Resident Evil: ORC

 

Since its announcement, Resident Evil: ORC has had more skepticism than hype, and now we see why. Produced by Capcom and Slant Six- the makers of Socom, Resident Evil attempts to mix the third person shooter world with the survival horror world, and fails… miserably.

Campaign-

In the RE timeline, RE: ORC’s events take place between Resident Evil 2 and RE 3. Putting you in control of one of four playable campaign characters, you take the role as one of Umbrellas USS Operatives. You are thrown into the first mission with nothing more than a simple objective, retrieve the G-Virus sample. This is the one and only mission that has any tie-ins with the Resident Evil series. For the next six missions you will be playing guinea pig, retrieving items, burning evidence linking Umbrella to the incident and attempting to chase down iconic characters such as Leon Kennedy. On top of the pointless missions, you have the AI to deal with. Watching your AI teammates walk into jets of fire or walk into clearly visible trip mines is funny at first, maybe even the second time, but when they continuously kill themselves, stand out in the open to shoot the enemy Spec Ops or just run around in the middle of a gun fight, it makes me wonder how Umbrellas, “best operatives”, can be so outright dumb.

Settings–

Any RE fan knows to expect beautifully detailed but dark themed locations and an ominous musical score. What do you get? A couple of cars here, a pile of trash there and maybe a small fire in between. But on a brighter note, there are a few nostalgic sounds you hear, such as “Moonlight Sonata” in the Chapel from RE3, and the chilling sound you hear upon entering the Raccoon City Police Department for the first time in RE2 and RE3.

 

Multiplayer–

The only aspect of multiplayer that makes it worthwhile is the ability to play with other humans. Replacing the campaign dummies with humans makes killing zombies slightly more fun but also increases the difficulty no matter what setting you have it on.

There are four multiplayer modes and up to eight players can play in one game.

Heroes– Team Death match that lets you play as iconic characters from previous installments such as Hunk, Leon, Claire, etc.

Team Attack– Just your run of the mill death match, with zombies. First team to reach the score limit wins.

Biohazard– Capture the flag styled game type, only the flags are G-Virus samples.

Survivors– Four vs. Four teams battle it out until the time limit hits zero. That’s when things get interesting. Once the timer hits zero an evac chopper lands and can only take 4 players with it. Once the chopper lands it becomes every man for himself…or herself.
 

 

Rating: The graphics and sound are decent, but the poorly thought out storyline, unbalanced gameplay and almost no replay ability hold back what could have been a fun and insightful experience in the Resident Evil saga.

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City- 7/10

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                             -Steven K.