After watching the teaser, and this gameplay trailer for the upcoming Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, I can say that I’m very much on board, and looking forward to the game when it releases in late-March. I never played the versus mode available in RE5, but Operation Raccoon City looks like a lot of fun, and the dynamic of the gameplay intrigues me.
Apparently, I made the cardinal mistake of indulging what other people had to say, when I glanced down to the comments section of the most recent Kotaku post about Operation Raccoon City. Somewhere along the line, there grew to be this resentment towards the progression of the Resident Evil storyline/game style, and nowadays there is a staunch faction of Resident Evil fans that resent the series starting with RE4 on. Their argument being that the game took a turn from no longer being a “true” survival horror series, whatever that means, and into somewhat of a glorified action-packed shoot-em-up series.
The thing is, such claims are very much accurate, but I have to ask, who cares? I should point out that my RE fandom credentials rivals pretty much the biggest RE fans, and I have played every single canonical game, and several of the remakes. I understand and have seen the game go from its grass roots where you actually run the risk of running out of bullets for your Beretta in your first encounter with Tyrant in RE1, to a point where it’s almost impossible to run out of ammunition for when you take on mutant-Wesker at the end of RE5. But I don’t understand where this resentment is coming from, that the game and its stories have developed and turned more into an action series.
Firstly, given the canon story, I would hope that the characters learn and develop, and understand going into future games that a single pistol just doesn’t cut it anymore. As long as the characters remain the same, of course the characters’ personas realize that they need bigass shotguns, rocket launchers and assault rifles to make their survival easier. The zombies have evolved too; instead of itchy-tasty, slow, lumbering zombies that you can time one shotgun shot to decapitate three at once, we have Plagas-infested human beings who can run, who can fight, who can communicate, and who can strategize. And there are simply so many more of them too; a single pistol just doesn’t cut it anymore. To me, it’s more absurd to take the same characters and repeatedly put them in the same scenarios of being underpowered and outgunned, against increasingly difficult scenarios. Change is good, and change is necessary.
Secondly, fighting is fun. Yes, there is an accomplishing feeling in successfully traversing a hallway, staircase, and corridor and not getting caught by a zombie in the first place, but the aggressor in me would rather fight ten times out of ten if it were an option. I don’t like to dodge a fight, if I can blow the upper half of a zombie away instead. RE1-Code Veronica were great games in their own right, but players like me could have their cake and eat it too. I was more than capable of dodging a fight, only to return later and use minimal ammo to get the job done, so I could be better prepared for a gunfight later on.
I’ll defer in the fact that not every single advancement in the RE story is quality; acknowledgment of the master of lock picking and Matrix-Wesker were kind of lame, but as a whole, I’ve always found enjoyment of every single installment of the Resident Evil series. And although Operation Raccoon City is not a part of the canon story, I have a good feeling that I will enjoy that one as well. It appears to be running in the same game engine as RE5, which I grew fond of, and wished that all the other Resident Evils could be remade to run in the same manner. And there are some intriguing modes to the game, aside from multiplayer deathmatch style that look like they would be a fun way to play the game.
I can understand some reluctance to change, as there are plenty of things in my own life that I look at, and am apprehensive of making changes as well. But in the terms of accepting new Resident Evil games, most of the arguments seem superficially obtuse, and mostly invalid. They’re just video games. If you don’t like the way Resident Evil is developing, switch to Silent Hill. If you don’t like that, go back in time and play some less action-oriented survival horror games, like D or something.
