Resident Evil 6 by Samhita adapa

 Resident Evil 6 by Samhita adapa

Ask a Resident Evil Fan what their least favorite game is and 99% of the time, their answer will be Resident Evil 6. Commonly referred to as “action-slop”, the game almost completely ignores the survival horrors aspects of the previous installments and almost entirely steers the direction of ship towards a Michael-Bay esque call of duty dupe. It’s pretty much an action arcade game and the reception almost entirely killed the franchise and Capcom. 

When I first played the game, I really enjoyed it. It was the first Resident Evil game I've ever played and as a huge wimp, a game where I could just run away instead of shooting was my holy grail. I quite liked the game and I replayed it a lot, that is until I played the other games. It’s crazy how bad Resident Evil 6 is compared to the others. It almost doesn’t do anything right. There’s barely any horror, repetitive, convoluted, and at some points just plain old boring. I tried replaying it after playing Resident Evil 4(2005) and I just couldn’t get myself to finish Leon’s campaign. It was just so boring. It’s so far removed from Resident Evil as a franchise that you could probably slap a different name on the disc and no one would know the difference. 

Action in Resident Evil isn’t new. It was introduced in Resident Evil 4 and continued into 5, arguably both great games. There was a good balance, though RE5 is a little bit more questionable. But I think RE6 just completely abandons all aspects of horror and completely leans into the action to draw in new fans. No part of the game was scary, even on my first playthrough. I was just plowing through zombies with no care. I didn’t care about preserving ammo or health. There was literally no survival aspect to it. And at some point, the campaigns became a chore, especially Ada’s. It was just so linear. You had to keep going, no time to stop, catch your breath. It felt like a race in all the worst ways. It tries to do everything which just convoluted it even more, especially with all the vehicle sections. There’s no wonder why it was met with such a negative reception. 

Despite all of this, there were aspects of the game that I really liked. I really enjoyed my first playthrough and I think if you don’t mind that it’s pretty much RE in name only, it’s really fun, especially if you play it co-op with another person. I think the melee attacks were the best part and I’m pretty sure I used those attacks more than the actual guns and I usually swear by the semi-auto rifle in all RE games. If you are new to resident evil, then I definitely wouldn’t recommend starting off this game and probably would encourage RE4 instead. However, I do think it’s important for someone to play through this game and form an opinion for themselves instead of only listening to online discourse around this infamous installment.