Resident Evil 6 (PS4)

Note: This review contains spoilers for Resident Evil 2 (1998), Resident Evil 4 (2005), Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6.

Following the success of Resident Evil 5 (RE5) in 2009, Capcom took the next natural step and started development on Resident Evil 6 (RE6). Much like Resident Evil 4 (RE4) and RE5 before it, RE6 had its own share of development woes, apart from attaching a less-experienced director to the project, whose only prior directing experience included Resident Evil: Outbreak - File #2 and the lesser-known Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure. The short version is that early in development, the focus shifted from survival horror to “the ultimate horror entertainment”, which included increasing its scope beyond the traditional bounds of a Resident Evil (RE) title and leaning even harder into the “action” genre than RE5 in an attempt at appealing to new players. This increased scope led to the inclusion of four distinct campaigns (much more on that later), each one tailored to appeal to a different corner of the RE fanbase, which also meant throwing over 600 people at the project to complete effectively four games’ worth of work in only three years. This effort proved fruitless, however, as RE6 sold fewer copies than its predecessors and received a frosty reception from critics during its initial 2012 release, as well as a lasting reputation as one of the worst games in the series.

Compared with RE4 and RE5, I had even less experience with RE6 before my series deep dive, as I had only played a small part of the demo without understanding the controls and watched a Clueless Gamer segment poking fun at it. Of course, I have much more experience with the series than I did twelve years ago, so I went into a full playthrough armed with far more knowledge and patience than before, this time through the more complete PS4 port from 2016 (though I played on a PS5). While I can see why it has its fans nowadays, I can’t say that I didn’t understand why it gained such a negative reputation, as I found it easily among the worst of the mainline games (apart from Code: Veronica X) thanks to its unfocused vision and how it plays more like a bombastic playable action movie than a proper RE game.

The story of RE6 concerns the global outbreak of the highly virulent C-Virus and takes place over a period of six months, from December 2012 to June 2013, the events of which are split across four distinct campaigns led by four different characters: Leon S. Kennedy, Chris Redfield, Jake Muller and Ada Wong. Although the four campaigns start in different places, they all converge at different points in time and all end in the Chinese city of Lanshiang. Although it’s clear from a full playthrough that each campaign makes an attempt at telling a complete story on their own, fully understanding any of them still requires playing all four campaigns anyway. As such, I won’t go into too much depth on the story here in favor of covering each campaign individually and how they each handle their own stories and variations on the core gameplay, though I will mention that completing a campaign lets you replay individual Chapters and Stages afterwards.

When you start playing through the story, RE6 gives you a tutorial through a very scripted, unskippable, non-canon Prelude that alters certain events from late in Leon’s campaign so that the player has a chance at trying the mechanics. By scripted, I mean to the point that while Leon carries a wounded Helena, the player cannot deviate from the set linear path, as no matter what direction they push the left analog stick, they will only move forward. While this tutorial sequence does a decent job at giving the player enough information upfront so that they can play the game, it doesn’t adequately explain everything and a player could go the entire game without understanding everything at their disposal. As such, I’ll explain the gameplay of RE6 in broad strokes as it applies to all campaigns and extra modes on a base level, including some information the game may not tell you.

The Prelude is a bit misleading.

 

Regardless of which campaign players start with first, all playable characters are available right off the bat, with no need to unlock them for a second playthrough. Among other settings (more on that later), players can select one of five difficulty options (Amateur, Normal, Veteran, Professional and No Hope) and two Screen Modes (Single and Split). Know, however, that when you Continue a save, you’ll still have to set all of your desired (non-character) options again, though the process doesn’t take long. Naturally, beating a campaign also makes it available for New Game+.

Like RE5 before it, RE6 refines the formula established by its predecessor and brings the series more into the modern age (at least by 2012 standards). The biggest change regards the movement: Despite RE4 and RE5 featuring more action, neither of those games let you move and shoot at the same time and instead just used an over-the-shoulder style of the series’ iconic and archaic tank controls. RE6, however, not only does away with tank controls altogether, it also adds an unprecedented freedom of movement that lets players slide, dodge and roll throughout the environment and during combat. The game doesn’t explain this movement system very well and it skews more towards an action game, plus dashing has a rather wide turn radius, but at least the game felt more natural than the other pre-Resident Evil 7 (RE7) entries. Players more accustomed to RE4, however, can alter the controls so it more resembles that game (though they won’t magically have tank controls again).

While RE6 functions a certain way due to its online functionality, it does also introduce other quality-of-life improvements. Pressing X will now re-center the camera and holding that same button down while dashing automatically performs context-sensitive actions like vaulting. Though players coming off of RE5 still won’t see any of the series’ iconic Item Boxes, weapons no longer take up any of the player’s nine inventory slots and players can swap between any that they’ve collected throughout the campaign at any time. Key items also don’t take up a slot and are not only always visible, but are automatically used at the appropriate spot. Though the inventory still operates in real time, players can combine and discard any items at will. For the first time in the series, players can even toggle the camera position in real time and the HUD will swap sides of the screen accordingly.

Characters can melee kick at any time, which helps with breaking boxes for items, but they can also perform melee attacks at any time during combat, with different animations and properties depending on the weapon equipped. However, each melee attack while fighting decreases the Combat Gauge and depleting it prevents you from performing any melee attacks until it fills back up on its own. Depending on which weapon you have equipped, you can also dual-wield by pressing Triangle while aiming, though I ended up not using this feature for very long out of preference. Players can also toggle a laser sight and an auto reload function (reloading doesn’t even require aiming!) and even perform contextual environmental kills.

In spite of the improvements RE6 makes to the formula, however, the cracks in its system grow more glaring and obvious the longer you play. During combat, for instance, players can swap between every weapon and secondary weapon they picked up or have in their inventory with the d-pad, but the Knife counts as a separate weapon that you must select first and you have to re-select the secondary between every single use. In addition, did you know RE6 has a cover system? I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, since the game doesn’t even bother explaining it and it almost never comes up. In the few moments where I did use it, I found it clunky and unreliable even compared with RE5, which feels odd considering that RE6 came out at the absolute peak of Gears of Wars’ popularity (you know, the game series that revolutionized and popularized cover shooter mechanics).

The health system, which also received an overhaul from RE5, has issues as well. Sure, with your health divided into squares, you can easily read it and understand how you can not only lose part of a square, but also regenerate a certain amount of health if you don’t take any more damage. However, you can’t just consume an Herb if you’re low enough on health and continue on. Instead, you must first turn an Herb or group of Herbs into a Health Tablet with the “Store in Case” option, after which you pop a tablet with R1 and recover a single full square of health. If you’re used to the Herb system from previous games, you may also find it odd how combining Red and Green Herbs (no other colors this time) in different ways doesn’t increase the effectiveness of your health recovery, but instead just create groups of Herbs that you convert into Tablets. The most frustrating part about this whole system isn’t that you can only put 10 Tablets in the Case at a time (potentially up to 15 if you convert a group of Herbs when you’re down to nine Tablets), but that every single time you lose a full square or more of health, you get knocked down and watch the player character right themselves. It doesn’t get any less frustrating as the game goes on, as it breaks the flow of combat and happens far too often if you struggle with certain groups of enemies.

I'll let the tutorial demonstrate the Health system.

RE6 also introduces a Skill system where players can modify a character with up to three Skills that they buy with Skill Points. As you use a Skill during normal gameplay, it will gain another Level (up to Level 3) and increase its potency. On paper, this system introduces some layer of depth and lets players either choose Skills appropriate to each situation or cater to their preferred playstyle. The problem, however is that the game doesn’t bother informing players about this system in any capacity until after they beat a Chapter and select OK instead of quitting, so one could potentially go the entire game without knowing of its existence. Otherwise, they just have to randomly stumble on it in the Skill Setting submenu option under Campaign in the main menu. During my own playthrough, I didn’t touch this system at all and instead saved my Skill Points for some of the Infinite Ammo Skills unlocked after beating the entire game.

While the player can mess with game settings at any time, veterans will get thrown off by how pressing Start doesn’t bring up this menu and instead does nothing but pause the game. If you want the traditional options menu, you have to press the right side of the TouchPad (pressing the left side does nothing), but the game doesn’t pause and these menus work in real time due to the game’s online functionality, so you must do so in safety. RE6 also has a much more linear level design than the rest of the series, yet it features a real-time guidance system that points you in the right direction. Though this did have a couple legitimate use cases during my playthrough, I found that I could otherwise ignore it when most of the game only gives you one path forward and marks most objectives in your vision anyway.

The tutorial sets the stage for this near-useless feature.

Similar to RE5, players can find and shoot Serpent Emblems that unlock certain extras viewable in the Collections menu. While this includes optional Figures, I didn’t like how the game also tied Files to this system, not only because previous games would let you find them throughout the environment for additional flavor or lore, but also due to how the lengthy files in this game can help explain certain things the main story fails at explaining. I would have preferred if the player could just find that information in the environment, as it let you get some extra context right away instead of jumping through hoops, though I suppose tying the game to online mechanics wouldn’t have allowed that (even though RE5 still let you read crucial Files the traditional way).

Now, if you thought RE5 had an excessive amount of QTEs compared to RE4, the game that helped popularize QTEs in video games, then you’re in luck because RE6 has even more of them and in more varieties. Sometimes the QTEs make you mash a button and fill up a bar within a time limit. Sometimes the QTEs make you press a certain button when a needle aligns with certain spots, often under a time limit. Sometimes the QTEs just make you press the same button over and over for an uncomfortable amount of time. Just about any possible moment the game highlights as “cinematic” has an associated QTE or QTEs that often feel more frustrating than tense, including one scene where the player must search a car interior for the key, start the car and drive away while a horde of zombies closes in.

And sometimes you get this.

While RE6 does indeed have a fair amount of gameplay across all four campaigns, the combination of linear level designs and the excessive overreliance on QTEs are what give the game the overall flavor of “playable action movie”. The game isn’t a literal “interactive movie”, that’s what games like Night Trap and Heavy Rain are for, but I couldn’t shake that “action movie” notion during my entire playthrough and even expressed it out loud at least once. Even without going into each of the campaigns on their own, this quality is why RE6 feels so far removed from RE’s survival horror style, even compared to RE5, which had pushed the envelope further than RE4 in terms of action and yet still felt like RE in the end.

As for the online functionality, which RE6 revolved its gameplay systems around, you can choose how much of it you allow in your game before you start playing. Until I finished going through the entire game once, I played with the Offline setting, but the PSN (online) setting gives the player a neat array of options. You can play a private game with invited friends, but if you want random strangers, you can choose whether or not they come from the same region as you. I also appreciate that the other parameters tell prospective online players exactly what you want out of the game through the Objectives (Playing For Fun, Serious Players Only, Playing For Medals, Here For The Story, Looking For Emblems), whether or not you allow Friendly Fire, if you’re good with Infinite Ammo (this won’t work without Infinite Ammo weapons in your inventory) or if you’ll let others invade your game through Agent Hunt (more on that later).

Even with the great options, however, there’s one mechanic that sounds great on paper, but takes real effort in practice. As I mentioned before, there are certain points at each campaign where the storylines converge. These are, in fact, Story Intersections, opportunities where players can play together within each other’s campaigns, allowing interactions with up to four people at once. The issue, however, comes from accessibility and availability. Not only must you have Partner Join set to Allow before you dive in, but a 60-second countdown timer will start at the top of each Stage and match you with someone playing on the same platform and with the same online settings as you. Although I joined someone else’s game and got another player in my campaign when hosting, I couldn’t get an intersection, so I can’t comment on that interaction apart from wishing good luck on seeing it yourself. I will mention, however, that Devil May Cry 5 would later adopt a similar Cameo system, but pulled it off far better in that it doesn’t require any sort of waiting time and if you can’t get another player, pre-recorded developer actions will play instead. If a hypothetical RE6 remake insisted on retaining online features, I think something similar to the Cameo system would work much smoother.

At least DMC5 doesn't make you stare at this.

Outside of playing through each campaign, you can also view each character’s collectibles under Special Features. This menu also lets you view all of the game’s cutscenes that you’ve already seen, placing them in chronological order while sorting by character.

Despite the uneven mechanics, the graphics hold up very well. Like RE4, the game has some good cinematic camera angles and there’s a great attention to detail in individualized UI and animations for each character and weapon, as well as the unsettling view of Derek Simmons’ infected form resembling a Transformer made of flesh. Dashing also changes the camera angle not unlike Gears of War, although you can change the angle to one more comfortable for you. Apart from the infamous “giraffe” logo, the main difference from prior games is that the animations are exaggerated to action movie levels, including character movements and explosions on par with a Michael Bay film, which feels like a big departure from prior games.

Don't believe me?

 

As with RE5, RE6 also has good voice acting, especially from the returning characters. Although there is some memorable music, I don’t remember too much of any of the pieces outside of the menus, unlike other games in the series.

Since I didn’t cover the story where I have in other RE reviews, I will now go into it here. However, since the game splits its story across four games worth of content, I will make an attempt at covering each campaign as a separate game, down to how it handles its portion of the story and its spins on different gameplay mechanics where applicable. I won’t go super in-depth, this review will end up long enough as it is, but I thought this approach would help reflect the actual experience of playing RE6. I also played in the order that the game lists the campaigns: Leon -> Chris -> Jake -> Ada. Once again, there are spoilers ahead.

 

Leon’s story begins on June 29, 2013 in the American town of Tall Oaks. United States President Adam Benford plans to publicly reveal the government’s involvement in the Raccoon City Incident, as explored in the original Resident Evil, but is infected by the C-Virus through an infectious gas and mutates into a zombie. Leon S. Kennedy, now an agent of the Division of Security Operations, is forced to take the President’s life to save United States Secret Service agent Helena Harper, who feels responsible for the infection and promises she’ll explain once they reach Tall Oaks Cathedral. Field Operations Support agent Ingrid Hunnigan, who assisted Leon during the events of RE4, provides remote support and informs them that the organization Neo Umbrella has claimed responsibility for the outbreak. Leon and Helena also eventually stumble on a video tape that shows off the power of the C-Virus through the “birth” of a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ada Wong.

This campaign started off interesting, with the shock of killing the President and an air of mystery surrounding the C-Virus and resurrection of Umbrella’s ideals in Neo Umbrella. Though Helena’s subplot with her sister Deborah feels silly at times, it does at least tap into the tragedy of a zombie outbreak, specifically the inability to save a loved one.

Leon and Helena begin their journey.

Once Leon and Helena leave Tall Oaks and enter Lanshiang, however, the story goes off the rails. At this point, Leon’s campaign features crossovers with the other three campaigns and in rather quick succession, but without the context of the other stories, some developments feel random. The biggest example comes from the crossover with Jake’s campaign where Leon and Helena help fight off the Ustanak, but without playing Jake’s campaign, you have no idea what this Nemesis-like monster is or why it’s chasing Jake and his partner Sherry. Later, we also learn a major revelation about Jake’s lineage, but at this point, we’ve barely spent any time with him and don’t have as much reason to care outside of the shock of hearing a name. The crossover with Chris’ campaign feels more natural and gives some purpose to Leon meeting Sherry, but the crossover with Ada’s campaign right after feels more confusing. With only the context of Leon’s campaign, we see Ada Wong flip flopping between motivations and somehow going through two different outfits, plus a total lack of an explanation on how she came back after Chris had witnessed her death. You could conclude that there are somehow two Adas running around, but you still wouldn’t know exactly how that video tape factored into it unless you played Ada’s campaign.

Due to the quality of these crossovers, the Lanshiang portion highlights the biggest issue with the game’s storytelling. Although each campaign is tailored to a certain type of RE fan, the attempt at giving a complete story each time falls flat because, while each character’s story does indeed have a beginning, middle and end, the lack of crucial information at certain points forces you to play every campaign for the complete picture. As such, Leon’s campaign alone undermines the game’s purpose of appealing to every player.

By contrast, the gameplay feels more consistent as the most “vanilla” of the four campaigns. Whether you play as Leon or Helena, you’ll mostly fight the classic zombies, this time created from inhaling the C-Virus, with a gameplay style closer to RE4 and RE5. There’s certainly no shortage of QTE fests or action sequences, and dying to the same train in one sequence multiple times feels annoying, but you can at least tell they tried evoking the tone of classic RE in its atmosphere and encounters, even if it falls short. An early portion of the game even features a reference to Resident Evil 2 where you can run into a cop on their first day on the job, mirroring Leon’s situation in that game. I also noticed more of an emphasis on puzzles compared to RE5, though they are simplified so the game doesn’t slow down even for a moment.

On a minor note, I got a laugh out of the game early on when I noticed some exaggerated curtain physics. While unintentional on the developer’s part, it did add at least some entertainment value.

What is up with that curtain?

 

After a mission in Edonia on December 24, 2012 that led to the deaths of several soldiers under his command, Chris Redfield left the BSAA and turned into a drunken wreck repressing his memories. Six months later, his partner Piers Nivens finds him in a bar after an exhaustive search and convinces Chris that he should return to the field and complete their mission against bioterrorism. Chris and Piers head to China on a hostage rescue mission, but Chris’ PTSD affects his actions and judgment.

Of all four campaigns, Chris’ has some of the strongest writing, at least by this game’s standards. Although Piers hadn’t existed prior to RE6, you can tell that he and Chris had developed a strong bond, reinforced during the Edonia flashback, enough that he was willing to perform the ultimate sacrifice. While I can’t speak to the accuracy of the depiction of Chris’ PTSD, it adds a tragic layer to his character and feels realistic considering all of the suffering and bloodshed he endured over the years, not to mention the trauma of losing his teammates. Although this campaign gives in to the rest of the game’s sillier tone at some point, it does come the closest to what one may consider “good” writing.

Chris encounters a world of horror born from the C-Virus.

Then we get to the crossovers, which don’t feel as awkward here. Playing this campaign second does help fill in some glaring holes left from Leon’s campaign, but at the same time raises questions of its own, mostly regarding Ada. The crossover with Jake’s campaign does have some weight with the context of RE5, though I couldn’t help wondering if it would feel more powerful with the context of Jake’s side of the story.

Compared to the story, however, the gameplay feels subpar. Whether you play as Chris or Piers, they primarily fight J’avo, B.O.W. soldiers created from an injection of the C-Virus. While J’avo do help the game stand out, they quickly grow annoying due to their multiple transformations and how they often feel like bullet sponges, even on the lowest difficulty. Add to that the heavier action focus compared with the rest of the game, which invites easy comparisons to Call of Duty or Gears of War (your preference) in how it blows past the action/survival horror line that RE5 blurred or even stepped over. The only upside is that there are some areas where the otherwise pointless guidance system has more of a use case. On a smaller note, Chris’ inventory time travels, which works for the gameplay but doesn’t quite make sense narratively.

The only other praise I could give this campaign is that Chris’ UI looks easier to read than Leon’s and his in-game menu actually highlights a number of options more clearly.

Seriously, though, what is with the physics?

 

Jake’s story begins on December 24, 2012 in Edonia. Division of Security operations agent Sherry Birkin is sent to retrieve Jake Muller, a mercenary whose blood contains antibodies needed for a vaccine against the C-Virus. In return, Jake demands $50 million, an amount that Sherry reluctantly agrees to. Their extraction from Edonia, however, is sabotaged by the arrival of a persistent, near-invincible B.O.W. known as the Ustanak.

At their core, Jake and Sherry have an interesting dynamic. Both are the product of fathers who acted as antagonists in prior games, which influences their lives in different ways. Although Sherry followed a much different path from her father, Umbrella scientist William Birkin, she still has the G-Virus in her system, which gives her a quick healing factor as a permanent reminder of her childhood. Jake, however, never knew his father Albert Wesker, but had inherited some of his superhuman ability and adopted a mercenary lifestyle that matched his outlook on life. He also has an interesting character arc where despite going through hell dealing with Neo Umbrella and meeting Chris Redfield, his father’s killer, he grows a heart and realizes he can follow a different path from Wesker and use his powers for good.

That said, the plot and its execution feel rough. It does add context to, and help fill in some gaps left by, Leon and Chris’ campaigns, but certain things still go unexplained, with one glaring example in the lack of an explanation for the Ustanak’s presence. Whether you play this campaign in a vacuum or in the context of Leon and Chris’ campaigns, you don’t get any explanation for Ada’s erratic behavior throughout the game. The crossover with Leon’s campaign also doesn’t feel that satisfying outside of fanservice for reuniting Leon and Sherry, as its only purpose is explaining part of Leon’s story. By the time the story finished, I felt a combination of satisfaction and confusion, plus exhaustion from going through three very different gameplay styles.

Was that really necessary, Jake?

 

Regardless of whether you play as Jake or Sherry, this campaign feels the most different in its gameplay, for better or worse. This certainly feels the most “cinematic”, with too many instances where the camera forces your gaze in specific directions, even in the middle of combat, and annoying snowmobile and motorcycle sequences that killed me more than any particular fight. The motorcycle sequence in Chapter 4, in particular, features a set number of death scenes regardless of what vehicle you actually hit, which you will see over and over if you don’t have a good grasp of sight reading. Some sections encourage stealth, you can even hide in designated spots, but I didn’t find it all that reliable and inevitably found myself shooting my way through, including an annoying section in Edonia where snow would periodically obscure the screen. Well, not always shooting, as Jake uses hand-to-hand moves in place of a Knife, which bust the game wide open once you get the hang of it. Puzzle fans will also find Jake’s campaign lacking, as the closest you get to a proper one is finding all 16 ID Medals in Chapter 3 for a special prize.

I hope you're good at sight reading.

By far the worst part, however, is the Ustanak himself. This Neo Umbrella B.O.W. exists as a way of appealing to players who preferred the gameplay of Resident Evil 3 (RE3), but can’t achieve the same effect thanks to his more scripted nature. Encounters with the Ustanak have more variety outside of traditional boss fights, but the sections that require sneaking past him get annoying even after you understand the intended method. Although the 2020 RE3 remake also featured scripted Nemesis encounters, those at least felt more engaging and had some semblance of tension. I will admit, however, that the final boss fight has neat parallels with the final boss fight in RE5. Other noticeable RE callbacks that some fans might appreciate are a recontextualized recreation of RE4’s cabin fight and Jake playing Chopin's "Revolutionary Etude" at a piano.

Playing through the campaigns in order, I noticed how the UIs improve with each character. Although Jake’s resembles Leon’s, at least at first, the digital appearance makes it easier to read. From Chapter 3 onwards, however, his UI changes again for narrative purposes and never goes back.

 

Before I get into Ada’s campaign, I will note that during its original release, players could only access Ada’s campaign after beating the other three. Following a patch and in subsequent releases like the PS4 version, however, players could access her campaign immediately. Beating Ada’s campaign also unlocks her for use in Extra Content.

At the start of the campaign, Ada receives a message from Derek Simmons and investigates a submarine, where she finds orders to confirm that Jake Muller’s body contains antibodies for the C-Virus. However, she doesn’t remember receiving these orders, as they are dated from six months prior. Ada wonders if Simmons lied about the orders or if someone executed them in her place. When she escapes the submarine, she learns from Simmons that Neo Umbrella will launch attacks in America and China, which prompts her to go to America.

On paper, Ada’s campaign serves the same purpose as Separate Ways from RE4 in that viewing the game from her perspective helps fill in crucial gaps and explain previously unexplained plot elements. For example, we learn that some of Ada Wong’s actions throughout the game were committed not by her, but a doppelganger created from a scientist named Carla Radames using the C-Virus, which Carla created. This revelation and others like it do help bridge the other three campaigns together, which I went along with for the most part. By the end, however, the story fell apart towards the end with the reveal that Simmons enacted his entire plan, including the creation of the C-Virus and causing a global pandemic, just because he fell in love with Ada Wong and desperately wanted to be with her. At this point, I lost a lot of my remaining respect for the story, as such a weak motivation made Simmons one of the least compelling villains in the series.

I also felt great disappointment during the lab section at the very end that explained everything about Carla. While I liked getting closure, the entire sequence also felt anticlimactic in that after multiple game appearances, with RE6 serving as Ada’s final one for now, we still never learn what her deal really was. We don’t know what her personal goals are, what she really stands for or how she actually feels about her partnerships with Leon. At this point, I can only hope that a potential RE6 remake or a future RE title will address this.

Unlike the other three campaigns, you effectively can only play as Ada Wong. There is a second player character, the rather generic Agent, but he only shows up in co-op play and otherwise has no impact on the narrative in any capacity.

Beyond that, playing as Ada proved equal parts interesting and frustrating. Instead of the Knife, she uses her signature Crossbow, which makes sense, but requires tracking one or two unique ammo types on top of whatever guns she finds. At certain points, mostly early on, Ada has more overt stealth gameplay marred by the presence of Gnezdos, which swarm the player and can take off a huge chunk of health before you can get them off of you, in rather tight spaces. One section in particular had me fending off multiple swarms and I feel like I only survived because I played on the lowest difficulty. Certain areas also featured mounted guns triggered by stepping on parts of floor, which the game subtly encourages using against enemies, as well as an oxygen meter while swimming underwater. As far as I can remember, she’s also the only character who gets past locks by shooting them, which didn’t matter as much due to my plentiful ammo supply.

The only time you'll ever see an oxygen meter in the whole game.

Despite running into difficulty in the earlier Chapters, however, the latter half of her campaign felt easier than everyone else’s campaigns. During crossover segments, she doesn’t need to shoot a boss as many times, which makes even the multi-stage fight against Simmons a relative breeze. I also found Chapter 3 very easy once I realized I could run past most enemy encounters with little to no penalty. Although you can run past encounters in the other campaigns, this specific Chapter offered more opportunities, which helped a bit in conserving resources. As for the final boss in Chapter 4, I struggled at first and restarted multiple times from wasting ammo until I realized the much simpler intended solution, at which point I ended the fight in seconds.

Then there are interactions like this.

Since I brought this up for the other three campaigns, Ada’s UI resembles Jake’s, from his Chapter 3 onwards, and I noticed a few audio hiccups during Chapter 5, even when restarting a Stage.

Even after you play through all four campaigns, as uneven and unsatisfying as they are in their own ways, RE6 still has yet more gameplay under Extra Content. Here, you can jump into one of seven game modes directly (Agent Hunt, The Mercenaries, The Mercenaries No Mercy, Survivor, Onslaught, Predator, Siege) or go into the current recommended game mode with Cycle Mode, which, as the name suggests, cycles through the seven modes periodically. As I’ve done with previous games, I’ll cover each mode individually here in the order listed, but I’ll first note that most of them let you set Skills from a special pool and set parameters for creating or joining a game. I also don’t know whether or not the game had a thriving online scene in the past, but my time with the multiplayer, in which I saw a scant few other people and could almost never get a match going, gave me the impression that that scene died.

 

As I mentioned before, Agent Hunt lets you invade another player’s game as a creature based on whatever parameters you’ve set. In the one game I tried this with, in which I invaded someone’s Jake campaign, I saw that you can choose where you spawn as a generic enemy, in my case a J’avo. Though I found the constant display of the controls helpful, you have no options apart from moving and attacking and you can’t control whether or not you’ll mutate from the C-Virus. Since I kept dying no matter what I did, I didn’t find this mode too exciting, so I appreciated that you can leave at any time. On the upside, I liked that the enemies have their own appropriate UI design and that you can toggle player names (in case you don’t want to immortalize them in screencaps or video).

 

As one may expect, the fan-favorite The Mercenaries reappears with all of the familiar gameplay and the same play options from RE5: Solo, Duo (online co-op) or Split (couch co-op). This version of the mode has ten Stages available with four playable characters at the start (Leon, Chris, Jake, Agent), though you can unlock Ada, Helena, Piers, Sherry and Carla by fulfilling certain requirements. Notably, Stages have a limit of 150 enemies.

A sample of the playable characters.

Although RE6 controls better than RE5 on a technical level, I couldn’t get into this version of The Mercenaries as much. Maybe the breadth of content had an effect on my patience by this point, but I didn’t have as much fun with these Stages as in other RE games. At the least the roster feels more manageable this time.

 

Since I didn’t really get into it with RE5, I did try The Mercenaries No Mercy, which plays exactly the same, but Stages have a maximum of 300 enemies, which are weaker to compensate. That said, you’ll easily get swarmed by enemies, as they come at you faster than before. This makes No Mercy a much more chaotic variant that players may find more satisfying than the base Mercenaries. Although I didn’t play much of this variant, I could see how someone could get hooked and I would recommend it.

Next is Survivors, a deathmatch mode that you can play with up to six players solo (Death Match) or in teams (Team Match). The twist, however, is that players killed in a Team Match can come back as J’avo for an extra chance. At first, I couldn’t find a single match to join, so I tried creating a match and, as if by magic, I found another player within five minutes. Though I only played a couple rounds just for an impression, I did unlock Piers and Helena for Extra Content after two wins, which leads me to believe that this mode provides an easier method for unlocking characters. Afterwards, I joined a Team Match, which happened faster than setting up a solo match, and found the experience as cancerous as Team Slayers in RE5 thanks to a lobby of players taking the game way too seriously and steamrolling the competition. This also confirmed that coming back as J’avo doesn’t provide much of an advantage, if at all, with their limited health and abilities.

 

Onslaught is a unique mode where two players try to survive waves of enemies sent by the other. The number of enemies sent depends on the length of your kill combo and there is a possibility of sending or receiving B.O.W.s. Looking through the options, I noticed you can create a private match if you really wanted. Through my limited playtime, I found this one of the more interesting modes and wondered if playing with a friend might make the experience more enjoyable.

 

Predator is an asymmetrical mode where one player hunts down up to five other players as the Ustanak in one of nine Stages. The Ustanak player loses if the human players kill them and players take turns as the Ustanak across multiple rounds. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a match after five minutes, so I have no comment other than saying that the premise can call to mind games like Left 4 Dead or Evolve.

The final mode is Siege, where players compete in teams as either Agents or Enemies in one of ten Stages. The Agents protect an AI-controlled Rookie while the Agents try to kill them. Both teams take turns as either side between rounds and have access to power-ups. Once again, I have no comment, as although I found another player within five minutes, I couldn’t attract enough players for a full lobby. A shame, too, as I thought the premise sounded potentially fun.

 

While competent on a technical level, RE6 falls short with its bloated content, half-baked campaigns, mixed bag of gameplay and bad writing, even by RE standards. Sure, the game has fans nowadays who can overlook its shortcomings or enjoy it for what it is, but I can’t ignore that playing it feels like a chore and how it leans so hard into action that it feels far removed from the essence of RE and doesn’t understand what made the franchise appealing. Maybe a remake, however extensive, could fix the game’s glaring issues, but as it stands now, it does nothing but justify the existence of RE7, one of my personal favorites. I can’t recommend playing RE6 based on its own merits, but those playing through the series who have made it to this entry may have ignored the negative reputation anyway, in which case I hope they know what they’ve gotten themselves into.