This is a great game. There really isn't anything bad to say about it. Like Resident Evil 4 saved the survival horror genre, this game has saved the "zombie shooter" genre. The game is suprisingly deep for a rails shooter, with a fairly lengthy campaign and some actual replay value, the graphics are impressive, the level design is smart and entertaining, the cutscenes as usual are fantastic and the gameplay is amazingly crisp and responsive. Other than the random "WTF" moment that you'll run into with even the most perfect game, this game really is amazing!
Capcom is really on a roll with the wii. Between this, Zack and Wiki and the upcoming No More Heroes, they seem to be the ONLY third party company willing to take the time to make a quality game for the system.
Ok misconceptions debunked right off the bat. This imho (and by my guess a lot of others) is NOT a lightgun style shooter. It's slower paced, the gun controls are a little more forgiving, they purposefully put a cursor on the screen (I'll get into why in a minute) and you won't be doing any one shot kills anytime soon. The best way I can put it is Ghost Squad is more of an area 51 style game and RE:UC is more of a terminator 2 style game. In essence, it really does remind me of old analog gun games from the pacing and overall feel. Rest assured though, this is a GOOD thing. Lightgun games are quick, have very cheap enemies, no bosses to speak of (the ones that do have bosses do a pretty poor job at it) and consist of a lot of staring at a static background while enemies pop out from behind boxes. In this game you move around, you can look around (to a small degree) and you'll often find yourself shooting as you are moving through a stage in addition to the manditory "stop and clear the room" you'd expect from atradition RE game. Also the action sequences are back from re4 (quick do what it says on the screen or get smushed) and they work quite well, despite what some have been saying. (more on that later) They also do a great deal in regards to giving a simple rails shooter a lot more dept and sense of interaction, particularly in boss battles. Where ghost squad's action sequences feel tacked on and don't really effect the gameplay in any way, the way they are utilized in re:uc requires you to master them as they have a profound impact on gameplay.
The game is basically re 0-3 with all the crap cut out. This is a very good thing. The story is still fully intact as well as the best boss battles and sequences but the horrible gameplay mechanics and mind-numbingly long stages as well as unnecessary puzzle elements of the original games are removed. No longer do you have to do boring stuff like "Go through 20 rooms, stopping for 5 min in each room to kill all the enemies only to find a door that is locked.. having to go 15 rooms back killing zombies yet again, find a key, turn around again, kill zombies AGAIN and open the door." which only serves to artificially lengthen a game that should be shorter.
As I stated earlier, the game purposefully requires you to have a cross-hair on the screen. It becomes real apparent why shortly after you begin. One of the things that makes this shooter so much meat-ier is the lack of arcade-style icons and flashing targets. The characters look realistic throughout, with realistic lighting and textures applied. Aside from a health bar and an occasional health spray bottle, the hud is pretty much non-existant as well. So how is vital data dscovered? Through the cross hair of course! When you point the cursor at any viable target, the cross-hairs turn white in the middle. If you point at an item you can pick up, a "press Z" icon appears, if an enemy has a uber-sensitive spot, the cursor will either turn white or turn into a red dot respectively, depending upon how good of a spot it is. Also the amount of ammo left on a gun is displayed by a tiny circle of "bullets" around the crosshair, meaning you don't have to look away to tell how long before you need to reload. Any other action (like choosing a path, moving or dodging, ect) initiates a very obvious icon to appear on the screen, meaning you should never be confused as for what to do. That is if you can acutally read and understand common sense, which brings me to the controls.....
Why so much hate for the zapper on this game? The zapper works flawlessly on this game, even with the nunchuck in place. Aside from the obvious shooting mechanic, which obviously works well, there are some motion-control-specific stuff you can do which, at least imho works just fine if not better with the zapper, again, assuming you have a bit of common sense and understand how the nunchuck detects movement and how to properly hold the zapper. First off, when in close combat, when a zombie is about to chow down, or when something sticks to your face (damn leeches) you can utilize a knife by holding z while "slashing" the nunchuck at the screen. The nunchuck works on accelerometers, NOT true position tracking, so this is quite easy to pull off with the zapper and imho acutally feels at bit less hit and miss than seperately. The proper way to do it is to hold the back of the gun (nunchuck end) steady and swing the front of the gun in the direction of the slash, as if a bayonette was on the front of it, basically using the nunchuck as a pivot point. It works flawlessly every time, with 95% 1 to 1 matching of
the exact direction you swing the gun! It works better this way since the nunchuck is being quickly rotated instead of swung in the air, and the accel readings are smooth and constant, so the game can read them better. Again, I don't have a clue why people say you can't use the knife with the zapper because you obviously can. The other thing people complain about is the reloading. These people are just dumb. To reload you "shake the nunchuck" again, it isn't using positional tracking though, so by "shake" they actually mean do anything to give the accel values a qucik jump in any direction. So really, unless you really want to, shaking isn't involved. You can quickly aim offscreen and then back like in old school games and that will register, you can slap the butt of the gun, or my personal preference, you can FRIKKIN tap the analog stick with your thumb! Yes, it's THAT sensitive, so there's really no reason to sweat over reloading with the nunchuck in the zapper. Also I need to point out that if you are firing, run out of ammo and continue to hold down the trigger you automatically reload! So you'll rarely be reloading manually anyway, except in those rare breaks in the action when you want to get ready for the next room. You also have the ability to look around to a small degree. In wiimote mode you simply aim offscreen, but with the zappper/nunchuck you have a nice little analog stick to use. First off, I need to point out that this feature is essentially useless anyway. You can only look in about 5-10 degrees off the camera position and as soon as you quit looking the camera snaps back. Although sometimes you can get a SLIGHTLY better shot by looking around it isn't required. I've went through entire stages without even touching the stick, so that should tell you something. The wiimote version of this actually takes away from the gun feeling as now you are using the "gun" as a true mouse and the aiming is no longer 1 to 1. The final gesture you have to do I'll admit is slighty more difficult with the zapper. Sometimes, the action sequences require you to "wiggle" the nunchuck. By wiggle, I mean move left and right quickly. As you can imagine, it is a shade tougher in the zapper housing. It isn't impossible though. Basically we do the knife trick backwards, holding the front of the gun steady and wiggling the back. Admittedly this feels less natural than the other, but it works. I also need to point out that this gesture is never a requirement. None of the movement sequences utilize it, so worst case, if you mess it up in a boss fight you'll loose some health. So at least for me, there ar emore advantages to using the zapper than dis-advantages... your miles will vary of course but either way the controls are done quite nicely in either zapper modes (wiimote only mode sucks though).
You also have a c button which lets you quickly cycle through your weapons. Nothing much to say about that.
In addition to the regular game, you'll unlock UC missions, which are basically missions based on events that were talked about in the story in the original games but you didn't witness personally. These stages are basically re-hashes of the main story in terms of settings (you'll go through the same stage, but in a different order) but with re-arranged enemies, obviously a different story and set of cut-scenes and often different bosses. It sounds like artifical lengthening again, but actually it isn't that bad. The second time around the pacing tends to be MUCH quicker and since the stages in re:uc are expansive enough to rival those in re4 you never feel exactly like you are re-visiting the same stage as there are other rooms and such to explore.
Of course there is the usual "pick up random crap and collect it" bit in this game, in which you can pick up files. How you get them makes for an interesting gameplay choice. You see most files and secret items are hidden and the only way to find them is to shoot up the place. 9 times out of 10, the stuff is hidden in a lamp or light you need to shoot out. Of course, when you shoot the light, you can't see, so you are more vulnerable to attacks. It's pretty cool actually. Also keep in mind that it isn't required for you to collect this stuff, so it never slows down the gameplay.
Also returning from re4 is the weapons upgrade system, in which you can have your weapons worked on to increase their effectiveness. When you complete a stage you get a rating, based on how well you did. The better you did, the more stars you get (up to 3 per stage I think) you use this to purchase upgrades. Again, none of this is required, but it's nice to have.
All of this adds up to a very lengthy game. I'd say in terms of hours, if you do the uc missions, this game is almost as long as re4, which is pretty damn impressive considering it is an on-rails shooter. So unlike ghost squad, there's no w yyou can complain about getting your moneys worth on this one. The action never gets stale either. While you'll obviously run into the same minor enemies over and over, much like re4, just about the time you'd get bored with one type of enemy, they throw something else at you.
Hmm.. almost done... oh yeah.
The game is gorgeous. While there a few oddly polyginated goons, the levels set pieces and bosses look great, as well as the majority of the monsters (the howler monkey zombies look a tad blocky and when zombies munch on your face you can see a few polys). The game appears to be running on the re4 engine only on steroids. The textures are all hi res, the lighting is dynamic and there is a ton of bump mapping and siny stuff and what not. No complaints about the graphics at all as this is easily one of the best looking games on the wii, arguably better looking than smg in some instances. The bosses look particularly amazing.
Did I forget to mention the boss battles? They are frikkin sweet! Without question the best boss battles on a gun game ever. They are lengthy, they require actual aiming and action sequences are mixed in allowing you to dodge and move around to get a better shot. Plus the bosses themselves are wonderfully rendered and are just frikkin cool.... giant scorpions, giant snakes, giant bats, giant sharks (Man, I think umbrella has two divisions.. Division 1 makes the t-virus, Division 2 breeds giant animals!) ect.. A lot of the bosses from re 1 and 2 are a welcome return as this time they get a nice graphical overhaul and seeing as how you can actually AIM in this game they are a lot more fun to fight as well.
Only one minor complaint to be had. This game has a few "house of the dead" moments thrown in there which are annoying. By that I mean you'll spend a decent amount of time fending off leeches, snakes, and regular sized spiders that want to jump on your face. Now in this game it is a lot more tolerable because you have a knife you can knock em off with, but you are still using a full-sized gun to shoot at stuff the size of your credit card. I mean the snakes I can see, but if you saw a pile of leeches or spiders wouldn't you just step on them? Thankfully, you have grenades if you run out of patience.
So final verdict: If you like action games go buy this a quickly as humanly possible and enjoy yourselves! I think much like zack and wiki, capcom has revived a dead genre with this one and if nothing else, this game represents the future of where gun games are going, being to my knowledge the first gun game with gameplay taylored to the slower pace of a console.
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Topic: Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles Impressions. (Read 2816 times)
