Resident Evil Resistance Review

Alliteration!

Seeing as how I have a quick free day I decided to do a quick review over the companion game to Resident Evil 3, but first; some history! Late last year rumours started to arise of a new Resident Evil title that was very much an experiment from Capcom in that they weren't really sure if this would ever actually see the light of day and based it's survival only early impressions and hands-on from the Ambassadors program. It would be a multiplayer title which made use of the amazing RE engine but with an asymmetric gameplay system wherein one player would play a 'dungeon master' so to speak, and everyone else would be survivor attempting to escape in one piece. (So essentially a Resident Evil remake of that Fable Legends game that never released.)

It seems that the game ultimately made the cut as with the launch of the full Resident Evil 3 comes access to Resistance and as such I've had the chance to play quite a bit of it between my sessions with Russian Supermodel Jill. (That's what I'm calling her now, and you can't stop me.) So is the game any good, and does it have a future? That's a curious question... In today's landscape of Online games there are a handful of multiplayer horror titles that do well-to-moderately well for a while, most of which feature some asymmetrical gameplay, and some in the exact same style as Resistance's, but those titles are mostly dedicated horror affairs and although Resident Evil is a popular franchise I wonder if this version of it will take off.

In terms of gameplay; as a Survivor you take control of one of 6 survivors with their own set of skills both passive and active, some of which being more helpful than others. (January's skill to hinder the Mastermind's efforts is practically invaluable.) You are given a map to traverse full of deadly zombies and limited resources whilst you try to solve a 'puzzle lock' which basically devolves down to one of three task. (Either finding three items in the map, playing 'protect the hacker' with your teammates, or playing tower defence against the Mastermind.) Along the way your efforts are hindered as the enemy player (known as the Mastermind) who bombards you with traps, extra spawned in zombies, taunting lines and even the occasional arrival of one of those bigboy BOWs like Mr X or William Birkin. Survivors need to stick together in order to progress and merely survive the onslaught ahead of them as they are constantly racing against the clock and any bit of damage that a survivor incurs will count against the time. Should time run out, the match is over and the Mastermind wins.

Survival is dependant creating an appropriate build for you character with the skill customisation outside the match, spending your starting Umbrella credits on the right resources to help you early game, picking up the right supplies during each match and keeping ahead of the traps. As you get into the rhythm of things you'll start to learn how to use your character skills to the best possible advantage by doing things like refraining to manually revive characters as Valerie when she can just lay down her heal-stick and get it done that way; or shutting down all of the Mastermind's skills as January once your team is about to make a rush to exit the immediate area. The developers did a solid job of making the skills feel useful and situational to a degree where you actually start to learn how to play as each character. I don't think there's as much depth behind this as you'll find in a hero shooter, mind, but there's enough to keep the casual player busy for a while.

As a Mastermind your job is quite a bit more simple, all you have to do is work down of the time of the survivors until it runs out and they are all rendered unconscious. Of course, the best way to do that is to kill survivors which knocks off an eye-watering 30 seconds to their time pool, but simply poking and prodding is enough to whittle them down. To this end you have a pool of 'cards' which spawn traps, enemies or actions that you can deploy provided you have enough energy credits. These cards are all picked in the customisation screen and allow players to plan out their 'build' before the fact. I've actually seen an interesting amount of variation through this set-up where some Masterminds try to go as many zombie dogs in the arena as possible (Which is my preferred playstyle), some spawn tough zombies in enclosed spaces, and one didn't even rely on zombies at all and just used camera actions. (Which was surprisingly effective seeing as how he wiped the floor with us.)

The Mastermind need not spend all of their time cooped up behind a desk and watching the action through camera's, however, and each posses the ability to take control of a zombie and attack players directly. Although, whilst doing this does provide the players with a super powered zombie to deal with it also limits how much control over the map that the Mastermind has, meaning a learned team knows to use such an opportunity to keep the Mastermind distracted. This also goes for BOWs that can be deployed, meaning that there's an interesting risk/reward proposition that is always in question in this game. Also, each Mastermind is based on a minor main series villain which is quite interesting from a lore nut's perspective. (I love actually getting to see Ozwell Spencer go nuts.)

So how does it all work together? Actually incredibly well! Playing as a survivor is pretty chaotic and hectic at first but once you start getting into the head of your opponents there grows interesting strategy to take into account. "Oh, this room is full of zombies so there's a decent chance of there being a key item in this room." or "Oh, this door was locked so there's likely going to be trap behind it, better not stumble in unprepared." As a Mastermind there's the interesting dilemma of wanting to drown you opponents in zombies whilst being acutely aware of the fact that every one they kill will grant them extra time, so you need to rely on ambush's, trap placement and just general map moderation. I'd be lying if I didn't say I came to this game thinking it would just be a lazy tack-on but came away genuinely impressed and enjoying my time, that's as both a survivor and a Mastermind.

There's are some connectivity issues that do need to be addressed, however, such as the way in which each match is hosted by the Mastermind, so a bad connection will bleed onto all the Survivor's experiences as well. There's also the issue that most of these games have where you need a full lobby of 5 players in order to start a match, which becomes annoying as a lot of players want to que in teams for the best experience, which can mean a solitary player could be waiting around for up to 5 minutes to get people for a game and that's always pretty annoying when you just want a quick match. That being said, those are all ancillary gripes for a game that I think it a genuine decent amount of fun and I hope manages to gain and maintain an audience. There is a little bit of a content deficiency with what's on offer at the moment, but that does leave an opportunity for growth that I hope the Capcom team take advantage of. In conclusion, I whole heartedly recommend Resident Evil Resistance if you're looking for a new asymmetric multiplayer experience that's as much about getting in the heads of your opponent as it is about actual skill with the game. (Just don't expect a lake of depth to drown yourself in.)