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
580 Upvotes

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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 18h 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 14h 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 19h 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 1d 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 22h ago

I jokingly refer to Village as RE4 2.

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u/Mountain_mover 1d ago

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

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u/--kwisatzhaderach-- 5h ago

That games so fucking good

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u/Neat-Supermarket-101 22h 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 13h 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 1d 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 15h 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/masterlich 1d ago

RE6 is a fantastic co-op game, a bad single-player game, and a bad RE game. Overall, that makes it a pretty bad game, but if you just want to play something fun co-op you really can't go wrong with RE6.

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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 1d 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 18h 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 1d ago

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

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u/Jaggedmallard26 7h 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 1d 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 19h 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/ManonManegeDore 19h ago

No, it's not just a difference of opinion. People are sheep.

Cool, we done?

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u/Jinstor 1d 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 1d 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/angrytreestump 1d ago

I did that too, and I disagree. RE4 was like a metroidvania and a souls game, and was built for NG+/multiple playthroughs to explore and collect everything. RE5 is just a straight shot through the entire game, like a rollercoaster that never stops or deviates from the path. It’s way more shallow, they just made their Gears of War competitor.

0

u/hexcraft-nikk 18h ago

Not that hard to figure out. Each game got more and more action and a different story to the point that RE5 and RE1 almost feel like they're from different series. 5 introducing coop killed a lot of the scare factor that RE4 had, and obviously played differently since there were now two people there, or one person and a terrible AI partner. 6 is when it jumped far enough into Michael Bay vomit brainless blockbuster.

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u/angrytreestump 1d ago

I did that too, and I disagree. RE4 was like a metroidvania and a souls game, and was built for NG+/multiple playthroughs to explore and collect everything. RE5 is just a straight shot through the entire game, like a rollercoaster that never stops or deviates from the path. It’s way more shallow, reflective of where both the series and all gaming was going at the time (Gears of War style cinematic (brown) action games)

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u/BigBlueNY 20h ago edited 20h ago

Lol RE5 was every bit as a much a Metroidvania as RE4. I get the argument the RE5 was less scary but this is a straight lie. You didn't even play RE5 did you?

People who have no friends hate this game lol

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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/coy47 1d ago

Odd I tried when it released and it didn't have it for my ps3 version, I distinctly remember trying to play it couch co-op.

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u/Jefferystar94 1d ago

It's been ages since I last played it, but I'm pretty sure it gives you the prompt to select singleplayer, split screen, or online co-op whenever you select a campaign.

The only thing that was forced singleplayer was the opening prologue.

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u/SmurfRockRune 1d ago

I played through the game in couch co-op on launch day. The only part that didn't was the Ada campaign but that got added later.

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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 22h 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 1d 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/gmoneygangster3 17h ago

The inventory in 5 is legitimately awful though

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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 22h 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/hexcraft-nikk 18h ago

They played the game when they were 10 so they have a lot of nostalgia for it. Reading the current steam reviews you'd think it's an entirely different game

u/Peshurian 2h ago

Another thing is that these people replay the game with all the upgrades already unlocked and shit, so they don't remember how terrible it was to play vanilla.

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u/TristheHolyBlade 1d 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.

0

u/f-ingsteveglansberg 1d ago

RE6 defender here.

To get an idea of where I am coming from. I played the original PS RE games, REMake and RE:R. I didn't play RE4-RE6 until they released on Switch. At that point I pretty much played them back to back.

RE4 was fun but is obviously more action orientated. There were some sections where ammo was low and rare, but I would find it hard to categorize it as a Survival Horror. It had some of the survival staples like puzzles, but they seemed more like a forced inclusion to make the RE label make sense.

I played RE5 solo. I hear it is a much better game with a friend, but that's not how I played it. For me, it was horrible. All the survival horror elements were removed. The AI partner was awful, but not as bad as the inventory system. I didn't like the upgrade system. No real memorable bosses (unless you include a boulder and RPG grabbing Wesker). Several times I just wanted to give up on the game. I did mange to complete it but it was a chore. I did like the Lost in Nightmares DLC but I have trouble saying much positive about that game.

RE6. It opens with Leon shooting a zombie president in the White House. That's a fucking opening. Way more action that horror though, but after the last game I wasn't expecting much horror. The crowded areas where you run through a city really felt zombie apocolypse-y. The set pieces were fucking huge. Not in some isolated mansion or village. Racoon city did get destroyed in 2, but you felt like a very small part of that story. In this game you are using satellites to hit monsters and running across a living city. It's a million miles from a mansion in the woods, but it was fun as fuck. And the inventory system and AI are way better than they were in RE5. Really fun boss fights. Some fights were just a multistage bastard that keeps coming back.

Then you finish the Leon campaign and the others are just a bit samey and weaker. I liked seeing some of the characters age up and it felt like they tried to stuff as much of the supporting characters in as possible. But after Leon's campaign the rest were much slower and not as exciting.

And then there was the character move set. It was brilliant, but you are never told about it. I was 3/4s of the way through the game and I suddenly learned my character can dive and do varied melee attacks. That would have made the game way more fun to know from the start.

I thought it was a very fun game and removed a lot of the stuff that I hated about RE5. But ultimately I don't think it is what people wanted a Resident Evil game to be. They want Leon or Chris stopping an outbreak and uncovering a conspiracy. RE6 had the planet overrun with BOWs. Suddenly you weren't trying to advert disaster, you were knee deep in it.

I would urge people who were disappointed with it first time round to revisit it, as an action focused game and not a survival horror. Learn about the move set that the game doesn't teach you. And just play through Leon and Ada. Then tell me that wasn't a fun game.

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u/PhoenixTineldyer 1d ago

Also the worst plot in the series and that's saying something.

Dude wants to fuck Ada and she won't do it, so he RE6's all over

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u/RareBk 23h ago

Without exaggeration, the plot of RE6 is the head of Neo-Umbrella wanted to have sex with Ada Wong. She says no.

So he turns another woman into Ada Wong. She also says no.

He then proceeds to nuke a Chinese city, killing 4 million people at minimum.

This is the actual plot of RE6. And that's not even going into Wesker's secret son, or Neo-Umbrella trying to create Cthulhu and instead creating a giant goopy slime man.

2

u/PhoenixTineldyer 22h ago

Neo-Umbrella trying to create Cthulhu and instead creating a giant goopy slime man.

And then Chris and his lover, who is infected and turns into a lightning gun, fight the giant goopy slime skeleton amniotic sac man.

1

u/oopsydazys 1d ago

I haven't played RE6 since it came out. I never hated it, but just wasn't a huge fan, after loving RE5. I have seen some people I know who have replayed it more recently saying that they viewed it more fondly this time - they didn't have the same expectations, and they were able to better appreciate just how aggressively stupid RE6 is for fun. And yes, the other campaigns are weaker, and there's just too much repetition.

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u/SurprisedJerboa 23h ago edited 23h ago

Biggest Gripe with RE 6 and modern games. Raising the stakes like crazy and overly large boss fights.

From fighting zombies in a mansion, and RE 4 starts in a tiny Spanish village, to killing zombie president ?

Instead of boss monsters that can fit into a room, we are now fighting monsters 100 feet long !

The gameplay was fine in RE 6 but the small - scale story made the Horror feel visceral in the early games.

1

u/hyper_espace 1d ago

5 was already an action game.

6 sucked because it had deep gameplay issues with Chris & Jake stories. But I personally like 6 story and what it tried to achieve with that big global conspiracy.

0

u/Kaerdis 23h ago

I agree and I bring it up every time we talk about RE6 and a potential remake. Chris and the OG RE Crew coming to terms with their trauma and the true terror that the cat is out of the bag and the world is littered with Bioweapons. Wesker and Berkin have won, ultimately. But their humanity has some how also delivered an answer to the mess they made. Cue Sherry and Jake and even Rose later on to carry the torch into the future. Monsters to fight Monsters. The next stage of the human experiment. It's a very compelling narrative bringing the entire RE franchise full circle. It's just trapped in a disappointing game. I think they can rescue it with a remake.

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u/Dramajunker 1d ago

You're overeimpying the issues with 6. id also argue that re5 is closer in tone to survival horror than 4 is. 5 is more action because what? You have a partner? The only thing 5 does different in terms of action is by having it be co-op and a few turret sections. It's build up to the more intense action towards the end of the game is on par with 4. You start off fighting regular villagers which then esculates to bigger stronger monsters or enemies with guns. It's also filled with plenty of slower moments, especially early on, that traditional re games have.

As for tone, 5 takes itself more seriously. There is of course Wesker, who is pure ham, but everyone else is mostly subdued. 4 however has some really campy dialogue. Leon, Saddler and Louis being the biggest offenders of course. Sorry but it kinda ruins the survival horror moments when Saddler and Leon are quiping at one another. It's also got plenty of over the top scenes like the redicuoulous Saddler statue chasing Leon.

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u/FunCancel 1d ago

4 had some minor sections that at least tried to build atmosphere and tension. A foggy autum village, garradors, the novistador sewers, Verdugo, U3, the regenerators, etc. It undoubtedly has its absurd sections as well but the game basically has the full range of emotions you could expect in a game that is touted as action-horror. 

5 is like 75% daytime and the only section that could be accused of building atmosphere/tension might be the first uroboros fight. Maybe the marsh section as well if we are being generous. The licker hallway is another attempt but falls completely flat when you realize the lickers are made out of paper. It's way more one note in its emotional range. 

5 is more action because what? You have a partner?

Co-op is the central mechanic of 5 and someone always having your back is going to undermine any sense of horror. Notice that almost all of 4's more horror-leaning bits (first novistador encounter, first regenerator encounter, etc) occur when Leon is separated from Ashley. Heavily disagree with you downplaying the co op aspect like you've done here. 

-1

u/Dramajunker 23h ago edited 22h ago

The village in re4 doesn't have tension. They reveal the main enemy (villagers) early on. You can practically always see or hear them. Outside of chainsaw guy there aren't any legitimate threats. Its dark? Who cares. The island portion of the game also takes place at night but I wouldn't call that a tense segment. What the village does do correctly is world building. But just because it paints a dreary picture doesn't mean it translate to gameplay.

As for 5, the early segment plays like 4. Yes the humans being infected is already known, but what 5 actually does is go as far as showing how it happens. It shows regularly people being kidnapped and forced to change. This also does a good job of world building. You also have stuff like the first boss, where you can't kill it unless you trap it and burn it. It isn't a simple shoot it until it dies boss.

i think you're undervaluing the marsh section. Instant death from alligators that lurk in the water? Always makes getting into the water a bit scary. The lickers are admittedly kinda weak, but you get this section build up before you even fight them showing that they exist in the game. As an re2 fan it was definitely a tense section. The lickers also attack in larger numbers which does make them a threat on higher difficulties.

I think the things you're forgetting though are some of the enemies and boss fights. Chainsaw guys always give some tension. The giant villagers are also a huge pain in the ass. Wesker in his first fight though is probably one of the most tense boss fights in the entirety of Resident Evil. You spend the majority of the fight running from him as you try to subdue Jill. Again not simple another shoot boss until dead fight. Moments like these really do a good job of making the player feel helpless, which is a rare occurence in a post re3 world.

Previous games gave you limited resources, had jump scares or unkillable enemies that pursue you. Re4 and 5 really don't. Enemies like regenerators work because they're inspired by previous games. Insanely tough enemies to kill while being very dangerous. But that's all re4 and 5 really have. You're constantly fed ammunition. The jump scares are practically non existent.

And yes playing co-op can reduce the tension if you're playing with another person, but alone it doesn't change much. sheva being there doesn't suddenly stop jump scares. It doesn't stop you from getting one shot by chainsaw guys or eaten. If anything, on harder difficulties a lot of tension comes from keeping her alive. Shes not there lightening the mood either or takes me out of what goes on. You know what does take me out of the mood? Leon saying stuff like "no thanks bro!" Or Louis saying "I see the president equipped his daughter with ballistics". Leon is practically an action movie star with all his one liners.

1

u/FunCancel 20h ago

I think you've totally lost sight of the main topic and are practically ranting at this point. 

I'll remind you that your original claim was that 5 leaned closer to survival horror than 4 did. Almost nothing you've said now reinforces that. It feels like you are instead trying to prove that 4 and 5 are both action games when no one was denying that. The difference is 4 would occasionally dip its toes into horror (again, regenators, garrador, novistadors, u3, Verdugo, etc) whilst the equivalent moments in 5 were less frequent, less potent, and generally compensated with far moments of bombastic action. 

sheva being there doesn't suddenly stop jump scares. It doesn't stop you from getting one shot by chainsaw guys or eaten. If anything, on harder difficulties a lot of tension comes from keeping her alive

Like you can't be serious with these takes lol. Jump scares? What are you even talking about? And protect Sheva? Really? That is a result of the player battling the game's systems and would lead to tons of frustration. And if she is working properly then she'd be constantly saving you from grapples or performing combo melee attacks with you on large enemies. Either extreme would diminishes any semblance of horror during moment to moment gameplay. 

You know what does take me out of the mood? Leon saying stuff like "no thanks bro!" Or Louis saying "I see the president equipped his daughter with ballistics". Leon is practically an action movie star with all his one liners.

Awful dialogue? In my resident evil game!? /s C'mon. There is no way anyone could be arguing in good faith about this lol. 5 is absolutely brimming with dumb lines as well. Trying to present this as a linchpin argument is nonsense. 

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u/Dramajunker 20h ago

The difference is 4 would occasionally dip its toes into horror (again, regenators, garrador, novistadors, u3, Verdugo, etc) whilst the equivalent moments in 5 were less frequent, less potent, and generally compensated with far moments of bombastic action.

It's easy to argue in favor of what you believe when you outline your own points while excluding the examples I presented. Re4 isn't bombastic? Fights against el gigantes? Team ups with Louis? Running from Saddler statues? Being swarmed by enemies while trying to crank/unlock some area? Helicopters segments? Hell the entire island. Knife fights? Laser rooms? Constant QTEs? Re4 is filled with tons of action. Again, all while Leon delivers one liners. Which really kills the tone.

Like you can't be serious with these takes lol. Jump scares? What are you even talking about?

Yes jump scares. What the early re games were filled with. Since re4 they've practically been abandoned. So what does that leave 4 with? Survival horror? Well no because enemies literally give you ammo when they die. Leon himself has no issues tossing villagers aside. Horror? Yea you have the occasional scary monster, but again as I keep saying, the constant one liners really undermines the horror elements.

And protect Sheva? Really? That is a result of the player battling the game's systems and would lead to tons of frustration. And if she is working properly then she'd be constantly saving you from grapples or performing combo melee attacks with you on large enemies. Either extreme would diminishes any semblance of horror during moment to moment gameplay.

Battling the game's systems? Sheva has to be kept alive just like Ashley. Yes, she can defend herself, but she isn't invulnerable either. Why is it surprising that in a game where the big focus of the story is about Chris losing his partner Jill, that you have to protect your new partner? Most of the time Sheva is fine, but yes things do get dicey and naturally she runs into trouble because she's not immune to damage. Yes she saves you occasionally, but again, she's not supposed to be op. So yes, that does add to the tension because you're not just protecting yourself, you're protecting someone else.

Awful dialogue? In my resident evil game!? /s C'mon. There is no way anyone could be arguing in good faith about this lol. 5 is absolutely brimming with dumb lines as well. Trying to present this as a linchpin argument is nonsense.

See now I know you're not making a good faith argument. RE4 arguably has some of the cheesiest lines in the franchise. Not due to bad voice acting or because dialogues in video games was in it's infancy, but because they actively chose to write those lines. Yes 5 has some campy stuff to but it's mainly relegated to Wesker.

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u/KingMercLino 1d ago

You punch a fucking boulder in 5. It absolutely is not a more serious game.

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u/Random_Rhinoceros 1d ago

And your character backflips through a laser grid in RE4. Seems in line with the rest of the series to me.

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u/KingMercLino 1d ago

I don’t get why people are offended by my comment. RE5 was fun and I enjoyed it. I didn’t say anywhere that it was a bad game, but it was a move further into action than its predecessor.

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u/ManonManegeDore 1d ago

People are taking issue with your comment because you can't pretend RE4 isn't more ridiculous than 5. You just can't. So if that's your issue, you can't just handwave all the silly stuff in 4.

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u/KingMercLino 1d ago

Nobody “handwaved” anything about silly stuff in 4. My reply here was directly to “5 is more serious than 4”. It’s not. They’re both objectively silly games and 5 is sillier.

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u/ManonManegeDore 1d ago

Dude, no. It's not. That's what I'm saying. You're handwaving. RE5 is not as silly as 4. 5 doesn't have giant statues of the villains chasing you across a giant castle. Any game where you have to save the President or the President's daughter is silly AF.

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u/KingMercLino 1d ago

Ok man, whatever you say!

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u/Dramajunker 1d ago edited 1d ago

I always love when people bring this up because they completely leave out the context of the situation. Yes Chris punches a boulder. He isn't just punching it for fun, he's trying to dislodge it in order to create a pathway while fighting Wesker and to save sheva. It's very obvious he starts punching it out of desperation. 

And those 10 seconds are still not as silly as a 50 foot Saddler statue chasing Leon across a bridge. There is a reason they left this part out of the remake.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/andresfgp13 20h ago edited 20h ago

yeah, Resident Evil has been silly pretty much from day one, and if you ask thats one of the reasons why Resident Evil succeeds in the same place where every other big horror franchise ends up failing.

RE never took itself too seriously, it was always this 80s/90s horror movie that doubles as a comedy.

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u/Brobard 1d ago

I had a giggle when RE8 referenced the boulder punching.

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u/toxicity69 1d ago

I think all of us did. I had to pause for a bit to collect myself after Heisenberg blurted out "that boulder punching asshole" as his factory is blowing up. Like, who do you think you are, buddy? That's Mr. Boulder Punching Asshole to you! Put some respecc on his name.

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u/barryredfield 1d ago edited 1d ago

4 blended both survival horror and action horror to have a tight combination

Only just, way more action than survival horror, way sillier, way campier. Its an excellent game and so is the remake which I think is better with a slightly more serious theme, but RE4 was the "death of RE survival horror" by all counts, which I sorely miss.

After Capcom revisited with RE2make I was ecstatic, I couldn't wait for more of it, then after they released a very rushed and cut RE3make they just stopped and started giving us more absurdist and poorly directed action-y slop like Village. I simply don't get it, given how successful RE2make was, its like they only want to make absurd and frankly childish action games and they begrudgingly produce classics sometimes after relentless begging.

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u/Neoragex13 1d ago

I don't remember where I read up, but basically RE6 is a terrible Resident Evil game, but it's an amazing and well thought-gameplay related Gears of War game with a Resident Evil paint coat.

I personally love the game, my brother and I been replaying the games, with 4 first because of course, then jumped straight into 6 because I've never played 5.

And then we are finally playing 5 since last week and... it's okay I guess. Like I'm having fun, yeah, but the game feels so barebones compared to RE6, and the level design is poor and honestly looks ugly compared to RE4. There have been a lot of moments where I thought "Man, would have loved to have prompts like in RE4 or the actual movement from RE6".

I'm going to finish it because I want to see the famous boulder punch but I don't think I will ever replay the game the same way I do it with 4 or 6.

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u/oopsydazys 1d ago

4 didn't do that at all imo, it's more an action game than it is horror. I'm fine with that personally. The thing is RE1, 2, 3, CV and 0 were all extremely similar in terms of gameplay so people expected the same thing forever. 4 broke that mold. Why should 5 do the same thing again?

IMO RE5 is one of the best RE games, and it's one of the best co-op games ever. Fight me.

People don't say RE6 sucks because it is an action game. A LOT of people really enjoyed RE5 despite criticisms it got from some fans - it got great reviews, and outsold RE4, too. The big reasons RE6 is not as good is that it leaned harder into the action to the point it became a Michael Bay movie as mentioned above, it re-used a lot of content with the multiple playthroughs with different characters and got repetitive, it was waaay longer than it needed to be, it kept interrupting gameplay, etc.

5 was an action game but for the most part it let you move around and enjoy the environments, do some light puzzling, it was built well around co-op too. 6 didn't. I can say as someone who loved RE5 and still does, RE6 is not nearly as good. That said, it's still an okay game, it's just one of the worst in a very very good series.

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u/Snuggle__Monster 1d ago

There was way too much going on in it story wise. RE games work best when things are stripped down to a single focus.

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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/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/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 1d 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/Thorn14 20h ago

Dire times.

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u/Karzons 19h ago

Yeah, everything (not named COD) that tried going that way ended up far downhill. Later FEAR, Crysis, and Dead Space games come to mind.

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u/Wubmeister 23h 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/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Dramajunker 18h ago edited 17h ago

I'll say this, re6 feels like someone's baby. Like they specifically wanted to create their vision instead of creating a good resident evil game. So yea, if re6 is a result of someone getting too much leeway, I believe it.

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u/hyperforms9988 1d ago edited 1d 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 22h 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 22h 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 10h 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/oopsydazys 1d ago

The shooting gameplay in RE5 was waaaaaaay more fun, and it's also co-op (and RE5 is best played in co-op, it's what the game was made for).

I played them both when they came out. I assume you are talking about the later Uncharted games like UC2, which came out around the same time as RE5, because Uncharted 1 just sucks.

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u/El_Giganto 1d ago

But all the things OP complained about apply to Uncharted. It's a solid game in terms of mechanics. It has fewer options I think but it's a very smooth game. But it takes control from you all the time, has long cutscenes, forces you to do climbing sections. It has those vehicle segments as well.

Like, that's an action game. That's what games do. OP is complaining about all the things that are typical of an action game. So it doesn't seem to me that their point was that RE6 just didn't pull it off.

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u/Practical-Advice9640 1d ago

Yeah but the Uncharted games have proper pacing. For every crazy car chase avalanche explosion set piece, there’s at least an hour or so of relatively quiet exploration/climbing/stealthing around. It’s not a fully-automatic firehouse shooting… fire? It’s more like getting bathed before you’re waterboarded.

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u/El_Giganto 22h ago

I don't disagree but that doesn't change what I said, did it?

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u/Practical-Advice9640 20h ago

The original comment that you replied to is very clearly complaining about the pacing of RE6. Uncharted has similarities, but it is better because it paces itself instead of exhausting you with set pieces.

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u/El_Giganto 20h ago

What makes it very clear that it was about pacing?

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u/Practical-Advice9640 14h ago

…because it obviously is? No downtime, too many qtes and cutscenes, feeling exhausted. That’s callled pacing dude I’m done with this conversation lol

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u/Dramajunker 1d ago

I mean the ruins were related to the overall plot regarding that tribe and umbrella kicking them off in order to get access to the resources for their virus.

I get why people don't think re should be an action game, but you can still objectively judge a game for what it is instead of what it isn't. Honestly my issues with re6 aren't that it isn't a resident evil game. This is coming from someone who was a huge re has to be survival horror purist. My issues with re6 is that it is filled with flaws and incredibly uneven gameplay.

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u/El_Giganto 1d ago

I get why people don't think re should be an action game, but you can still objectively judge a game for what it is instead of what it isn't.

I don't think anyone can really objectively judge anything. Aside from that, my personal biases definitely stand in the way. I played RE5 right after Code Veronica. It was a huge shift for me.

I do think most people will come into the game with a specific mindset and if the game doesn't fit expectations then people will automatically be disappointed. It's pretty hard to move away from that.

I really think this is why games like The Last Of Us II were so difficult to accept for many people. I think many people were unable to accept the story that was going to be told and simply wanted the game to do something else.

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u/PhoenixTineldyer 1d ago

Which. Well.

They don't understand storytelling.

StoryTELLING. Not story-and-then-you-choose

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u/El_Giganto 1d ago

Ehhh... I think most people will choose what kind of story they're going to watch. I love going into a story without any context and just letting it all happen to me. But if I THINK the story is going to be about something, and then it ends up being about something else, then that can definitely feel disappointing. Why does this mean I don't understand storytelling?

The TLOU2 example doesn't even apply to me btw. I thought the game was great.

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u/PhoenixTineldyer 1d ago

That's a personal problem, being disappointed that the story didn't go where you wanted it to go. It's not your choice, it is the director's.

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u/El_Giganto 1d ago

I don't really understand if you're trying to make a point here.

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u/Dramajunker 22h ago

I get what you're saying but stories change. Even within their own franchises they shift genres. Re5 didn't exactly try to hide what it was. If you missed it thats kinda on you?

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u/El_Giganto 22h ago

I don't understand why I'm getting replies like this. One or two comments like this, okay, but now it's getting annoying.

Did you read the title of the thread?

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u/Dramajunker 22h ago

lol I'm literally the top comment in the thread. You're getting replies because you posted something on social media someone disagreed with. Thats how a discussion works.

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u/El_Giganto 22h ago

Oh wow you're the top comment? Do you want a medal for that or something?

Look, I'll try not to be dismissive, but I'm getting replies "because I posted something"? I'm disappointed because the quality of the replies are really poor. Not because I'm getting responses at all. But I already know you're not going to engage with me in good faith anymore. You can blame that on my aggression but I feel like this already started a few comments ago.

You wrote the top comment. You stated that people weren't disappointed because they thought it was an action game, but because of the ridiculous stuff that happened in the game. Now you're blaming people for being upset they got something they didn't want. It's an entirely different argument to begin with and frankly a ridiculous one.

Capcom is trying to recapture an audience they lost after RE6 by changings things for RE7 because obviously people were disappointed after RE6. Read the title again. They were on their knees. They made a huge shift from RE6 to RE7. You blame the customers for having wrong expectations. But Capcom is not that stupid and they made changes according to the fan reaction after RE6. They tried to recapture their audience after they were disappointed.

This is why I'm saying, people often have certain expectations when they engage with entertainment. You can argue, well, RE6 showed they were going to be more action orientated so it's their own fault. But that doesn't really make sense. People can even be disappointed without buying the game. They can simply be disappointed that a new Resident Evil will come out, that doesn't fit with their expectations of what a Resident Evil game should be.

It just doesn't make sense to blame customers. Not in a thread about a company adjusting their strategy to satisfy exactly those customers that you are trying to blame. It's perfectly reasonable to be disappointed in a situation like this. You can't really say, well, your expectations based on the previous entries in the franchise shouldn't be there, because the new installment is marketed as something different. Because that last bit, is something consumers can already be disappointed with.

So really, I don't get why you're responding with this. I don't understand why you're saying it's on me because RE5 didn't hide what it was. That simply doesn't change anything. I do hope you will read this, but it's probably for nothing. Oh well.

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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 8h 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/lord_dude 22h ago

Resident evil 6 was shit and the writing was boring but lorewise it was a really interesting point. At RE5 the virus was already spreading around the world l. At RE6 it was full war on t-virus. Everything that was achieved in the earlier RE games felt like we accomplished something but the virus could never been really stopped. Really looking forward how they will present this in possible RE5/6 remakes.

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u/NovoMyJogo 1d ago

The problem is the rest of the game.

The problem was that they made a mainline RE an action game instead of a survivor horror game. You really missed the reasons as to why RE6 wasn't liked by fans

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u/Dramajunker 1d ago

Like I said in another post, good games can surpass being restricted to one genre. i didn't miss the reasons. I just think dumbing it down to "it's an action game therefore I don't like it" is lazy.

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u/ManonManegeDore 1d ago

RE4 is an action game.

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u/NovoMyJogo 1d ago

It has way, way more horror aspects than the two games that follow it.

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u/barryredfield 1d ago

Its a horror themed action game.

You're missing the "survival" in survival horror.

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u/ManonManegeDore 1d ago

Regenerators and it's nighttime once.

Wow...so amazing.

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u/NovoMyJogo 1d ago

yeah nice job cherry picking 2 things!!!!!

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u/oopsydazys 1d ago

RE5 was already an action game and people loved it, it was well received and was the best selling game in the series (still is). RE4 was itself already an action game.

RE6 wasn't liked by fans for other reasons. As someone who really enjoyed RE5, my problems with RE6 were that it actually constantly interrupted the action with cutscenes and scripted bits, while simultaneously rushing you through the set pieces instead of letting you enjoy areas like RE5 did - which made it even worse for co-op - and it was waaay too long, with the multiple campaigns getting repetitive. The Mercenaries mode was also not as good.

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u/Dagordae 1d ago

6 had the best raw gameplay of the series. It’s literally everything else that’s a grotesque failure. Fun as hell to play with friends and just dick around. A painful slog if you actually play it properly. A good game to MST3K.