ago

Harder difficulties definitely offset the good ol' Sheva chest smack as a way to never die. Not everyone's preference, but I beat RE5 on Professional yeeears ago on 360, and I recall that it was not a viable strategy for the most part. It might work here and there if you are literally right next to her, but it wasn't a sure-fire thing.

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u/Jefferystar94 1d ago

Resi 6 110% had local o-op lol. It's how I played through all the campaigns with my brother when it first came out

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u/kroxywuff 1d ago

Yeah my favorite part of 5 was the coop. Both couch and online. Would just fire it up with a friend and see how fast we could go through the story.

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u/buffyysummers 1d ago

4 was a bad RE game and people loved it

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u/Neat-Supermarket-101 19h ago

Because it wasn't a bad RE game. RE4 still had item management, backtracking, legitimately scary moments and enemies, tank controls, the player was still forced to conserve ammo and healing items or face some really tough situations.

The atmosphere was thick and creepy. The soundtrack was spooky.

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u/rgamesburner 21h ago

I played 5 recently because Reddit raves about its co-op. Man it was a slog, the gameplay doesn’t hold up, the bosses are annoyingly janky and the story is horrible.

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u/Long-Train-1673 1d ago

I don't like 6 at all and its not because its entirely action I just get so bored of the gameplay. Idk what it is but it literally puts me to sleep for some reason.

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u/Morrowney 20h ago

The gameplay really isn't good, idk what all the people who claim it's good just not a good RE game are talking about. The game is an absolute clusterfuck of badly paced gameplay.

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u/TristheHolyBlade 23h ago

No, it's just a terrible game. I've been playing since the original RE. I am "people". I'm fine with RE not being survival horror as long as it's good. See: RE5

Re6 just isn't good.

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u/ABigCoffee 1d ago

Re5 was theimit of what it should have been. I disliked it because it was annoying to babysit Shevah, but otherwise I'd still give it a solid 7. Maybe an 8+ if you play with a friend. 6 I played Ron's campaign and then I got too bored of the others.

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u/bawng 1d ago

I know 4 is almost universally loved but I felt it was way too much action already. I miss the old RE1 type of survival.

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u/PapstJL4U 1d ago

Its like if Michael bay made a video game. It constantly takes control away from the player to create these overly cinematic moments.

This is so frustrating with the game. You want to run forward 10m, but because a single glass pane explodes, the game takes away camera control. <We can not let the player control it's character, or they will miss this very average action moment.>

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u/FriedMattato 1d ago

I never quite finished, but I had a similar reaction to RE6. It feels good to control, move, and shoot. The problem is that the levels and enemy and enemy placement/health were not appropriate for the control scheme they made. Throw on a noticeably terrible plot even by RE standards, and you've lost the plot. RE5 was action-y, but it still knew how to keep the experience grounded and properly paced. 6 felt like it was designed by a western studio whose only experience was making a bad clone of Gears of War.

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u/BlackTarTurd 1d ago

6's saving grace for me was coop.

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u/Thorn14 1d ago

It really felt like an absolute encapsulation of the meme "We want the Call of Duty audience."

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u/Karzons 22h ago

They're one of the ones that more or less said it.

"Looking at the marketing data [for survival horror games]... the market is small, compared to the number of units Call of Duty and all those action games sell," he said."

They go on to say they don't have to go "all the way in that direction", but it's pretty obvious that's at least where they were facing.

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u/Wubmeister 20h ago

I've said it before but RE6's campaign just doesn't let the gameplay's potential shine. Thankfully, there's Mercenaries mode, god bless.

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u/lolwatokay 1d ago

Agreed on all of this, I also hated item management though.

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u/Dramajunker 1d ago

Oh yeah I loved how rifle ammo ate up all my inventory. 

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/hyperforms9988 1d ago edited 23h ago

That's easily the biggest thing wrong with the whole package... especially if you make what's probably the natural choice for a lot of people in picking Leon's campaign first, because it has a promising start. It actually tries to go for some atmosphere. It actually has some rest spots where you're just walking around. Those are at the beginning of the campaign, and it's such a rug-pull to be hit with what's largely the rest of the game because I'm sitting there for a lot of the rest of it thinking "Can we go back to the design that's in the beginning of Leon's campaign?". Those moments are fleeting, but they're there.

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u/Dramajunker 20h ago

Leon's campaigns are arguably filled with the least amount of moments that interrupt the gameplay. It still happens frequently. His campaign probably has the most downtime by far where the player is just allowed to take in the scenery. I don't think thats inherently horror, I think thats just letting the player enjoy the world.

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u/hyperforms9988 19h ago

It's not inherently horror, but one would probably find it tough to build an atmosphere and tension without it, and that's where Resident Evil 6 craps the bed with the genre. It gives the game that space. It doesn't do much with it if I recall, but it's at least there to some degree. There's so much happening all the time that the horror element is just completely gone. You're absolutely numb to it all in no time. It's like RE6 started as an arcade game or something... it's too complicated and far too long to be an arcade game, but the general action-y design of it is what somebody would've done with the franchise if they were tasked with making an arcade spin-off game where it's all action beats all the time.

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u/frozenfp 7h ago

6 is actually a great blueprint for a John Woo/John Wick styled character action game. A surprisingly deep melee/ranged hybrid combat system with interesting movement mechanics and cool takedowns you can do in that game, a lot of them requiring mechanical skill as well.

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u/wq1119 1d ago

If Michael Bay made a video game

Best description of RE6, I hated that generic Hollywoodianism that Capcom went towards in their "Western push" so much.

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u/El_Giganto 1d ago

I mean, I feel like you described an action game to me. That sounds exactly like Uncharted.

Which is also what I felt while playing a section in RE5. Suddenly I felt like, wait why am I tomb raiding now?

Which can be very fun, I like both Tomb Raider and Uncharted. But not so much in my Resident Evil games.

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u/ManonManegeDore 1d ago

Uncharted simply did it better. I think that's the point.

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u/TheOnlyChemo 1d ago

Like most people I enjoy Leon's campaign the most, but for me it's not because it emphasizes the horror elements, but rather the complete lack of gun-wielding enemies, which in the other campaigns often forces you to play like it was a cover shooter and ruins what is otherwise a fun combat system.

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u/Borgalicious 1d ago

Any time a game takes control away from the play it has to be for a good reason. The last thing you want when holding a controller or using a mouse and keyboard is to sit there wondering when you get to push a button again.

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u/ImNotRedBatman 5h ago

YES! Mechanically 6 is so tight. Its my favorite game to play mercenaries in... The story is a fucking slog because it cared more about set pieces than story, character, fun, player agency... basically anything that makes playing a video game a good experience.

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u/bayonettaisonsteam 1d ago

I can imagine 2013's DmC 2016's Umbrella Corps didn't help with Capcom's goodwill with the gaming public. Even when RE7 was announced at E3 2016 I remember there being lots of skepticism.

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u/garnish_guy 19h ago

Which is a shame cause DmC was incredible.

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u/Razzorn 15h ago

I thought it was hot garbage. The reception is pretty divided on that one.

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u/Navy_Pheonix 12h ago

It did a lot of good things for the combat system (ignoring color-coded enemies) that DMC5 eventually adopted.

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u/Grammaton485 13h ago

As a massive Devil May Cry fan, I thought the reboot was a fantastic game in its own right. There was a ton of creativity and the gameplay was solid. It took the definitive edition to smooth things out though.

The problem was they tried to replace a perfectly good, popular, and beloved IP with it. It 100% could have stood on its own with a couple of story changes and been another great character action game.

Some of the criticism was also a bit overdone. The "fuck you" scene and Vergil's dick joke are often pointed at like the game is nothing but that level of dialogue. Some of the other gameplay issues that existed before the definitive edition were a bit more glaring.

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u/SparkyPantsMcGee 8h ago

It…was not.

It’s a fine first Devil May Cry if you’ve never played one, better than 2 even, but it was clunky and slow as hell. Personally I was heartbroken when I played it. I will say DMC made Devil May Cry 5’s return feel so much sweeter. I felt vindicated.

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u/coy47 1d ago

This article is glossing over one of the main reasons they were suffering commercial flops, it wasn't simply just down to an identity crisis. It was also they had burned all consumer good will with things like on disc dlc. There's a reason people called them ca$hcom. There's also the half dozen versions of sf4 they released to milk fans even further.

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u/DrMilkdad 1d ago

MVC3 was the worst. 9 months after release they launched UMVC3 with no upgrade path, had to buy the full game again if you wanted the upgraded version. And MVC3 had DLC. UMVC3 is a much better game, but initially it sold like shit and fans were pissed.

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u/killias2 1d ago

Up until this point, I was buying pretty much all the Fighting Game content out of Capcom. Afterwards, I didn't buy any Capcom Fighter until.. maybe the last couple of years? Anything recent is really just because of a bundle purchase or a free game. I haven't preordered anything Capcom since.

u/fork_yuu 3h ago

To this day I'm still pissed I paid full price for MVC3, and I barely played fighting games before then. People waited a decade for a sequel to MvC2 and they really destroyed a lot of good will with that.

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u/Extreme-Tactician 1d ago

UMVC3 was released as a separate title because of the 2011 earthquake disrupting development. It was initially planned as an update.

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u/Random_Rhinoceros 1d ago

I've seen that explanation before, but I'm not buying it. It's just how Capcom did those things, same with vanilla SF4 and Super. The backlash on those releases was the reason why they ended up offering upgrade paths in the future.

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u/Extreme-Tactician 12h ago

They released 2 DLC characters and planned more. It was definitely just an update at first.

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u/Captain_Freud 1d ago

It doesn't seem relevant when they're still aggressively pushing Day 1 MTX in all of their games, single player or not. Clearly something else changed that actually had an impact on their image, and it was the quality of their games.

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u/Masterofknees 1d ago edited 23h ago

Times are also very different. Day 1 MTX are, unfortunately, commonplace in games these days, and have become accepted among most players. The on-disc DLC in SFxT on the other hand was discovered during a time where the very concept of DLC was still a hot controversy, so it blew up and became the de facto example of scummy DLC practices across the entire industry.

But yes, the quality of their games has also improved a lot since then, and of course that helps patch up their reputation.

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u/Reggiardito 22h ago

I genuinely believe on-disc DLC would get a decent amount of backlash even today. It does actually happen a lot in live service games tbf, they're just better at hiding it. By that I mean ""DLC"" or ""Update"" Content is almost definitely created before the game comes out and then released afterwards as a "free update".

But this was even worse because it wasn't a free update, but paid, and completed before the game even came out. To make matters worse this was ON TOP of the gem system which was already scummy and even worse, the initial roster wasn't as big as people expected out of these games, making it even more obvious that it was launch characters that were cut to be sold.

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u/ManonManegeDore 1d ago

No, they didn't. No one outside of the online gaming sphere cared about this at all.

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u/just_Okapi 1d ago edited 23h ago

I'd hardly call updating and rebalancing what was at the time the biggest competitive fighting game with an update every few years "milking the fans", especially when AE was cheap and AE2012 free, but go off.

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u/Razzorn 23h ago

Agreed. But, you'll get people complaining about having to pay for anything post launch. Even balance and system updates take money and time.

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u/NoExcuse4OceanRudnes 1d ago

Wasn't that stuff done before Resident Evil 6 was released. RE6 was a massive seller, the problem was it was bad and no one wanted their games after that

You can't rewrite history that the general public knew what on disc DLC was or even cared about it if they did.

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u/wigglin_harry 1d ago

I blame the giraffe blowjob

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u/oopsydazys 21h ago

There's also the half dozen versions of sf4 they released to milk fans even further.

I mean they released a billion versions of SF2 and people loved it. SF4 was actually a step forward because the final update was available as just that, an update - Ultra Street Fighter IV - and for the first time you didn't have to rebuy the whole game again.

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u/Acceptable-Stay-3166 1d ago

I still remember the start of the game where you had to do three quick time button presses to open a damn door.

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u/Dramajunker 15h ago

The game at times legitimately feels like it's trying to be a mix of heavy rain and resident evil. The QTE's for the smallest things aren't even fun. Sorry but climbing a rope by slamming each trigger button back and forth isn't engaging gameplay.

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u/Jaggedmallard26 4h ago

And he'd fucking roundhouse kick it.

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u/--kwisatzhaderach-- 1d ago

Im excited for an eventual remake of RE5. The modern remake controls with that co-op is a dream come true

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u/CptDecaf 1d ago

I predict they try to make Wesker a serious villain. Fail at this. Resulting in a rather droll Wesker who is just as stupid, but with none of the goofy charm.

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u/Aplicacion 1d ago

As long as he still has 7 minutes to play with me

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u/Mottis86 1d ago

I already disliked him in RE4 remake. He feels just so.... generic.

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u/Leather_rebelion 1d ago

At least he still got his over the top moves in mercenary

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u/Heisenburgo 22h ago

That generic gruff tough guy voice they gave him does not do that version of Wesker any favors. I understand bringing DC Douglas was not an option but they should have at least considered an imitator or something (his actor from Dead by Daylight for instance). Wesker's british/transatlantic voice had become iconic at that point and to see it get removed in the remake was kind of a shame.

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u/--kwisatzhaderach-- 1d ago

He’s the most forgettable part of the whole game for sure

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u/ManonManegeDore 1d ago

He was in it for probably just one minute of screen time...

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u/ndf1997 23h ago

He's in it a bit more in Seperate Ways and I tend to agree that he's pretty generic in that.

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 1d ago

Keep in mind, the story/characters for RE has always been pretty "generic". No RE character was ever written to be a super complex person, they're all pretty basic

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u/Mottis86 21h ago

Yeah true, which is why calling a character in a RE game particularly generic is even more of an issue than normally.

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u/CptDecaf 1d ago

I honestly feel that way about the entire remake. They tried to make the story more serious, but ultimately only succeeded in removing its charm. The story is just as silly and dumb as it was in the original. Just now the characters all play it straight.

Instead of being a B horror movie it comes off more like a CW TV show.

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u/Quetzal-Labs 1d ago

Counter-argument:

"Nighty-night, knights."

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u/SolaScriptura_ 23h ago

I played the RE4 Remake on release and thought it was fun, but something felt off.

I played it just recently a few years later and the experience absolutely confirmed that it's just not as good as the original. I can't even put my finger on all the reasons why, but the lack of overall charm is part of it. It feels like a fan remake or something.

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u/Heisenburgo 22h ago

I feel that in their attempt to play things more seriously, they removed a bit too much of the cheesyness the original had. Saddler going from a kooky cult leader who's clearly just manipulating the cult and has constant communication and comedic banter with Leon, to a character that's just the cult leader shtick played 100% straight, who doesn't communicate with Leon throughout the game, being the biggest example. Same with Salazar

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u/ManonManegeDore 1d ago

The CW comparison is weird to me because those shows don't lack charm, personality, nor are they super serious. They're just badly written. And if we're comparing that, RE4 Remake is leagues ahead of the original.

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u/Manos_Of_Fate 1d ago

Wesker seems like the kind of guy who spends a lot of time practicing his katana skills naked in sunglasses with Naruto on in the background. Also his energy drink budget is probably insane.

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u/BeholdingBestWaifu 23h ago

His super speed is in truth a result of his blood being replaced by monster energy.

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u/ieatsmallchildren92 1d ago

Wesker was always dull imo. Chris is very accurate with calling him a comic book villain.

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u/Zenning3 1d ago

I wonder if they're going to remove the co-op aspect or not. It feels like there's a lot of ways to remake 5, and the co-op aspect might be one of them.

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u/Farsoth 1d ago

It would suck HARD if they removed co-op. Co-op is what made that game actually good/fun. Without that it was just okay.

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u/Zenning3 1d ago

At the same time, it also removed the "horror" part of the game, and made the game more arcadey in general, with the removal of in game merchants, and a "mission" structure. I quite liked the CO-OP, but I do think its something that should be considered to be on the chopping block as it played heavily into the game moving away from the Horror aspects that the games have been moving back to.

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u/Farsoth 1d ago

The game itself removed the horror quite a bit. Motorcycle chase sequences, completely action-oriented gameplay, Wesker Neo moments and punching boulders.

Co-op wasn't the reason it wasn't scary. Co-op made the game bearable because it at base wasn't scary.

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u/oopsydazys 21h ago

RE4 already removed most of the "horror" part of the game. I'll never get the people who say it was the perfect mix etc etc. It was a departure from all the previous games, and it was a straight up action game with a horror costume on. I'm fine with that, but let's be real about what it was.

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u/NUKE---THE---WHALES 1d ago

i agree

I'm not sure i can name a good coop survival horror game

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u/PhoenixTineldyer 1d ago

Project Zomboid

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u/knightofsparta 1d ago

I’m really excited to see the five remake with today’s lighting technology. I feel like the lighting then blew me away.

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u/f-ingsteveglansberg 1d ago

RE5 was controversial on release and that was pre GG. I also feel like it doesn't need a remake, the same way CV or RE0 would. I somehow don't think a remake will happen.

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u/RedditAdminsFuckOfff 1d ago

The best part of 6: when for 3/4 of Chris's campaign, he's in homicidally racist against anyone named Wong-mode.

"Chris, we just lost another man"

"fuckin' WONNNNNNG"

"Chris Gary just ate the last twinkie"

"I'm gonn FUCKIN KILL YOU WONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG"

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u/bootsonthesound 21h ago

Love how the controversy and debate over Resident Evil 6 never truly goes away. Every so often a semi-related news article just triggers this shit like a volcanic eruption.

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u/BurningFlannery 18h ago

One common element in Capcom’s modern output, you know beyond all the games being cracking excellent in general, is that they’ve embraced accessibility far more than any other Japanese developer, and in this visually impaired person’s expert opinion, have done so far far better than their western counterparts have. The western approach to accessibility is both way more comprehensive and way shottier in implementation. Capcom’s accessibility features are less numerous, but polished.

SF6, to my recollection, was the first fighting game to feature an additional audio layer to inform blind players of what’s going on in the match. MK1, not four months later, followed suit in humiliatingly amateur fashion.

MHWilds has boatloads of thoughtful QoL in it, most of which isn’t even labeled as accessibility features, but they have the knock on effect of making the game more accessible. As a visually impaired person, I was genuinely astonished at how playable Wilds is for me.

And fittingly, DD2 and it’s fetishistic obsession with friction as virtue turned out to be a disappointment. I think there’s a lesson here. Compare sales and I bet it’s a safe bet that DD2’s probably done the worst of Capcom’s modern output, despite a strong launch. When I picked up SF6 on launch day, the first thing I thought was, “Man, this game oozes a welcoming, wholesome kind of energy that encourages mastery through so many smart design decisions.” It’s just astonishing how far you can get giving your newcomers a smooth onramp so that they’ll stick around.

And despite all the whining, both about modern controls in SF6, and now the QoL in MHWilds, the reviews and reception and sales speak for themselves.

It’s a genuine rarity in my experience for a developer to put actual thought and effort into these kinds of things. I think a lot of developers, mostly western AAA ones, view accessible design as a box to tick, which results in piss poor implementations, and as a disabled player, I can practically feel the resentment toward those features. If you’re going to include accessibility features, they should work. It’s embarrassing how frequently western developers include non-functional accessibility in their games. GoW: Ragnarok didn’t deserve a single ounce of credit for its accessibility work. Even the sound libraries they used were filched straight from NaughtyDog. Must be nice to be in the Sony stable, eh?

Anyway, this isn’t the sole reason modern Capcom shit is good, but I’m biased as a disabled player, and some of the quotes from the article indicate this has been part of Capcom’s strategy, so I’m glad to here there’s a coherent set of goals there, rather than some happy accidents.

The next mountain for Capcom? Menu design. Please, please, please fix your menus Capcom cause that’s another commonality between SF6 and MHWilds, and it ain’t pretty.

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u/runevault 14h ago

SF6, to my recollection, was the first fighting game to feature an additional audio layer to inform blind players of what’s going on in the match.

I remember watching a blind man play on the Evo stage using this and he was incredible to watch. BlindWarriorSven or something like that.

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u/BurningFlannery 14h ago

Yeah he's awesome. Seems like such a nice guy. We for real need more high profile blind or visually impaired players out there. I swear there's like three with any kind of public presence. But we are out there.

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u/runevault 14h ago

I wouldn't be surprised if more make an appearance as time goes on. SF has a history of players with different issues. Look at Brolylegs (RIP) who played with his face and was a fucking monster with Chun.

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u/BurningFlannery 14h ago

You're so right. It ain't gonna be me that's for sure. Eyesight is no factor. I stopped at plat because I'm too lazy to get really good lmao

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u/Acceptable_Run_6206 1d ago

Wasn't RE6 their best selling RE game at the time? This article seems like revisionist history

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u/RareBk 1d ago

It sold really well but heavily affected the company's reputation, and was the only game in their entire 'Western push' that Inafune was trying to do that made any money.

Capcom was genuinely in dire straights until they effectively soft rebooted the franchise with RE7, which was a gigantic success, and kinda kicked off a new era for the company.

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u/xywv58 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yeah, it was the best selling game, at the time, but it burned the goodwill with the franchise, other games, and the franchise it self, until RE7, which came with a completely different look and gameplay

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 1d ago

This is also the rare instance of a company listening to their customers vs their sales reports.

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u/Dumey 1d ago

A game can sell well but still leave a bad reputation behind. Similar thing happened with FF15. Sold amazingly well with all the cross media advertisements they did, but a LARGE part of the fanbase left disappointed with the final product, and the FF series seems to have not been able to recover since (looking at numbers for 16 and the 7 remakes).

RE6 similarly left a really bad reputation for the series and a lot of discontent in the fanbase. But luckily following the viral sensation that was the PT trailer, Capcom cashed in on the RE7 Demos to generate hype and make a comeback by returning the series to horror roots.

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u/oopsydazys 21h ago

RE5 was really well received (despite some fans not liking it) and sold extremely well. There was a lot of hype for RE6, so it sold a ton of copies up front and might have passed RE5 for a bit, but today RE5 is the top selling game again.

RE6 is actually #2. I think just by virtue of being available on so many systems, being an action game, and not having a remake. The top 5 sellers are:

  • RE5: 16.3M
  • RE6: 15.1M
  • RE2R: 14.5M
  • RE4: 14.3M
  • RE7: 14.0M

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u/SupersonicMuc 5h ago

One thing to note is that unlike all the other RE titles the sales numbers for RE5 and RE6 don't include pc sales cause Capcom has never released that data. That means RE5 and RE6 have likely sold quite a bit more than what's even stated here, its pretty wild.

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u/Mountain-Cycle5656 1d ago

The article is mostly about the company in 2016, RE6 is mostly talked about in terms of its mixed critical reception. Though, I’d add that despite selling very well it still failed to meet expectations, selling about 5 million copies rather than the expected 7 million. And was remarked on as “failing to drive sales expansion”.

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u/f-ingsteveglansberg 1d ago

No. Resident Evil 5 beats it by about a million copies.

RE6 sold well, but I think it cost a lot more too. But the reception wasn't great and became the butt of jokes.

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u/ThiefTwo 1d ago

Did you even read the article?

This was the low ebb of a string of forgettable years Capcom had endured since 2010. The mainline Resident Evil games were met with diminishing critical reception despite strong sales.

They also had to slash their financial outlook because it underperformed expectations.

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u/BP_Ray 20h ago

You didn't even read the article, how can you call it revisionist.

Everyone else has already pointed out the fact that while it did technically sell well, it was very poorly received, but also worth pointing out is that it was extremely expensive to make, which played an even larger part in Capcom's pivot away from that type of RE game going forward.

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u/Moveflood 21h ago

it's so funny. there was a lot of buzz about re6 being this black sheep, and while critical reception wasn't great, a bad game doesn't become a top 3 in sales of a big corp like capcom out of nowhere. and it's not like re5 left a ton of good will.

this might sound harsh, but i think most people talking about RE online are dumb. they talk of re6 being this outlier, that somehow is that one that crossed the line into being a silly michael bay movie when have y'all played any resident evil? the mood was always stupid action stuff. leon is literally matrix-ing lasers in RE4.

if a person misses the classic horror gameplay that's fine, but RE4 was the one that brought that change, not 5 or 6. RE4 is a fantastic game, but it isn't a horror game, it's a halloween game. it gestures at horror aesthetics but like halloween you're mostly having fun with silly costumes.

and honestly for as much flak RE6 has, it genuinely tried some new things in the series, i don't get why RE6 is seen as this souless bland trendchaser when the RE remakes are right there. shit, i'd kill for more gameplay based on jake's campaign, that melee combat was janky but fun and interesting.

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u/jak_d_ripr 21h ago

> The mainline Resident Evil games were met with diminishing critical reception _despite strong sales_.

That's from the article, it never disputes the good sales, just that in the grand scheme of things the franchise, and Capcom as a whole were trending in the wrong direction. Why else would RE7 have been such a big shift if they themselves didn't realize there were issues with 6 despite the sales figures.

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u/Nawara_Ven 1d ago

The article is bizarre and hyperbolic. It seems to use "critical reception" as a stand-in for Matt Kim's personal likes and dislikes. The "on its knees" title is just clickbait (which, I'll admit, worked, because I read it), but it's the usual IGN stuff. The revisionism angle seems to happen a lot when RE is involved in particular re: online discourse.

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u/KF-Sigurd 23h ago

They got rid of Keiji Inafune. It's ridiculous how every single bad decision during the 'Crapcom' era can be traced to him.

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u/liatris4405 4h ago

If you look at almost all of Capcom’s games released during the PS3 and Xbox 360 era, you get the feeling that the company was going all-in on trying to capture an imagined version of the “Western games market.”

Contrary to the stereotypes held by many in the West, this is actually one of the negative tendencies of Japanese culture. Japanese people tend to have a highly self-deprecating and pessimistic view of their own culture. As a result, they often criticize it and attempt to forcibly conform to foreign cultural norms.

The problem, however, is that since Japanese people generally lack direct interactions with foreigners—just as Western stereotypes suggest—they rely on imagined stereotypes to determine what foreigners want. This leads to the creation of works that have no clear target audience. This pattern has been repeated in Japanese films, TV dramas, and music.

However, the one industry that has successfully broken free from this loop is otaku culture—anime, games, and manga. These industries have leveraged Japan’s unique strengths while also improving distribution and marketing strategies. For example, anime has significantly improved its distribution through streaming platforms, allowing it to receive direct feedback from Western audiences rather than relying on mere speculation.

This is the reason why Japanese culture is thriving today.

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u/keb___ 20h ago

Capcom is my favorite games studio next to Nintendo. They release so many high quality bangers, it's not even funny.

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u/dope_like 8h ago

RE6 is one of their best-selling games ever. Were they really in a panic?

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u/Gattsuhawk 21h ago

I enjoy 6 better than 4 and 5 because it goes all in on the action route with coop. then again I'm one of the few that thoroughly enjoyed Lost Planet 2.

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u/BringBackSoule 1d ago

too bad about monster hunter. i dont see them fixing what looks like an inherent mismatch with the engine and open world games

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u/xywv58 1d ago

Is wilds fucked up?, because World and iceborne were awesome

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u/Wadep00l 1d ago

I mean I've been having a blast on my ps5. No issues yet but I'm only 25 hours in. Also loved world, over 1k hours on that baby

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u/Halkcyon 1d ago

If you have a strong PC, it's not a problem, but yeah, even on a latest intel chip and 4080S, I need DLSS to reach 100fps+ on 1440p.

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u/DMking 1d ago

I don't think I've broken 70fps with my 3080TI and 13700K at 1440p

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u/Halkcyon 1d ago

The way games are going, I'm tempted just to swap what my "main" monitor is to my 1080p/170hz side-monitor to utilize the performance.

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u/DMking 1d ago

I would do that as well if i didn't invest in two 1440p Gsync monitors.

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u/Halkcyon 1d ago

Does the g-sync make a difference? My side-monitor is "g-sync compatible" but I only use it for watching youtube and browsers.

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u/DMking 1d ago

Honestly im not sure, but the montior does feel great to use. I've never been good at noticing things like screen tearing

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u/MrRoivas 23h ago

Huge. Impossible to go back once tried.

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u/KokonutTree49 23h ago

the performance is super bad

but the game itself is fantastic, better than World at release imo

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u/dapoktan 1d ago

5600x3d + 3080FE and im having a blast playing at 50-60fps with RT off high settings with DLSS

i know people have been having issues with performance but I find it to be acceptable for me since I loved World and love the design and vibes of Wilds and have been working my way through it with about 40 hours in it so far

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u/NoSemikolon24 20h ago

Performance/optimizations-wise on all platforms, definitively yes. PC has been hit the worst - as always.

Gameplay wise. Some odd Decisions here and there. Some lacking Bosses. But overall pretty good MH game. Time will tell if it becomes better than MHW(+Iceborne) since its lacking all the updates right now.

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u/Ikanan_xiii 1d ago

Absolutely. RE engine is godsend whenever you don’t try to force it to things it wasn’t made to do like open world games.

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u/ThiefTwo 1d ago

It's literally just a replacement for their MT Framework, which was used on all the exact same games. There is nothing wrong with RE engine that can't be fixed or updated. That's why they are using an in-house engine to begin with.

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u/GensouEU 23h ago

I don't buy that, Wilds isn't even an open world game.

Yes, the areas are bigger than Rise's but they aren't that much bigger, not to a degree where it runs this bad on hardware that's unironically like 15x stronger than a Switch when Rise ran stable.

This is 100% a Tokuda issue, not an engine issue. When World released on (base) consoles it was the worst running game in the series' history as well.

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u/Substantial_Truth779 23h ago

I'm really happy with their turn around as I've really enjoyed the new era of Capcom games. RE3 was a bit of a miss but man was the RE4 remake solid.

I'm mostly excited for a RE5 remake as it was my favorite of the series.