COLUMN: Aaron's Backstage Pass: Resident Evil 6 PS3 Review

Last week I got a big surprise in the mail. I received a review copy of Capcom’s “Resident Evil 6” for the PS3. I am a huge fan of the series and I could not wait to play it.

The story behind “Resident Evil” is that you are trying to stop a group called Umbrella from releasing a deadly virus that will turn everyone into monsters and zombies. It is a survival horror game where you have to fight through hordes of zombies and stop the person that is going to release the virus.

In Capcom’s “Resident Evil 6” you have to once again stop a biological virus from being leaked and spread throughout the world. You arrive just in time to find the President of the United States infected by the virus and he turns into a zombie that you must stop. It is now your mission to find out who is behind the deadly attack and to stop the biological virus from spreading.

You can choose one of three characters when you start game and each story is different. You can play either as Leon, Chris or Jake. You also have a partner with you to help you through the mission. I feel that they are more helpful in Resident Evil 6 than in Resident Evil 5. They assist you more and are usually right there to revive you when you are close to dying.

I thought the story was very interesting and liked how each characters story was very different. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I just want to say the puzzles are back and are pretty tricky.

I really like the controls a lot. Once again I was kind of disappointed that there was not much information in the instruction book. However you can look at the controls on the in game menu and they are pretty simple to learn. There are in game tutorials as you are playing and they are really helpful.  Even during the loading screens there are tips on how to control your character. 

One new thing is that your character can now shoot while they are running and they can slide and shoot at the same time. In the past Resident Evil games you had to stop and shoot and you could not move and shot at the same time. In Resident Evil 6 you can jump over desks and tables and shoot zombies on the run.

My favorite thing is that you can now kick and do special damage to zombies at any time in the game. One of the most frustrating things for me in the Resident Evil games is that there seems to never be enough ammo.

I always run out and have to rely on my knife to fight off zombies and it’s almost impossible. It seems like there is a lot of ammo laying around in Resident Evil 6, but you can attack zombies with special attacks. You can stop zombies on the ground until you smash their head in with your boot; you can throw them over railings, smash their heads against walls, and use weapons that are already sticking in them on the zombies. It’s really cool and the zombies usually drop ammo so you have plenty of it.

Skill points play a huge role in Resident Evil 6. You can find them laying around or can get them by killing zombies. You use them to upgrade your characters abilities. For instance you can upgrade their aiming of their defense. 

I thought that this was a great new feature and it made me want to kill more and more zombies so I could build up the character I was playing with.

There are a bunch of settings you can set the game to when you start. You can play alone, or you can select to have someone online jump into your game and help you. There are many different options to let people know what you are doing in the game.

For instance there are hidden medals that are scattered in the game and you can let people know that want to jump in your game that you are just looking for the medals and may take a long time to complete a level. 

Some people are very serious about playing Resident Evil and this is a great way to let other players know what you are doing so they don’t get frustrated with you.

I was really happy to see that “Mercenaries” was brought back. This is where you have to score a ton of points by killing zombies in a set amount of time. The more zombies you kill in a row, the more points you get. By getting high rankings in the different levels, you can unlock different costumes for each character.

One of my favorite new game modes is called “Agent Hunt.” This is great, I don’t want to give too much away, but you basically are a zombie, or monster and you have to try and kill one of the heroes in the game. Oh, by the way you appear in other online players games. This mode is so much fun, I can’t quit playing it.

Another neat thing about Resident Evil 6 are the dog tags. By doing special things in the game like killing a certain number of zombies or by clearing a level, you unlock different features for your dog tags to show off. You can change the design, color, logo, and saying on them. I thought that this was also great, because it gives the game more replay value. 

You can also go back and watch all of the cut scenes in the game and the endings. This was a nice feature and you can also unlock different bits of information about the characters. The information tells about why the character is in the game and events that led up to Resident Evil 6.

I really liked Resident Evil 6 a lot. I am a huge fan of the series and of survival horror games and think this is one of the best ones that I have played. There are a ton of spots in the game where I jumped even though I knew what was coming. I loved every minute of it Resident Evil 6 and I know fans of the series will enjoy it as much as I did.
 

Aaron Chalich is a columnist for KSTP.com blogging about the latest entertainment news.