Preview: Hands-on Resident Evil 6
Words by: Leigh Groocock | Posted: 10 months ago | Filed under: Features, Previews.
It’s been awhile old friend, but it was only a matter of time until your pretty head appeared again. Resident Evil 6 is launching in just a few short months and a demo is to be released this September, however the lucky owners of Dragon’s Dogma were granted early access to the demo as a cheeky treat and we’ve gone ahead and written up our own thoughts as well as recorded the full demo, which can be found on our fantastic YouTube channel.
The very generous Resident Evil 6 demo features 3 different campaigns; each lasting around 15-30 minutes each, you’ll see old legends such as Chris, Leon and Jake return in a whole bunch of different scenarios that they’ll unfortunately stumble upon at some point, most of which seem quite near the beginning of the game, so thankfully very few spoilers are revealed.
Each of the three demo campaigns put you in vastly different situations to give you a taste of what to expect when the game launches in just a few months’ time.
Leon’s campaign takes the old school Resident Evil approach of slow, tense gameplay and for the brief time you’re able to experience it – it’s an absolute blast. The atmosphere is crap-your-pants tense, as you slowly make your way through the deserted Whitehouse while a storm is brewing outside, since America has been hit by a bio-terrorist attack.
Chris’ campaign kicks off with him drinking away his sorrows in what we can only assume is cheap whiskey, when he’s forced back into the zombie onslaught by a fellow comrade. Did you get a chance to play the extremely mediocre Operation Racoon City? That’s exactly what this is, except it looks a lil’ bit better - constant waves of zombies with huge amounts of ammunition in an extremely average third-person action title.
Jakes campaign mostly consists of running away from the terrifying Ustanak, a nemesis-style monster who has some truly bad-ass execution cut scenes (one of which involves him showering himself in blood, yeah, that awesome). After a run for your life, you’ll eventually battle the behemoth in a rundown tunnel.
Each of the three campaigns all come with their own co-op minion, which will assist you as you battle your way through the level and they can easily be replaced by a real player if you so wish. Yes, this does mean you and a buddy can expect the same banter as you did in Operation Racoon City and Resident Evil 5… by banter, we actually mean screaming at the top of your lungs ‘till the idiot you chose to help you does what you say.
The main thing which stuck out to us throughout our time with the demo was how the series has taken a more action-oriented approach. The thrill of meeting the occasional infected has gone out the window as you now tend to run into huge swarms of the blood thirsty freaks, which in the time between Resident Evil 5 and 6 ditched the pitchforks and learnt how to fire fully automatic machine guns, bumping up the difficulty to a whole new level.
One of the few things worth experience in Operation Racoon City was its item management, which they’ve thankfully carried over to Resident Evil 6 (there wasn’t much worth carrying over). You’ll no longer have to worry about whether or not you have enough free blocks in your backpack, so collect everything to survive the oncoming freaks.
If the demo is anything to go (which we can assume it is), we heavily advise that you keep your eye out for Resident Evil 6 when it launches this November. You can expect the much loved tense zombie action that we’ve became used too over all these years, as well as a few new additions – albeit some aren’t welcomed.
About Leigh Groocock
My name is Leigh. I'm a journalism student at university and do video stuff on the internet for money... I'll leave you to decide what that means.
