Capcom released their Umbrella Corps game last week on the PlayStation 4 and PC. The idea of the game, which has been brewing for a while, is solid. Having a $29.99 game that gives you just enough Resident Evil experience and puts you against the world (as well as the CPU) in constant online battles — that’s a solid game plan. As with things like communism, all of it looks great on paper, but if it isn’t executed properly and supported, then you will certainly run into some road bumps.
There are some road bumps with this title.
An Experiment Gone Wrong
The first element of a good game that stands out to me, and this is always a big factor when I put together gaming reviews with established universes (such is the case with RE), is how good is the story? Focusing completely on the single player experience in The Experiment mode of the game, the story is pretty much broken into small pockets of setup that consist of 1-2 sentences before the match begins. There is no real rhyme to the proverbial reason when you’re playing the single player experience, as you simply point-shoot-collect material-survive. It’s a repetitive gameplay design that is fun for the first few rounds, and scary on occasion, but gets old quick. The purpose of collecting vials of whatever isn’t readily explained, but collect enough and the game shifts to survival mode, which means you just need to survive for a certain amount of time. Having played this single player experience more than a few times, it felt a lot like the zombie multiplayer experience from Treyarch Call of Duty games. It was meant for quick pockets of fun, but never meant to lead the charge in gameplay. It’s a shame that it ended up this way, as there were a lot of good elements here to make this single player experience seem like it could be solid.
Online (Team Match)
On the multiplayer side of the equation, I honestly didn’t have much luck getting games going. There are only a few titles out there that have ever given me trouble when it comes to starting up an online session, and especially not the case when the game is coming from a AAA publisher such as Capcom. Regretfully, the MP experience went against the grain and I spent more waiting time to play online than I did actually playing online, which speaks volumes about the game. For example, prior to this review, I just tried to get a team match going (just to reconfirm that I’m not a complete idiot when it comes to starting/playing online matches) and the game kicked me back saying that it ‘Couldn’t create a lobby’. When most of the game is supposed to be an online experience, and we’re a week out from launch of the title, that doesn’t bode well for consumers who put down some dough to get things going.
Anyway, when the online experience did decide to launch, and I played just two different ways, but overall the controls feel clunky, the gameplay design feels very claustrophobic, and the experience just seems incredibly unbalanced for a title that dons the moniker of Resident Evil. Respectfully, it just seems like there wasn’t a lot of thought given to how, why and what this game was going to be. The weapons felt unfair at times, the actual gameplay felt short and disjointed in some areas and the brief battles just didn’t seem like there was a lot of polish put into their finish. This type of gameplay, while good in some areas, certainly doesn’t do the RE brand any favors when getting fans excited about the series again.
My biggest complaints with the entire experience is the lack of choices for multiplayer matches, the lack of participants in matches and the lack of inspired design that feels like a completely missed opportunity. Again, for a game that is heavy on the online content, or at least marketed that way, the delivery seemed short. The levels should have been bigger, the amount of PvP players should have been expanded to at least 8v8 and the load outs, which had the structure of a good idea, needed to be a bit more balanced and obvious. The gameplay just felt absolutely broken and glued together, which again is a shame for fans of the Resident Evil series, who deserve a great idea like this to delivery some solid gameplay. It was incredibly difficult to understand why this game was made the way it was and why there wasn’t more thought put into the design. The assumed setup of Umbrella Corporation’s militants coming in to rectify an outbreak in a lab, saving the chemicals with no regards for the human lives, is maliciously delightful. It’s a wonderful twist to a traditionally hero-driven series and one that could have been so much better than it turned out to be had proper time and money been given to the developers.
On the bright side of the equation, this game looks positively gorgeous in some areas. The zombies are scary as hell and the lighting, texture and what not are nicely done. The visuals certainly are there, at least with character models. The environments were a little short on spectacle, but for the most part you won’t be focusing on the environments long enough to criticize them. Overall, the game has pretty potential, but sadly all of it is drowned out by the lack of gameplay design.
