'Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City' is a reunion that fans could skip

Slant Six Games and Capcom attempted to retell one of the most memorable games only to fall short due to mediocre game-play along with a poorly written story and terrible voice-over performance.

The plot of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City focuses on the actions of U.S.S. Delta Team (nicknamed "Wolfpack") and US Special Operations during the Raccoon City Incident. Delta Team was tasked in assisting HULK in retrieving the G-Virus sample but the mission failed and the T-Virus was unleashed on the city. As result of the outbreak, Delta Team is tasked with destroying evidence linking Umbrella to the catastrophe.

Fans would be expecting a retelling of one of the most iconic video games from a different perspective. However with the poor dialogue and choppy story telling that has butchered it into a new story. This new story is just the same plot of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 only with unnecessary content added to the mix.

Oh as for those "what if moments"; they were over-hyped.

Slant Six and Capcom had to make a new plot based around an existing story but they managed to screw it up. Unfortunately the game play aspect also shows very little hope of redemption.

Its squad-based action that mostly consists of maybe one useful teammate who will heal you at times while your squad will walk into your line of fire. Sure they will shoot back at hostiles but you will be doing most the work.

Gamers will encounter the same dumb AI and glitchy action that is expect from almost every poorly developed game. But this being a Resident Evil-game; fans should consider this kind of effort to be an insult to the series.

Thankfully redemption is found in its multiplayer aspect. Despite its flawed story and game play, its multiplayer makes an excellent guilty pleasure for the weekend. In the end we all love killing zombies and Left 4 Dead 2 was getting boring.

Overall Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City tries to give gamers a new take on the Raccoon City Incident only to fail due to a poor setup and a lack of effort. However it’s still worth playing just for some weekend fun.

Or do your self a favor and just wait for Resident Evil 6.

Final Scour: 2/5

Tags: Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City

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Ed Grabowski

April 06, 2012

Ya know, maybe you can help me with identifying what is off about ORC. I can't quite put my finger on it, but the game just feels...off. I played it and beat it, and by the end I just felt so empty. Compare a coop game like Gears of War to ORC, now I am not comparing production values really, just...something. With many other coop shooters, you have a story, characters you care about, intersting level design, varied environments, intersting weapons, cool enemies, awesome set-pieces.

ORC has none of these. It is like they just created a few rooms in an editor, and copy and pasted them for 4 hours. They then threw in some characters, got some bargain basement writer and vvoice actors to quickly record some lines, threw enemies into the game with no regard for their placement or pacing, and threw the game out the door. It's like it has no soul. You know what it feels like? It feels like when you go to the store to buy a shooter, get it home, and find out the single player campaign is just multiplayer maps with bots. Like Brink was.

That's what ORC feels like. The whole experience was so empty. It just felt hollow. There were no intersting characters. No variety in the things you did or saw. Pathetic boss battles that required zero strategy. No intersting weapons. No intersting story or even a script. You were just dropped into a situation and told to shoot. Even the shooting felt hollow. It felt like they did the bare minimum of what was required and cut every single corner in the book.

What a complete waste too. How awesome was that concept? I just wish Capcom had given the game to a dev that knew what they were doing and cared about the source material, but instead they gave it to obvious rookies who clearly didn't want to make the game. And that is completely unfair to all the fans of Resident Evil who were really looking forward to this game. It is unfair to them that Slant Six decided to sell themselves for cash and ruin what could have been awesome canon for the franchise.

What a waste.