The Mog Blog

Fear? That’s long gone in Resident Evil. Heck, it’s not even right to classify Resident Evil 6 as a survival horror at this point. This, of course, does not make it a bad game.

In the demo offered at the E3 show floor, you had a choice of missions between Leon, Chris, and Jake. Honestly, Leon’s mission looks pretty slow as you’re navigating your way around some university. Heck, I’ll let Fusionx of Gamer Escape handle the Leon mission.

Because it’s Chris, and Chris punches the crap out of everything, I naturally gravitated towards his portion of the demo. Chris is accompanied by Piers Nivans. Honestly, I was not paying attention to the plot or to Piers or anything really. Given that I didn’t want to die (and thus give up my turn at the game), I just went at it.

At first, the game feels very much like any other third-person shooter out there, with Gears of War coming to mind. You’re able to dodge and sprint which makes your mobility excessively better compared to the previous titles. I honestly had a hard time dying and rarely found myself in a situation where I would get locked down due to terrible tank-like controls.

Ammo seems to be rare, but that does not matter at all. You can now freely melee without having your enemy in any sort of stunned state. Realizing I was out of bullets, I just jumped right in and started smacking things around. It’s a slowish melee attack, but that did not really hinder me at all. Several fierce strikes either ended with the enemy on the floor, or within the hands of Chris and his murderous grip. Knife is also its own separate item again, but the melee essentially replaces the knife.

Item management is much more streamlined. Taking a page from Resident Evil: Revelations, health restores are now in the form of health pills that you gulp down with a simple button tap. Collecting items no longer put you in an animation to grab them. Pretty much, there is ultimately nothing to fear when you’re running around and punching stuff. This could be a very bad thing, but since this is an E3 demo (and I assume it will be the same demo that will be coming home with Dragon’s Dogma), I’ll let it slide until the game comes out.

I love it, though. Resident Evil 5 started to go more in an action direction, and I support this decision as the original formula just would not work any more. My only real worry is just how easy the game can be. Resident Evil 5 had its difficulty moments, but that was because everything you did had a level of sluggishness that prevented you from doing precise moves. Resident Evil 6 seemed to have dealt away with all that, making it feel more like a western developed shooter. It’s already better than Operation Raccoon City, so that’s a good thing.

Resident Evil 6 will be making its way on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on October 2nd, 2012.