Resident Evil 6 is an action horror game that focuses a lot on the action side of things. The plot relates to previous games with four campaigns that can be played in single or multiplayer.

This is different from the previous game because the movement flows a little better and you don’t have to stop moving to perform an action such as reloading or melee. We also don’t get the in-game shop presented to us after every death or level, instead there is a skill point currency that’s used after the levels to provide set bonuses to the player, the guns can’t be upgraded, it doesn’t work for both players in split screen. Honestly I preferred the way RE5 handled player power progression.

Something that is very noticeable is how dark the game is. A lot of the time you can’t see anything or can only see the bare minimum. I think it’s supposed to make things more tense but it’s just irritating when enemies have perfect aim. There are also sprint sections which give you no idea of obstacles, often resulting in an unavoidable death.

As for the four campaigns, three can be done split screen or co-op while the last is designed to be played solo. The campaigns are:

Leon – Leon’s campaign is welcomed in with the prologue section, he’s helping his friend get through a city. They then stick together through all sorts of weirdness like a gassy fat monster in a church or a crab leg spawning naked woman called Deborah, even the T-Rex-fly-dog man that was massively excessive. They end up going after the source of the trouble.

Chris – In my opinion the hardest campaign with gun toting and mutating enemies everywhere. This follows a soldier approach and Chris seems to be the only character with any real idea of why and where he’s going. It does repeat a section from Leon’s campaign exactly the same which was disappointing.

Jake – This one has a more obvious aim to the story with Jake’s blood having what’s needed for a vaccine. There’s also a giant monster man called Ustanak which is pretty standard action shooter stuff. The gameplay ends up irritating with an item hunt in low visibility and forced stealth sections. As Jake we fight a tank, a helicopter as well as many humanoid enemies, some with guns and some without. The bits with the Ustanak monster were the highlight of this story and felt close to a proper shooter like the Gears games. Ustanak being borderline unkillable kept it interesting in a way that the regular enemies couldn’t.

Ada – She’s a one woman army and should be iconic as a woman in gaming but I’d never heard of her before playing this. Her section is challenging because she doesn’t have an ally to distract enemies. Ada spends a lot of time dipping into the other characters campaigns while chasing down a clone of herself and trying to do the right thing. A really interesting character.

It’s fair to say they go too far sometimes in trying to be cool and dynamic which often ends up in boring, tedious game sections. This really isn’t helped by all the bullet sponge enemies or having the playable characters fall over at the slightest touch.

There are collectibles scattered across every level, these are on the form of blue discs that need to be destroyed and can be well hidden. There’s also a rank system that effects all levels so getting the top rank is reason to reply on the four difficulties.

The controls are really weird with melee being the same button as shooting. The menus are slightly less fiddly than RE5 but the combining health items before adding them to your stack is irritating in the heat of battle. It’s also odd that melee is more powerful than guns.

Overall, the gameplay is awful but somehow manages to be fun and engaging which is a weird contradiction. There’s so much that can be improved with this game but the story acts as an end to an era for Resident Evil and with the support of the series is pretty good. Mechanically the game is bad but I found it quite enjoyable.