I'm playing all the Resident Evils for the first time in release order

• This room with the lasers that you have to slowly make your way through with the Genesis sucked. It's not particularly hard to navigate, just annoying. Later, when the level gets flooded, I died a bunch of times because I thought you had to swim through the lasers...eventually the game was kind enough to give me a YOU ARE DEAD screen which also told me I could just swim above them.

• I already knew about Jessica's betrayal so that wasn't much of a surprise, but I got sad when she shot Parker and the game played things off like Parker was gonna die. Way to kill off the cool dad character! I had a feeling that it was a cop-out though and luckily I was right...

• The big ass kaiju BOW that you have to fight after Parker "dies" was ripped right from the playbook of Resident Evil 5...in that it was kind of a crappy boss, lol. And it devolves into one of those Time Crisis gatling gun shoot 'em up sections that RE5 loved so much. At least the helicopter pilot dropping you ammo and rocket launchers throughout the fight is kind of a throwback to Resident Evil 1.

• They took the whole "Revelations" subtitle quite literally as the last two chapters start tossing a lot of random developments your way, including the whole mentor/trainee relationship with Parker and Raymond (a character I felt was extremely underdeveloped) and the whole plot with O'Brian setting everything up to expose the FBC... It's kinda convoluted and once again reminded me of Metal Gear/Ace Combat/your typical "international intrigue" anime scenario where something possibly gets lots in translation. It's not unentertaining, mind you, just sorta muddled by the end.
• I totally forgot about Norma, the Veltro leader, until they brought him back at the eleventh hour along with the deus ex machina of the third ship. He DOES have one of the coolest transformations in the whole series thus far, IMO. I do like his vaguely "aquatic Tyrant" final form.

• Fighting him was a pain in the ass though and based on what I've seen on the internet I'm not the only one who thought so. The limited timeframe you have to shoot his heart weak point is pretty unforgiving especially when he starts tossing illusions all over the arena. Took me three tries to kill him.

• And then we have the finale! I like how Parker survived and how O'Brian retires to go off and write a "detective novel" (possible Resident Evil fanfiction). And how the game hints at RE5's Lost in Nightmares DLC. Jill Valentine survives a haunted ship to live and fight another day...and be turned into a blonde by Wesker!

There's nothing really wrong with the game, but that means that it's also oddly forgettable in some ways, and definitely feels like the side story Nintendo 3DS gaiden that it was originally developed as when compared with its recent predecessors. It lacks the super engaging pacing that Resident Evil 4 had, for instance - while RE4 was the sort of game that made me want to stay up late playing just one more hour, I was okay to take a break and go to bed after each bite-sized bit of Revelations. And while Revelations provides a decidedly more focused single-player experience than Resident Evil 5, the strange racial miscalculations of that title and the Hollywood-influenced (but genuine, I believe) portrayal of Africa just make RE5 more interesting, in my opinion. This isn't to say that Revelations is dull - it's just that it's sandwiched in between other series entries that I simply find myself having more to say about. Sometimes when you're the third child who does his thing well enough, yet is overshadowed by the perfect big brother (RE4) and an annoying at times, compelling at others second sibling (RE5), this sort of phenomenon can happen.

But lest we end on a meh note, I will give credit where credit is due - the many new faces that Revelations brings to the increasingly complex world of Resident Evil are mostly welcome ones, and the game does a solid job of bringing back the terror that used to infuse the series in an era when the scares were slowly being forgotten. Though, part of me wonders if I would have enjoyed Revelations even more if it had brought back fixed camera angles, too…

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• I've played through the first chapter of Leon's campaign (about three hours) and honestly...I think I like it so far?!!! Now, I've heard on the internet (and I think some people here have written the same thing) that Leon's campaign is really good and possibly not representative of the entire game, but what I've seen so far has been enjoyable and much better than what I expected given this game's reputation. What were the main complaints about RE6 again? FYI, I'm playing the Steam release and I think theres been some stuff patched into the game since it initially came out, so maybe that's why my initial impressions are positive.
• Things that amused me in the prologue: the fact that Leon's pushin' 40 (or at least in his mid 30s) and still rocking the same haircut, the fact that he's voiced by Matthew Mercer (who does a good job but I started getting into Critical Role a while ago and all I can hear as I play is Matthew Mercer the Dungeon Master) and the fact that half of this made-up Chinese city gets blown to bits within the first ten minutes. We come a long way from hunting down zombies in a creepy old mansion, huh! Btw, from the POV of someone who lived there for six years, the city of "Lanshiang" is totally just Hong Kong.

• I had a moment or two where I was indecisively trying to determine whose campaign to start first. There's a lotta advice online (and Dusk Golem gave me a run-down at the start of this thread months ago) on how to experience things in chronological order, but it's a bit complicated for a first playthrough, so I just decided to go with the recommended order first, as much as I do wanna see Sherry Birkin again right away. I'm interested to hear what people's preferred campaigns/orders are though.

• Leon shot the president! Hunnigan is back! Don't know much about Helena yet but she seems okay! It's a solid start and I gotta say that a preppy college campus turned into a dumping zone for the latest version of one of Resident Evil's viruses is a novel concept. I'm surprised that college campuses aren't used in horror media more often.
• Apologies in advance if a lot of my screenshots are super dark - the monitor I'm playing on seems to have higher than usual brightness, and I didn't notice this until I viewed my pics on other screens. This game plays with lighting more than the other REs - certainly more than RE5, which was all sunshine in comparison.

• Upcoming are a few pics of zombie teenagers and shootouts in lecture halls. Did I mention that Resident Evil in a college campus setting is a great idea? It lets the series have its fascination with "Gothic old world environments in a modern setting" cake and eat it too...
• By the way, that guy you run into in the very beginning who has a daughter that turns into a zombie in the elevator - is it possible to shoot her as soon as she pops on screen?

• The descent into the sewers and subway system underneath Tall Oaks is one example of the game using low lightning really well. (Interesting that Leon and Helena have little flashlights attached to their earpieces; it's a sensible decision seeing as how the flashlights that illuminated the characters in RE4/5/Revelations all seemed to appear from nowhere.)
• I've heard that Leon's campaign has more of an emphasis on survival horror while the rest of RE6 favors the action side of the series. This sewer trek seems to exemplify that well.

• Going through the subway cars reminded me of traversing ruined Raccoon City in RE2 and RE3. Exiting to the surface and seeing ruined cars, zombie bodies and fire and brimstone everywhere REALLY reminded me of those two games, which I assume was intentional. I liked this segment very much - it made me feel like if I'd played RE2 and RE3 back in the late 90s when they were both still new, this was probably how my young mind of the time would have interpreted, elevated and remembered those scenes in Raccoon.

• Got a kick out of the section where Leon and Helena team up with scrappy survivors and have a shootout in a gun shop. I never played Outbreak, but was it anything like this? Was Capcom kinda influenced by The Walking Dead? Either way it was fun even though these AI "companions" were mostly for show and all end up inevitably dying. The random Japanese dude made me chuckle.

• I wrapped up with some revelations about a NEO UMBRELLA (ominous!) and Leon and Helena getting tossed around like ragdolls. Curious to see how they end up in China after all this.

• So, one of the things I noticed is that this game doesn't really bother to explain its interface that much to you. I feel like there's quite of lot of hidden menu shenanigans that I had trouble adjusting to at first, like the need to synthesize green herbs into...err, Tic-Tacs, I guess? I've gotten the hang of things now but are there any specific control scheme tips and tricks I should be aware of, like the position of the aiming reticle or the ability to have Leon's smartphone menu swap sides of the screen?
• I also feel like melee is much more encouraged here, what with the different finishing moves and all the kicks. I'm doing it to conserve ammo and enjoy how Leon is still able to take enemies to suplex city.
• By the way, is there any significant drawback for dual wielding Leon's starting firearms?

Jawmuncher said:

Pixel Grotto
So the best things to know for RE6
- I'd recommend playing the campaigns in order of Leon 1, Jake 1, Chris 1, Ada 1 and continue that way. This way when you get to the final chapters you're beating all of the campaigns back to back (Since they all tie to one another by the last chapter)
GENERAL TIPS
- The prologue only teaches the basics. So don't fully rely on it.
- The loading screen tips are worth reading.
- The more you utilize all of the games systems, the more fun you can have.
- Auto-mix herbs and insta-load pills: Hold R1 and press Square when empty (RB and press X on XB1)
- Paint targets for AI partner: L2 + Circle (LT + B on XB1)
- Laying on the ground or taking cover regenerate's stamina quicker, also taking pills will restore stamina as well.
- Dazing enemies (Like in RE4 & 5) allows for special melee attacks to be performed on them.
- Insta-Death QTE's can be turned off in the options (The game will automatically perform them if you fail)
- QTEs which say to wiggle the analog stick mean for you to wiggle both analogs, which will fill the bar faster.
- In the options you can change back to laser pointer aiming if you dislike the crosshair.
- There are numerous camera settings, such as FOV slider, Shoulder Preference, camera bob, etc. So mess with the settings and find a camera configuration comfortable for you.

COMBAT TIPS
- Sliding: Dash with Action button (X on PS3, A on XB1), then hit L2 to slide (LT on XB1). To spin 180 degrees mid-slide, pull back while sliding. To shoot while sliding, tap R2 (RT on XB1))
- Rolling while standing: Aim with L2 (LT on XB1), then tap Action button and left or right to roll in that direction. Release L2 (LT on XB1) mid-roll to stand, or continue to hold L2 (LT on XB1) to lie on the ground. On the ground, tap left and right to roll
- Dodging: Aim (L2 on PS4, LT on XB1) and hit the Action button (X on PS4, A on XB1) while standing
- Running attacks: Dash with Action button (X on PS4, A on XB1) and hit R2 (RT on XB1)
- Quick shot: L2 + R2 (LT + RT on XB1) when near an enemy; tap repeatedly to attack multiple nearby targets (Uses your stamina bar)
- Quick recover: Mash the Action button (X on PS4, A on XB1) when knocked down, or hold back and tap the Action button
- Counter Attack's can be performed by pressing R2 (RT on XB1) at the right time when the prompt is shown.
- In mercenaries mode you can slide into Time Bonuses to break them.
- Jake has hand to hand moves as a weapon, use them often when playing as him! Hold L2, then hold R2 (LT & RT on XB1) to lock on. Release R2 (RT on XB1) to dash, keep pressing R2 (RT on XB1) to do multiple moves on the enemies around you. You can perform a Backflip using Down + X (A on XB1) during this if needed.
- Always remember you can slide into cover!

SKILL TIPS
- Skills are an important part of RE6, they allow for numerous perks which can help or add more challenge to how you play.
- If you feel you're having trouble in the campaign or mercenaries, check the skill's page to see if there are some which can help (Such as more ammo drops or higher defense).
- Skill points are shared across all modes, so don't spend all your points in mercenaries when you're still playing the campaign or vice versa.
- The page detailing skills in full can be found HERE

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• I think I can safely say that I like this game. I feel like in some ways it's the culmination of everything the series has learned over the years in one crazy effort to be what Resident Evil has aspired to be ever since the first game - a Hollywood action movie. But I can certainly understand why people don't like it - there are so many Quicktime events that remove control from the player or expect them to do something in a very specific way, and I find myself dying to these way more than I do to any enemy. The game doesn't explain half of the stuff you can do, and if it wasn't for this thread and folks helping me I probably wouldn't have known that you can sprint, slide into enemies, etc. The plot progressively manages to play it straight while still being batshit bonkers at the same time, which I like but know won't be everyone's cuppa tea. And it's not all that scary, though I do think the beginning of Leon's campaign felt very much like an old school Resident Evil. But man, the ambition and full-on balls to the wall throttle that comes with how this game is paced is something to behold.
• Going back to where I left off, I like how the graveyard area that the game dumps you in after Tall Oaks is a true zone where you're never safe. There are always zombies crawling out of the ground and lunging at you, and the fact that you don't actually pause the game when you access the menu got be grabbed more than once.

• I liked the caves/underground laboratory underneath the cathedral a bit less, but that's probably because the various gimmicks and traps reminded me of the temple on RE5, which I found to be the least interesting area of that game since it felt like something out of Tomb Raider instead of RE.

• I don't get the whole subplot with "Project Ada Wong" yet, but guessing that's something which will be revealed in the later campaigns.
• The fight against Deborah Harper and that giant fish thing (woah, you can swim in this game, just like Revelations!) were great spectacles but I died a ton of times on both simply due to Quicktime events. In the case of Deborah, I feel like they tried to make a boss encounter out of RE4's minecart section and while it's definitely exciting to be fighting a big nekkid chick while zooming on a cart through the darkness, RE4's minecar was better because when I died there I felt like it was actually due to skill deficiency instead of me simply getting disoriented and failing to hit a button at the right moment. I think there's also one part in particular where you've got to shoot Deborah to keep her from hitting Helena off a cliff, but you can also choose to save Ada from a ledge, and if you do that you've got a limited few seconds to aim at Deborah, and if you screw up you've gotta watch the whole cut scene again, which is real annoying. I repeated this cycle like three times because I suck at aiming, I suppose.

• Leon and Helena on a plane. I love the concept of fighting zombies on a plane, 'cause c'mon, we've already had 'em on trains in RE Zero and ships in Revelations. A plane is the natural evolution! Not much room to run around on a plane though...BUT THERE IS ROOM FOR A QUICKTIME EVENT WHEN YOU HAVE TO CONTROL LEON IN THE COCKPIT. Never did I imagine that Resident Evil would one day turn into Flight Control Simulator back in March when I started this thread. Also, there's that scene where Leon opens the plane's hatch and you've got to press the buttons to keep him and Helena from getting sucked out into oblivion. HOW THE HECK ARE THEY HOLDING ON ANYWAY

• I was really happy to see Sherry again! One thing I do love about RE6's enjoyably ridiculous (yet somehow very very serious at the same time) story is how it feels like a big comic book event that's crossing over between multiple series and bringing all this fanservice to the fray. Once again, totally understand why some folks wouldn't like this, but as a comic book guy I dig it. It's really something to see Sherry all grown up and an agent herself - I just wish she had more interactions with Leon aside from a standard "I heard you'd become an agent" and "Last time in Raccoon City I was too young to fully understand what was going on." Anyway, I like Sherry and I'm probably going to play as her even though I know it's supposed to be Jake's campaign for story reasons, Wesker's son, blahblah. But Jake kind of looks like a douche.

• So Leon and Helena go to Lanshiang, and I just wanna say that as someone who lived in Hong Kong for six years, this is one of the best representations of Hong Kong-by-another-name that I have seen in a video game. I think Sleeping Dogs might be a bit better but that was an open world game while this is a survival horror (err, action horror, or perhaps just action) one, so a bit different. Capcom's designers did their homework. Everything straight up looks like HK, from the neon signage to the tea advertisements to the fact that they turned a wet market into a place to collect keys - a straight up genius move IMO. I actually posted some of these screenshots on my Steam feed and one of my HK friends was like, "Woah, quite accurate in terms of the signs and feel." GJ, Capcom, I'm really looking forward to seeing more of Lanshiang in the other campaigns.
• Also, I know from looking at the RE Wiki that the BOWs you encounter here are technically called "Rasklapanje," but I prefer to call 'em "char siu zombies" in my mind since the first one that Leon and Helena encounter straight up rises from a pile of pork belly.

• There are two very specific instances of fixed camera angles as Leon and Helena climb stairs in the next part of the game, shortly before they run into Chris. See the pics below - did anyone else notice this? I mean, I like it! But it seems weird that they're just tossed in there. I guess parts of this game have an FPS view, a behind the back view, and now even a fixed camera view! It's Resident Evil for everyone...I suppose?

• I had to take the below screenshot, because y'know, iconic meeting between Chris and Leon and all that. Fanservice up the ass and I liked it, but I had the same minor complaint that I did when Leon reunites with Sherry - the characters already know each other and only have the briefest of interactions! I certainly liked when Leon acknowledged Chris by saying that "he's been in this as long as I have" but I'd like to witness the moment that the pair of them actually met. It feels like Capcom coulda introduced all of these characters to each other in a prior game but decided to dance around that by just having them all know each other and only bump paths in rare instances, which is fun but smells a teeeeny bit of missed potential.

• Next we go into a train fight with Simmons, man of a million different transformations, and I feel like the whole game just keeps on amping up over and over again from here on out. It's certainly a rush and I didn't wanna put the gamepad down during this last bit (haven't felt that way about an RE game's pacing since RE4, so good work on that front RE6). We have a train fight where dog BOW Simmons is throwing metro cars at you, then once you think you've beaten him all of Lanshiang gets nuked with the C-Virus (the scene where Leon and friends are driving through the gas-filled city was impressive, I guess Capcom was going for a sort of post-9/11 vibe there) and then we play through the events of the prologue again, although some stuff is different like Helena not being injured. (On that note, did this game really need that fifteen minute prologue with Leon?)

• Wait, there's more. Simmons turns into a T-Rex (this made me lawl) and Leon and Hela have to jump outta an elevator as the events of what I'm presuming is Ada Wong's campaign happen right behind them? Shit is crazy!

• After a quick run-in with Ada again, finally we reach the grand finale...where Simmons reaches his final form...of an insect kaiju. It was somewhat hard for me to fully appreciate the nutty nature of this final boss because I don't think the actual encounter was designed so well. Maybe it was because I was badly low on ammo, but running around and waiting for an opportunity to shove that big glowing lance-shaped thingy into zombies so kaiju Simmons could pick 'em up and get electrocuted wasn't entirely fun.
• BUT IT WAS WORTH IT TO SEE SIMMONS GET IMPALED ON A SPIKE AND HAVE HIS BLOOD FORM THE UMBRELLA LOGO LOLOL AMAZING

• Leon's campaign wraps up with him reflecting over how he's had Yellow Fever for Ada Wong since 1998, and then we get funky zombie breakbeat/porno music in the credits. I seriously looooove Leon and Helena's credits song, actually.

SolVanderlyn said:

Great writeup. There are dozens of us who genuinely love RE6 and all of its campy storytelling. I REALLY think you'll like Chris' campaign if you liked Leon's. Leon's feels like RE4 on steroids, and Chris' feels like RE5 on steroids. It also has the most interesting partner dynamic in the game, IMO, with Chris being not quite himself for three or four chapters and Piers stepping up to be the best newcomer to the series in a long ass time.

I might even say to do Jake's next, because Chris' is just kind of... better... in almost every way. Not that Jake's is bad, but I feel like it's easily the worst of the main three and meanders a bit at times, especially in the snowy mountain area towards the beginning. Jake is also a totally unlikable asshole and his relationship with Sherry is annoying to watch. He has this Eminem-esque 00's aura about everything he does that just grated on me in all the wrong ways. Sherry herself is pretty ace, though.

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• I mentioned this in my previous posts, but I need to repeat how impressed I am with Capcom's representation of Lanshiang, AKA Hong Kong by another name. (For reference, I lived in Hong Kong from 2012 to this year.) I tried to look up to see if the team actually visited HK during 2010 or 2011 when this game was in development, and I can't find any concrete info, but they must have at least had some damn good photos and video to draw from when designing the levels. So many little details are on point, ranging from the ads to the city's crosswalks and building interiors. I even found a room that looks almost exactly like my first apartment's kitchen in Hong Kong.

• To give you a sense of how on-point the city looks, check out the construction signs and movie poster here (it's Ip Man) juxtaposted with their real-life interpretations. Capcom changed a few key details like logos, but as soon as I saw these I knew the references. I've been sharing some of my screenshots with a few other friends in Hong Kong who haven't played this game and my one friend said it looked way better than Sleeping Dogs and he wished it were open world (he basically only plays open world stuff and MMOs).

• The Chinese J'avo are also an example of great enemy design. I like the J'avo in general - they're the best evolution of the "regular humans who quickly mutate" concept that was introduced in RE4 with the Ganado, but the Chinese opera masks on the Lanshiang ones seal the deal. They also yell at you in Cantonese! I can't really understand Canto and I found a message board thread of at least one guy saying that they sound "too polite" but it's still cool IMO.

• The flashback in Edonia is also an example of good environments, except this time based on Eastern Europe (Serbia, perhaps?) rather than China. I got a kick out of the game taking things up to Attack on Titan level as well as the fact that Chris Redfield can jump on this giant BOW's back and just rip its appendages apart. Truly we have surpassed the boulder punching of RE5 and ascended to a new level.

• So one of the features in this game that I find interesting is that each campaign clearly seems to be trying to appeal to the different camps of Resident Evil fans that have emerged ever since the series split genres in RE4. Leon's adventure was pulpy as hell with throwbacks to the old zombie crawls of the older titles, but Chris' missions are CLEARLY going for a sort of Call of Duty/SOCOM/perhaps Gears of War vibe. I think the game tackles both vibes confidently but clearly some reviewers (like the Kotaku folks) thought that RE6 should've just picked one style and stuck with it. I'm guessing that many former fans felt the same way, judging by the "too much fat, too many diverging/chaotic styles" criticism I've seen leveled at Resident Evil 6. Personally, I dig the variety, and I enjoyed how we can see the same tale told from variant perspectives. Leon gives us the classic horror-turning-into-cheesy-adventure take on the Lanshiang crisis, Chris gives us the serious-PTSD-soldier-reliving-his-worst-nightmare take. I think both takes are valid, and the death of Finn at the finale of the Edonia flashback was well done.

• Chris Redfield clearly isn't himself in the beginning chapters of his campaign, as shown by his obsession with tracking down Ada and then murdering the giant snake that's killed his men. It takes him a chance encounter with Leon - the guy who's been in this as long as he has, to quote Leon's campaign - for him to snap out of his funk and realize that there's more at stake than just a personal vendetta. As I said before, Chris seems to have suffered the most mental trauma and baggage from the war on bioterror since the events of Spencer Mansion, while Leon perhaps copes a bit better - though from what I've heard of that CG movie Vendetta, Leon's got alcoholism problems or something?! (Speaking of Spencer Mansion, I was totally reminded of Yawn the snake here!)

• Those of you who mentioned that Chris' campaign is like RE5 on stereoids were right - it amps up mightily in the last few chapters, but still says relatively grounded in military stuff with a chase scene near a seafood restaurant (I swear that I've been to a restaurant just like that in HK) and driving sequences. The one bit of cornball is when the game straight up BECOMES ACE COMBAT, wtf. The Ace Combat sequence wasn't very good.

• So, the conclusion when Jake and Sherry reunite with Chris and Piers in the undersea oil rig - man, Jake is such an emo douche. I like the symbolism with Chris now coming face-to-face with the son of his greatest enemy, but I'm assuming that in Jake's campaign he goes through a bunch of stuff where he tries to escape the shadow of his evil father, yeah? Him shooting a gun right by Chris' EAR is one of those "IT LOOKS COOL HUH" scenes that I found kind of dumb, because as someone who's suffered from ear problems in the past - that shit would burst your ear drums or at least give you temporary hearing loss/tinnitus! And it doesn't seem like Jake was using a silencer or anything. Sorry, just a pet peeve that I'm overthinking.
• The final battle with HAOS was extremely annoying, though I did like taking screenshots of him chasing Chris up the falling platforms. None of the boss battles in the RE games after 4 (one might even go so far as to say that the series as a whole has kind of struggled with bosses) has been exceedingly great, IMO, but I was so low on ammo that I had to resort to knifing this dude most of the time. Yes, I did pick up the ammo drops in the room and I still had to rely on the knife. Luckily, I had PIERS WITH HIS LIGHTNING POWERS TO ASSIST ME!

• So, the Piers death sequence. It was moving, and I ended up liking Piers WAY more than I expected. I tend to be suspicious of young characters with nice hair in Japanese games (chalk it up to playing too much Final Fantasy, or recently shaving my head, lol) but part of the reason I played through this campaign as Chris was that I didn't especially wanna try out the new dude. But the new dude turned out to be a soldier to the end and a great foil for Chris, the more hardened war vet. I kinda expected something bad to happen to Piers over the course of the campaign, especially when Chris starts talking about how he's going to retire, but I did not foresee the C-Virus self-injection and the undersea sacrifice. It ties Chris' story - which has really been about him finding a new reason to keep on fighting the good fight after the loss of his men - full-circle. Chris now goes on in his unending battle with renewed purpose, this time fighting to commemorate his fallen comrades rather than avenge them. Perhaps standard stuff for stories about soldiers and war, but there's a reason why these tropes are popular.

• Overall, a much more tragic finale than Leon's "lulz so many wimmens in mah life" ending. I did like the pulp of Leon's campaign somewhat more, and the fact that his starts out feeling like a traditional RE game, but Chris' is just as good, just in a different way.

SirKai said:

I'm very impressed and relieved you like Chris' campaign. I found the J'avo/shootout encounters to be totally miserable to deal; small arms assholes LMG guys, rocket launcher enemies, snipers, etc. It was too much, and that 2/3 of the overall game is spent fighting them is just silly.

I do appreciate the ridiculous scope and scale of the action and set pieces though, and Leon's campaign is pretty good (I also love Ada's Chapter 2).

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Dusk Golem said:

As you got to do Jake's and Ada's campaigns, only thing I'll mention before you get into Revelations 2 down the line:

There are two endings to Revelations 2 from a choice you make in Episode 3. Normally I wouldn't suggest anything specific, but one ending is so much better than the other one (to the point you can tell which ending reviewers got by who says the game has a fantastic ending and who says Revelations 2 has a disappointing ending as the game doesn't make it clear it even is a choice and that there's more than one ending whichever one you get), at the end of Chapter 3 there's a moment where Claire falls to the ground, Revelations 2 doesn't have any QTEs except this ONE moment, if you complete the QTE like you'll maybe instinctively do, you're going for the bad ending. Instead of doing the QTE, switch characters to play as Moira and do what you have to do as her.

I am mentioning this since that's the only way to get the True Ending, when the one and only QTE in Revelations 2 pops up you may instinctively do the QTE quickly without even a second thought, but doing that gets an infinitely inferior ending where you don't get to fight the final boss and get a 30 second cutscene instead of a much longer and in-depth ending and finale (actually one of the best endings to a RE game, if you asked me). And to change the ending route after experiencing the bad ending, you literally have to replay half the game (have to replay all of Chapter 3 and Chapter 4).

Giving this word ahead of time, I like Revelations 2 a LOT and I'll leave the rest of your thoughts to your own, but this is one area where I think they made a really dumb design choice. I get what they were going for, but I think between the unclear method/unclear it's even a choice moment, and one being so infinitely inferior to the other route overall makes the moment not really work.

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• Back to Sherry for a sec - aside from being another one of those cute short-haired types (hi Rebecca Chambers), part of the reason I like her is that she is a very tangible example of progression in the series. You can point at her, be like "that's the little girl from RE2 all grown up in real-time and starring in a game 15 years later," and probably get someone who knows nothing about Resident Evil to say, "woah, that's cool, so the series stars the same cast over time?" To me one of this franchise's greatest strengths, and something I was totally unaware of when I started this series playthrough, is the revolving cast of characters and how they age and grow in real time. We see it with Chris' transition from normal special forces cop to a bulking, weathered soldier, we see it with Leon as he moves from rookie policeman to a grim (but occasionally still wisecracking) government agent, and now we see it with Sherry Birkin, except with her it's more pronounced since she was so young in Resident Evil 2. Honestly, it's cool and I think she deserves her own game.
• It also helps that she's like a mini-Claire, obviously influenced by the biggest female role model in her life and striving to make a role for herself in a world seriously messed up by bioweapons. According to a Famitsu article I read Jake was designed to be "someone today's young people can empathize with" (lol okay) but I found Sherry way more interesting. That said, her coupling with Jake, another young person who had a messed up father, and the fact that the game REALLY pushes you to ship the two of them throughout every cutscene does eventually work - it's that classic good girl/bad boy combo that Resident Evil Zero also pulled off.

• Going into actual campaign stuff, I like how Sherry and Jake's beginning gives you the opportunity to see Chris' battles from a different perspective, like the fight on the bridge. The battle against the giant BOWs seemed muddled though, where I was running around just shooting enemies as opposed to setting explosives or defending Finn like I was with the BSAA. If you run out of ammo during these sections there's literally not much you can do but run around in circles. Maybe it all works better in multiplayer.

• Ustanak is...a mixed bag. His design is okay, and I see him compared with Nemesis a lot. I suppose the game is trying quite hard to re-capture the same magic that occurred whenever Nemesis or Mr. X came crashing through a wall. The interactions with him never reached that level for me, though. I think Nemesis and Mr. X worked because RE2 and RE3 were much quieter games in comparison with RE6, where every encounter with Ustanak is telegraphed from a mile away and accompanied with a bajillion Quicktime events. And oh god, is it just me or are the Quicktime events so much more frequent in Jake's campaign? It seems like there's one every fifteen minutes!
• I do think the Ustanak setpiece on the chopper was fun, though. Fighting a big bad with a gatling gun as he shoots at me with his own gatling gun while hanging from the bottom of a helicopter is certainly a special kind of magic.

• I linked a Kotaku article in my last post on Chris' campaign, and in that article they called Jake's campaign the "experimental" one. I agreed with this as soon as I hit the section on the snowy mountain where you've got to run around finding USB drives and are suddenly presented with a mini-map. It seems...just really odd and reminded me of something out of one of the newer Tomb Raider games. Snowmobiles randomly show up here too and you can ride them, which surprised me, but they control kinda jankily. It seems like suddenly in the midst of a game that's mostly action, Resident Evil 6 tried to briefly recapture the "walk around and pick up things" gameplay of its PS1 predecessors.

• After the snowfield, we have a messy snowmobile chase sequence that I failed at least five or six times thanks to QTEs and sloppy controls. And then a FORCED STEALTH SECTION against Ustanak that I found very awkward. I feel like this game's engine is not especially optimized for stealth, and here it happens in the most inorganic way imaginable, where you've got to sneak around, curb stomp insects when their backs are turned and duck into dumpsters. It was at this moment that I sorta understood a lot of the complaints leveled against this game.

• I feel like things get a little better when Chapter 3 starts and the gang is in China, though this chapter is also sorta messy too because it starts with another forced stealth section where, at least from Sherry's angle, you're stuck against a bunch of triad J'avo goons with nothing but a skimpy hospital gown on and a stun gun. I kept getting swarmed by these dudes until I realized that "stealth" in this game simply equals "run up to guys when they aren't looking at you and press right trigger." I found this section more tolerable because it has a weird Hong Kong action movie vibe to it (I think it's the "come hither" finger pose that Jake does at the beginning that sets the tone).

• Then there's...more random collectible shit! You've got to run around this gaudy Chinese mansion (actually a pretty accurate representation of what a nouveau riche house would look like in China, lol) gathering tokens to open up a big Buddha station. What is this, Donkey Kong 64?! Banjo-Kazooie?! It's not unfun, as the combat here once again reminds me of a nutty Hong Kong action movie and I did like the throwback to Resident Evil 1 where you've got to play the piano to unlock a token, but it's just odd.

• AND THEN A TANK SHOWS UP. LOL, A FREAKIN' TANK. Just random as hell, this campaign!

• After a motorcycle chase sequence, all the campaigns start crossing over with each other, and I quite enjoyed this. I think the segmented campaign system that the developers went with is actually a grand idea, and seeing events from different perspectives is a lot of fun, even if Jake and Sherry's objectives seem once again muddled and helpless when compared to the objectives of Chris and the BSAA. With these two kids, it mostly boils down to "run around, eliminate all enemies and survive," while Chris had more specific things like "eliminate the snipers on the choppers."

• I do wish the reunion between Sherry and Leon had gone on for a bit longer, now that I think about it! I'm sure that Capcom knows that fans love the RE characters and wanna see them cross paths more often - I still find it fascinating that apparently Leon has not yet met Jill Valentine - but they seem reluctant to do so in the actual games, limiting interactions to a few minutes. Even this game's story, which was apparently designed on the basis of "CHRIS AND LEON NEED TO MEET AND POINT THEIR GUNS IN EACH OTHER'S FACES," only offers its fan service up in small amounts. Just wish there was more!

• The final section of Jake's campaign features our heroes in what I honestly think looks like a bigass hadron collider, and they've got to do a keycard search while avoiding Rasklapanje. These Raskalapanje sections are kind of lame, IMO - the first one that I experienced in Leon's campaign was okay, because I liked looking at the Hong Kong-inspired visuals, but here I was just glad to see that guy die. And as usual, more QTEs as our heroes have to CRAWL FASTER to escape.

• The final boss fight with Ustanak is decent, and I like the imagery of him tossing around fire with his ball and chain arm. But it really exemplifies how this campaign encourages you to play as Jake, who gets a cool final hand-to-hand showdown with him on a bridge while all Sherry can do is...drop a box on his head. Meh.

• Of course, he's not dead yet! One more final series of QTEs before Ustanak bites the bullet (literally), and one could conceivably argue that having him come back so many times over and over again is just redundant by this point. Still, the imagery of Sherry and Jake both holding onto a Magnum at the same time to blast him into fiery bits is the sort of goofy RE stuff that I like.

• And in the end, Sherry completes a homework assignment on a plane while Jake rides off after having told his woman how much she SAVED HIS LIFE. Cue cringe ending ballad. It could have only been more corny if they'd kissed while riding that thing outta the oil rig.

Nerrel said:

I don't really want to argue about this game again, but I do want to offer my opinion on this part...

The problem with the split campaigns is that they don't deliver different enough games to make it worth having them. Leon's campaign isn't at all a survival horror throwback and is even more action oriented than RE5 was- tons of enemies, QTE sequences, and the same ability to roll around with guns blazing. It was really just superficial throwbacks like the old zombies and a Raccoon City replica that separated it from the others while keeping it a linear action game otherwise. If Capcom was trying to reach out to the classic fans with his campaign, they didn't push very hard for it.

Cris' game, like you said, is the extension of RE5 that takes the military shooter stuff even further. It's like the zombies-with-guns section from the end of 5 stretched into an entire game. Jake's campaign felt like a really confused offshoot of that with melee and even more scripted events. It really didn't need to be there.

You seem to be finding this out now, but Ada's campaign is like a mix of the others but with the very worst quality. The aircraft carrier in particular is such a boring slog with some of the least inspired gameplay in the series... It feels like glued together scraps of the other campaigns.

What most critics thought (and what Capcom themselves admitted) was that they spread themselves too thin by trying to please everyone and the result is that they made an unfocused and unpolished game as a result. If they had gone all in with just one campaign they may have been able to pull of something better that more fans would have liked. I personally don't have a problem with the action direction itself and the controls were underrated, but the level design, enemy design, pacing, and general decision making (mix herbs, convert to tablets, tap the heal button over and over?) feels so half baked to me.

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• Before I get into the problems with this campaign, I would just like to say that the little transparent Gamecube that Ada carries around with her, which is supposedly a phone, looks odd and unwieldy as heck.

• Chapter 1 of Ada's campaign is one of the worst starting levels to something that I've played in a looong time. The game immediately encourages you to use stealth, but my thoughts on stealth in Resident Evil 6 are still the same as they were in Jake and Sherry's campaign - the engine just doesn't seem equipped for it. I ended up getting noticed no matter how much I tried to sneak around so I just defaulted to headshots and shooting everything. Got curbstomped a lot too. It all felt like a clunky B-tier PS2 game - one of those that came out in 2005 or so and immediately ended up in the bargain bin at Gamestop.

• "Suddenly after three campaigns of mostly action, RE6 wants to have puzzles like the old games now?!" This was my thought when I ran into the room with the picture of the snake. It wasn't a great puzzle, kinda felt out of place. I feel like this game's rhythm is certainly more action than anything else, and tossing old school puzzles in the mix at the eleventh hour (at least for me since I'm playing this campaign last) is a good example of the devs flailing about to appeal to everyone.

• Oh god, I found the following section where you need to escape the sub to be awful. It's cramped, there are enemies everywhere, and the elements designed to make your traversal easier, like the lasers which can also target enemies, seem half-baked.
• Then the sub starts flooding and you've barely got time to get to higher ground. I felt like I was almost playing a game like Dragon's Lair, where you've got like five seconds to press RIGHT or LEFT or else your character will die. Not fun.

• The coup de grace was the final bit where Ada's gotta stand in front of a computer console and answer questions from Clara as enemies rain down on her and a timer ticks away. I failed this at the last second the first time because a slew of BOWs knocked me down and I obviously had no partner to revive me. See the below screenshot. All of this crap happening to you at once certainly does create a hectic vibe that I suppose is what they were going for, but it isn't a fun hectic vibe at all.

• Chapter 2 in Tall Oaks was somewhat better, but it does feel like repeated territory from Leon's campaign. None of the puzzles vibed with me (I had to look up what to do for the hangman and electric chair ones) and Ada's disinterested stance here kind of sums up how I felt about it all. Speaking of which, Ada's snarky one-liner commentary during her campaign is occasionally amusing, and in a meta kind of way she frequently summed up my disappointment with her missions. I think at one point she actually says "What a pain in the ass," and I was like "....My thoughts exactly."

• Chapter 3 in China I found the most bearable, since it's relatively straightforward and short. By the way, here's Ada on a slide. You get a medal at the end of the mission for doing this!

• Another bit I liked was this small area, which is seems to be based off of the Ladies' Market in Mong Kok/Yaumatei in Hong Kong. I mentioned before that this game does a fabulous job of recreating Hong Kong in its environments and this one's quite accurate as well.

• Fight with the chainsaw BOW - I think at one point Ada grumbles about how these guys take so much time to kill, and that was what I was thinking too. I liked when you have to run across bamboo scaffolding as he's cutting it out from beneath you. Good setpiece idea for a boss. But then it boils down to a standard fight riddled with QTEs, several of which I failed because the game gave me like a second each to press the A and X buttons. Sheesh!

• Then it's time to assist Sherry and Jake as they sail through the harbor. This segment was okay; I kinda like the thought of Ada being a hidden rooftop figure silently assisting the younger protagonists behind the scenes. She also mutters one funny line about how big monsters just won't stop chasing poor Sherry.

• Unfortunately Chapter 4 was about as bad as Chapter 1. You're forced into another one of these "run through a labyrinth and find keys as Rasklapanje chases you" bits, and after running through these scenes in each campaign I was sick of them by this point. This might be the most annoying Rasklapanje maze segment yet, as the ship's corridors are confusing as hell and there seem to be more of the guys hunting you. It feels vaguely pornographic when they all gang up on Ada and straddle her on the ground.

• Speaking of pornographic, Clara's mutated form looks like it's made out of semen. Sorry, it's just all I could think of. You literally fight a jizz monster in this campaign. RESIDENT EVIL 6, YA'LL

• Ada's last chapter was all nonsense IMO, big explosions and bangs and shooting at random things in a helicopter with little tension. Perhaps it was because I felt like I had played through all of this before in Leon's campaign, or maybe I was just tired of the game by this point, but it was actually kind of dull. I did enjoy getting a few good punches in on Simmons though - he's really not a very good antagonist, now that I think about it. He's supposed to have this history with Ada (which we never see), and then he goes nuts, tries to recreate her out of entitlement and causes two bioterror incidents across the planet as a result. I feel like a deeper investigation of his psychosis and privileged tendencies (he yells some truly vile shit in the final fight about how he OWNS Ada) might have been intriguing but were beyond the scope of this game's writers.

• I realized one thing as I was watching the scene of Leon defending Ada on the bridge, which is supposed to be emotional. It's a nice scene, but you know what...? I actually don't find Ada Wong very interesting at all. She has barely any personality beyond being a walking femme fatale trope and her "relationship" with Leon, if you can even call it that, is a whole bunch of winks and five minute interactions that have amounted to NOTHING over the course of almost TWENTY YEARS. This scene with them on the bridge is the most you can really point to in terms of there being an actual "relationship" aside from the corny but genuine kiss that they share in RE2. I feel like Ada's an example of a character who is mostly popular for being badass and sexy, but if you strip that away...there's really not much there.

• And in the end, Ada blows the crap outta Simmons' remaining lab and I managed to take a screenshot of that pic of Clara and Simmons on the computer, which has random placeholder text about New South Wales displayed there if you bother to look close, aha.

• Errr then instead of an Ada-specific epilogue I got this thing with Jake where he's in the Middle East and trying to be a badass? What? Was this supposed to be a teaser for a future game where he's the protagonist? Well that didn't work out so hot, did it?!!

Resident Evil 6 has something for everyone, ranging from a quality tale about battle-hardened men shooting biomutations to terrible levels that feel like they came out of a 2005 PS2 game that was quickly relegated to the bargain bin at Gamestop. Reviews were all over the place when this sucker came out, and still are today, with just as many people insisting that this game is the shit as there are people emphasizing that it is shit. My verdict? It's BOTH, with some truly excellent parts and some truly abhorrent ones. It could have done with some trimming, for sure, and at the end of the day, Leon's and Chris' campaigns feel like the only real important ones here. A streamlined and likely better-received version of Resident Evil 6 would've only focused on those two guys - since one pivotal scene where the pair meet for a few minutes, briefly scuffle and POINT THEIR GUNS AT EACH OTHER YEAAA FAN SERVICE - seems to have been written first. That would've given Resident Evil 6 a better balance, with Leon's missions possibly focusing on old school survival horror and pulp while Chris' missions would lean hard on the military action stuff.

But we didn't get that. Instead, what we got is a shambling whopper of a game - at times as unwieldy and ridiculous as the enemy bearing the same name, at other times just as satisfying as a real-life beef whopper. Resident Evil 6 is both good and bad, the video game equivalent of an excessive and expensive comic book crossover, and shit, I think I've just written the most about it than any of its predecessors.

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