Review - Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles
posted 21 November 2007, Wednesday
Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles
1-2 Players
10+ Hours
Variable Difficulty
Resident Evil Umbrella chronicles is the story of Umbrella's downfall from Albert Wesker's behind-the-scenes perspective. You'll get bits and pieces from Resident Evil 0, 1 and 3, filler stories that take place in those game's time period and a whole new chapter dealing with an Umbrella base in Russia. This game adds and changes a lot of details about the original RE story, but I'm not a Resident Evil story buff and I barely remember enough of the original games to care. I'm happy with whatever story Capcom gives me as long as they don't borrow any more garbage from the horrible RE movies. Yes, the Red Queen is in the game.
The game is an on-rails shooter or a light gun game without the gun. You only control the reticule on the screen to shoot stuff and if you have the nunchuk attached you can also slightly control your field of vision. Unlike a traditional rail shooter Capcom has added survival horror into the mix. Instead of a fast paced romp where you mow down lots of enemies you methodically tread through zombie infested levels doing your best to escape the hordes that may lie around the next corner. The slower, deliberate pace works well and really adds to the Resident Evil feel.
The game can be played with the wiimote only, the Wiimote and nunchuk or with the Zapper. There are only three different button configurations (A, B and Zapper), and no option to set up the buttons yourself. The options menu has a decent amount of settings, but the lack of a button setup (Why don't games allow this anymore?), is severely disappointing. When you play with the nunchuk you can use it to switch weapons and also look around to a very limited degree. I wouldn't recommend playing without it because it makes the game a lot easier to control (switching weapons with the D-pad is bad), and the ability to look around can save your life by giving you a second chance at an item you missed.
The game also "supports" the Wii Zapper, but nothing remotely close to a real light gun experience. There is no calibration screen, no ability to set up your own buttons as mentioned above and only one button configuration for the Zapper that is the basically the same configuration as A. I don't know why Capcom even bothered.
The game consists of different scenarios, many of which you can play with a friend, and as you complete them you unlock new ones. You also unlock side missions as you progress, but for some of them you need to score high enough in order for it to unlock. As you play you pick up weapons that are added to your inventory that you can upgrade with star points in-between missions. Before each mission you are given the choice of which secondary weapon to take along, and ammo collected during a mission transfers to other missions. A lot of the environment is destructible, and if you want to find the files and items hidden in each level you have to shoot up a lot of it. The game also offers three levels of difficulty.
Unfortunately, Umbrella Chronicles has a quite a few issues. The first and foremost being the ammo hording. In spite of the survival horror twist this game brings to the rail shooter genre the idea that you have to conserve and collect ammo for upcoming missions just doesn't work well. We are able to upgrade our weapons to hold crazy amounts of ammo, but you'll likely use all of that ammo on the bosses which are crazy hard or have to go on ammo hunts in previous missions to fill up. I think I can safely say that most people hated the ammo hording aspects of the old RE games, and bringing it back for a rail shooter, a genre that is all about throwing as many bullets at your enemies as possible, is a bad idea. The later levels are better in that they offer more pickups, but you are stuck with the weapons they give you. So if you want to tackle a level with a magnum you better save up because the level you are playing may offer no magnum pickups.
Speaking of ammunition, Capcom did provide us with the ability to unlock infinite ammo for our guns, but they screwed it up so bad that they might as well not have. To unlock infinite ammo you have to pass every single mission with the highest rank on the hardest mode. This poor decision has already led many gamers to download a save file with this goody unlocked (including myself). Capcom should have known better than to make one of the funnest aspect of a rail shooter, infinite ammo, almost impossible to achieve for most gamers.
Continuing the list of problems is the fact that your default weapon sucks and cannot be upgraded. This was apparently done on purpose so that we would aim for enemy weak points or just use a stronger gun. The problem is that many enemy weak points are near impossible to hit because they are ridiculously tiny and your enemies or the camera are in constant motion. Zombies even tilt their head back preventing you from hitting their weak spot. Critical hits are also only registered if you do it in one shot. All this leads to the ammo situation I detailed above. Enemies also have a few cheap moments of invincibility while they are standing up or doing some other animation.
There also seems to be another bug with some of the quick reaction scenes where you are asked to quickly press a button to dodge or avoid something. Already on two occasions I have died like ten times in a row because the game would not register my button press. I would press the button as soon as it appeared on screen and nothing would happen. I would mash the button, I would hold it down - nothing seemed to work. Eventually I got it, but there wasn't any reason why it shouldn't have registered earlier and a hell of a lot easier.
There are also some things that just scream lazy in the game like the start up screen on the Wii menu. Before hitting start to run the game we are greeted with a horrible looking, red pixilated mess. It's hard to believe that's the best they could come up with. Also the menus in the game, while not bad, are not anything that stand out as having lots of thought or effort put into them. The fact that the only significant things to collect or find are files that explain the stories via text is a major let down. Where are the bottle caps like RE4? Why not have extra movie clips that give more details on the story? Where are the extra costumes?
It goes without saying, but Umbrella Chronicles isn't your typical rail shooter. I love how they incorporated the scary, survival horror aspect into the genre. It's fun, exhilarating and it feels like a real Resident Evil game. On the other hand, the remnants of what began as a half-assed Wii game that was dumbed down for an audience that likes "easiness" are evident. I think the big sales of RE4 Wii Edition made Capcom scramble to put some real effort into this game towards the end of production, but it was just too late to make this game as good as it could have been. Still, Umbrella Chronicles manages to be a really fun game with lots of cool fanservice, and in spite of its problems and lack of extras it still finds a way to be great.
I GIVE RESIDENT EVIL UMBRELLA CHRONICLES A 8/10 [GREAT]
Genre Bias +
Resident Evil Bias +
Ammo hording Bias -
PROS:
- Shooting zombies is fun
- Lots of fanservice
- Condensed version of the Umbrella story all in one game
- Slow, scary pacing works well
- Lots of guns to pick from
CONS:
- Ammo hording is back
- Have to replay levels to fill up your ammo
- Infinite ammo secret is way too hard to unlock
- Enemy weak spots too hard to hit
- Boss difficulty ramps up too much, bosses eat up tons of ammo
- Poor Zapper support
- Severe lack of extras
- Unpolished, lazy presentation
VALUE:
- I paid full price and while I don't regret it $40 new feels like the right price for this game. It's a rail shooter with co-op which means you can replay anytime and have fun, but the lack of extras and bonuses really hurt the replay value.
