Wiirior Score: 7.5
- Better than alot of games!!
The Beautiful:
- -Controls are super simple to pick up!
- -Introduces a few totally original idea shifts to on-rails shooter gameplay!!
- -Totally recaptures the Resident Evil look,feel, & essence!!!
The Ugly:
- -On-rails shooter gameplay can sometimes feel restrictive.
- -One-shot kills can occasionally feel random.
- -Some of the music undermines the atmosphere.
Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles for the Wii makes it the latest in a continuing sting to use the dark overtones and grizzly zombies from Capcom's number-one survival horror franchise for the sole purpose of a point-and-shoot action game. It's also the super successful, due to the number of factors, including a definitely more improved & intuitive control scheme with some authentic locations. Umbrella Chronicles has the very texture of a genuine good 'ol Resident Evil game, but it essence it basically handles like an arcade light-gun shooter. This makes it simple to pick up, but it also has a fair share of tired genre conventions. Nonetheless, there are some exciting moments, and the Resident Evil minutiae it contains should thrill fans of the series and fill them with absolute glee!!
Alot of this title's authenticity spawns from the truth that rather than weave an entirely original storyline, Umbrella Chronicles runs you through some key events of the first few Resident Evil titles, which the game presents as a report on the final hours of the now-felled Umbrella Corporation, the evil conglomerate mainly responsible for all these golly-darned zombies. Over the course of the game, you will revisit the events of Resident Evil 0, the original Resident Evil, and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. So get prepared cause it's an excellent retelling!! The narrative is understandably truncated (no surprise), and the game focuses more on establishing a grimy atmosphere and re-creating some specific, memorable moments than consistent storytelling.
Capping
it all off is a brand new scenario that takes place in 2003 and sees
the reunion of the original Resident Evil tag team of Chris Redfield
and Jill Valentine while they slay down the last vestiges of Umbrella
in a frozen tundra of an industrial complex, which is exciting but
could be a tad better. There are also a number of side missions that
often revisit environments from the main missions, showing you what
characters like Rebecca Chambers and fan-favorite Albert Wesker were up
to at numerous points in the series. Considering that most games of
this nature tend to last a scant hour or two, it's a little impressive
that it can take more than four hours to complete a single run-through
of all the missions. Yes four hours so this one does have some meat to
it!
Resident Evil: Survivor and Resident Evil: Dead Aim, the two US-released light-gun games that preceded Umbrella Chronicles, both made some daring attempts to cross-breed traditional arcade-style light-gun games and their more dynamic kin, first-person shooters. There are still traces of this in Umbrella Chronicles, such as looking around a little bit using the Nunchuk's analog stick, but most of the touches that this game puts on the light-gun formula are for the effect of making the experience feel more Resident Evil. What really defines the action is its methodical pacing. Don't get me wrong! There are still plenty of moments where monsters will appear out of seemingly nowhere and run at you at full speed, but most of the time you're dealing with the predicament that's key to all Resident Evil games: alot of golly-darn zombies, not much ammo.
While
your standard pistol has unlimited ammo, it becomes increasingly
ineffective as the game wears on, forcing you to rely on other weaponry
that can &
will eventually run out of ammo, including shotguns, automatic weapons,
grenades, RPGs, and the like. Oh those great weapons :). These weapons
can also be upgraded with stars that you earn over much of the course
of the game, increasing their ammo capacity as well as their stopping
power. There's a slight kinky dink in the upgrade system, though, in
that a lot of the weapons appear in only one of the games, limiting the
usefulness of upgrading any one weapon by more than one or two levels.
But maybeee they just want to make it a little harder for the true
hardcore RE gamers! The game attempts to encourage precision over speed
by giving every enemy a very tiny weak spot that, when struck, produces
a one-hit kill, though it's so small that the line between luck and
precision becomes pretty crossed and tangled. Either way, it's still
morbidly satisfying when you're able to pop a zombie's head like a
fragile balloon and watch the body stumble around aimlessly for a
second as blood spurts out of its putrid neck hole. Cool gore!!!
Flying in the face of ammo conservation is the treasure-hunt aspect of the game. Gotta make it diverse right? The levels are filled with breakable objects, such as light fixtures and wooden crates, which can contain herbs and sprays for restoring your life, weapons, and documents filled with crazy Resident Evil backstory. It's the type of stuff that fans of the series go nutsoidz for, and it's mainly the reason most opt for playing through missions more than once.
In addition to your firepower, you've got some serios close-quarters combat abilities, which are surprisingly effective. If a zombie gets close enough to grab hold of you, a quick shake of the Wii Remote triggers a counterattack that instantly kills the aggressor. It doesn't work on anyone other than the standard zombie, and even then they won't always attack you in a way that you can counter, but there are definitely times where it's preferable to shooting them. You've also got a knife that you can use by holding the A button and slashing the Wii Remote around all willy-nilly oh silly, and it makes short work of smaller enemies like leeches, ravens, spiders, bees, and bats--enemies that are far more difficult to hit with a gun. A very cool aspect of the game!! Incidentally, all this remote shaking makes use of the new Zapper peripheral less than ideal.
Amid all of the zombie murder that accounts for the volume of the gameplay, there are little interactive cinematic moments, à la Resident Evil 4, where you have to speedily press a button or shake the Wii Remote to dodge some kind of danger. They're generally not that hard, especially since there's always just a single action to pull off, rather than a series. Still, failing one of these moments results in a hit to your health bar, and possibly death. So be careful soldier! There are some fairly nasty, protracted boss fights that employ the same mechanics to better effect. You'll see what we mean!!
Though
Umbrella Chronicles doesn't look anywhere near as nice as, say,
Resident Evil 4, it manages to capture the dirty, undersaturated,
run-down feel of the series. Basically it's the more grimier version of
the games!! Which some people have been looking for!! Like us!! Despite
some admittedly less-than-pretty looking textures, the environments
pack in a good amount of detail, and the various zombified people,
dogs, monkeys, sharks, snakes, and plants look appropriately
fetid.Trust us they look cool!! It's too bad that much of the spooky
tension that has been a Resident Evil hallmark gets sucked out of
Umbrella Chronicles by an overbearing soundtrack that sounds like it
belongs in a different, faster-paced game. But hey nobody's perfect and
it doesn't much hinder the game. The voice acting is a better fit, with
the role of Albert Wesker, who serves as the game's narrator, being
particularly entertaining.
Resident
Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is solid for an on-rails shooter, a genre
that admittedly becomes less relevant with each passing year, and the
strength of the ambiance, the quantity of Resident Evil detail, and
some fun little gameplay touches make it better. If you don't care for
either Resident Evil or light-gun games, this won't change your mind,
but if you do, it's a pretty fun wiiild ride. Trust us, we went for the
ride!!!