Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City. Mediocrity be thy name.

    

     The Resident Evil series has always been an enjoyment and a solid (and original) addition to the survival horror genre. So when I first heard about Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City I was excited. Operation Raccoon City takes away more of the single player experience found in RE games, and makes a game that relies on a team based and tactical style. This game takes place between RE 2 and 3, and you play as a member of the Umbrella Corporation. Your goal is to gather virus samples and destroy any evidence of Umbrella's involvement in the outbreak chaos. You can choose to play as one of five Umbrella agents, and can switch characters between levels. I ended up playing the entire campaign as the same character, but that's because I wanted to level up that specific character's abilities. Which brings me to my next part.

     While you play the game you will earn experience points that can be used to unlock special abilities and weapons to use in the game. Some of the skills include longer sprint time, cloaking, and being able to disguise yourself as a zombie for a short period of time. This adds a little bit of a reason to continue playing so you can max out abilities or get better weapons. There are a variety of weapons including: pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, launchers, and grenades. For me, I just stuck with the assault rifles. Some familiar items from the RE series are around such as using green herbs to heal and first aid spray. If you or a teammate get infected you can use an anti-viral spray to fix that. These items as well as weapons and ammo can be found throughout each level.

     Now I have some complaints about this game. First of all the A.I. of your teammates is pretty hit and miss. At times my teammates would help out by firing on enemies coming from the side or tossing grenades. Other times I would catch them simply standing there or running off to some other area. All the while I'm trying to fend off a giant wave of zombies, lickers, or other enemies by myself. This takes away from the whole "team" vibe. Do yourself a big favor and play the campaign online with some friends. This will help tremendously! Also, the hit detection of your weapons seems off at times. Sometimes an enemy would be taken out with one or two hits. Then a few seconds later the same type of enemy would require a full clip to be take down.

     The cover system takes some getting use to as well. Unlike other cover based shooters, you don't press a button to take cover. That's because it's an auto cover system. This means you just run into a wall or crate and your character will automatically take cover. Sometimes this works and other times you take cover on accident and it gets frustrating. Even more strange is that when you are behind small cover you cannot vault over it. You actually have run around the obstacle which is stupid. To me this is just poor programming and execution.

     As mentioned before, you can play the campaign in four player co-op. In addition to that there are several multiplayer modes to try out. The Heroes mode allows you to play as iconic characters from the RE games, and then there's your standard team deathmatch mode. There's also a spin on capture the flag where your team must capture samples of the virus. Then there's a survival mode where you fight waves of enemies until a helicopter comes to pick you up. All of these modes can be fun, but the fun doesn't seem to last very long. 

     I don't want you to think that this game is complete garbage because it's not. Despite the control and A.I. issues I actually enjoyed this game. The graphics aren't amazing but they aren't the worst, and the sound design is alright. If you go into it knowing that it's a different take on the Resident Evil series you should be okay. DO NOT expect this to be like all other previous RE games! Again, if you have some friends online or can find decent people to play the campaign with, it will make a world of difference. The multiplayer modes are fun, but don't last a long time. The developers have added some dlc which helps but it's tough to say how much this will add to the game's longevity. At the end of the day Operation Raccoon City is a mediocre game that with a little more time in the oven, could have been better.

Final Verdict: 6/10

Written by: Alter Ego 83