infexxionAre People Being Too Hard On Resident Evil 6?
Let's not beat around the bush - Resident Evil 6 is getting atrocious, horrendous, completely brutal review scores from the community (with a current user score of 0.6 on Metacritic). The game has some flaws, no doubt. But one has to wonder, is this truly a bad game, or just backlash from a genre change that happened 5 years ago?
Let's go over the facts. Resident Evil 6 is a fairly straight-forward third person action shooter, with horror elements. It's not pushing boundaries in the third person department, but with the ability to move while shooting, the new weapons, and the return of "zombies", it's a step up from Resident Evil 5 in that respect alone.
As far as the story goes, it may be guilty as far as being convulted and doing little to make you care about the characters, but (most of) these characters are ones that we've spent games and games with, it's fun to see where they've ended up, and how they grow. So, while the overall story may be suffering, the characters (for the most part) stay in-character. I don't understand the complaints here.
It seems that the game and story criticisms are playing the background to the complaints that the game is too much action, too little horror. But wait - aren't these the same arguments that began with Resident Evil 4, continued through Resident Evil 5, and are now present?
Do me a favor, and go to the Metacritic user reviews for Resident Evil 6. Ctrl F and type "horror". The staggering amount of people whining about the lack of a horror aspect is astonishing. These people are complaining about a game that suffered a genre crisis in 2008 - why is it such a big problem now?
Were people honestly expecting something different? Was it the return of "zombies" that got players hoping for a horror game? The return of a lot of familiar faces? There simply was no reason to expect this to be anything but a continuation of Resident Evil 5. There are those who may have thought that since Resident Evil 5 did so "bad" they'd revert to the horror approach. Two problems - one being the genre change was established in Resident Evil 4 and everyone loved that game, and two, Resident Evil 5 sold more than Resident Evil 4. This is absolutely not a recipe for reverting a gameplay formula back to the original.
Let's not forget that Resident Evil 6 has had the most preorders of any game in Capcom's history. This is not going to change anytime soon.
Bearing all this in mind, you can come to one of two conclusions. You may choose to dismiss sales figures, past statements from Capcom, and facts, and continue to expect Resident Evil to become (or reform to) a horror video game. Or, you can take the realistic approach, which is this. Resident Evil is now an action game. Resident Evil 4 started this, Resident Evil 5 continued this, and Resident Evil 6 is solidifying this. People speak with their wallets, and as long as the "action" Resident Evil games sell more, that formula is not going to change.
Yes, it sucks to be a horror fan this day in age, there simply aren't many horror games around. But demolishing a game's user rating and complaining that Resident Evil 6 isn't a horror game is too little, too late. The game is going to sell well (already 4.5 million copies shipped). So, I propose this; instead of complaining about Resident Evil 6 not being a horror game, let's try to let it stand on its own feet.
What do you think? Is Resident Evil 6 a failure in both the horror and action departments? Is it a decent game? Which game in the series is your favorite? Let me know in the comments below, and as always, thanks for reading!
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Re-6 Rocks in its own way, you can love it or you can leave it but you cannot hate it unreasonably..
Plain and simple...this game doesn't deserve a 0.7 or 0.9.
The game didn't raise any bars on the horror front, gotcha. But that shouldn't take everything away from what it is.
However, with that said, I'm not taking into account the Metacritic score, because Metacritic user scores in the first month are almost always reactionary.
Capcom promised a return to form with Leon's story. Of course you're not going to get horror with the stories they explicitly said were not really horror. But if that campaign wasn't horror, then people have a right to be frustrated. And I think that people are still mad about the genre crisis from 2008, yes. With RE4, it certainly had some horror elements, just without zombies. People were pissed. With RE5, it had fewer. I liked it, but it was an action game. The reason people keep getting pissed is because Capcom keeps ignoring them.
Then saying that the complaints are ONLY because of the horror aspect is asinine as well, because the game isn't good enough to stand on its own. In the article the writer admits this. The characters (not all of whom are returning) can only be justified by being returning cast, and the stories are lackluster. In short, this is not a game where someone can forgive it for not being what they wanted because it's something they liked.
If you're promised X but given a really great Y, then most people will be happy enough. You won't get many complaints that it wasn't what you thought it was because you did have fun.
If you're promised X, but given a really shitty X, then most people will complain about how shitty it is. You'll hear complaints about the story, the characters, the gameplay--in short, why it sucked.
But if you're promised X, but given a mediocre Y, most people will complain you broke your promise. Because in the first case, you made up for the broken promise by delivering something else they wanted. But in this case, you've taken an expectation and replaced it with something they don't want.
That's what RE6 is.