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.)

Resident Evil: Project Resistance

Knock knock, open up the door, it's real!

In the immortal words of Alan Partridge "Can I shock you?", I am a huge Resident Evil fan. (What!) You may have started to pick on that little personal nugget after I, during my piece on video game zombies, dedicated an entire blog towards their depiction in various RE properties. I really sealed the deal over the weekend, however, when I purchased 5 Resident Evil games in a mad game-buying spree. (Yeah, two of them were technically re-purchases of the 'HD edition', but the sentiment still stands.) So you can imagine how excited I was when I heard that Capcom had unveiled their newest Resident Evil game at Tokyo Games show. Which one would it be? Resident Evil 8? Resident Evil 3 remake? and would it use the stunning Resident Evil engine? To which the answer would be; A new one, no, no and, thank goodness, yes.

Fans were (treated?) to a look at the, dubiously named, "Resident Evil: Project Resistance" through a teaser trailer and a few gameplay looks. What we saw was a game that very much seemed intent on trying something new, whilst actually not achieving that whatsoever. 'Project Resistance' is a asymmetrical multiplayer experience starring a cast of unlikely heroes (Who, as many have pointed out, look like a new-age mystery crew) as they work their way around a hostile space that is being manipulated by the mysterious 'Mastermind', who is yet another player. Gameplay seems to pan out as having the players undergo some task, like smashing up a number of Biocores (Whatever that is), whilst the Mastermind uses their game-creator like power to place zombies around the map in order to disrupt the heroes.

Resistance most closely resembles a game that never came out; Fable Legends. That game would have seen players taking control of some heroes from the Fable lore (Fable's incredibly shallow lore.) and trying to make their way through a gameplay scenario devised on-the-fly by another player. It's kind of like a live version of 'Super Mario Maker', with the Mastermind, or 'Villian' in the terms of Fable legend, having to play a resource game whilst the survivors, or heroes, play a team-objective game. However, Fable Legends never made it launch (Despite getting a full E3 reveal and everything). Heck, the studio behind Fable, Peter Molyneux's Lionhead Studios, were shut down whilst working on this game. (Although to be fair, that decision was made my Microsoft and probably wasn't solely due to them making this kind of game. If that were otherwise, this would certainly be cause for alarm.)

I say this kind of game is 'nothing new' because we already have a semi-popular horror-themed asymmetrical experience in 'Dead by Daylight'. That game had 4 players cooperate in a typically horrific locale in order to escape and not be sacrificed to 'The Entity' by a revolving cast of horror movie villains. Then there was the, less popular, 'Friday the 13th: The Videogame', which had players assume the role of camp consulars and be hunted down by one of the various movie Jason's. What I'm trying to convey here, is that the medium is already crowded with this kind of niche game and they are all struggling to remain relevant. I named the two most recognizable, and successful, games, but there are a cart's worth behind them of similar concepts that quickly dried up. However, it is true, none of them brandished the recognizable Resident Evil logo.

As a Survivor, the meat of the game comes from utilizing your roles in order to work together and survive the nightmare. You have your usual affair of specializations for this, your Tank, Medic, Hacker and... the other one; all of whom make a powerhouse of a team when you are together. You'll have to support each other whilst being met with traps, automatically locking doors, flickering lights and a huge number of zombies. Capcom decided to bring back all the zombies from Resident Evil 2, including Ivys, Dogs, Armoured Zombies, Lickers and, the big man himself, Mr. X (He's gonna give it to ya.) Gameplay has only shown off a couple of uninteresting indoor maps so far (Places where it is easier to control the level of lighting) but seeing as this Project reeks of 'games-as-a-service' I'm expecting the release of traditional RE locations down the line. (As well as RE characters.)

For a Mastermind your task is simple, divide and conquer. As a team, the survivors are far too powerful to defeat with all their synergistic abilities. Luckily, you have a bunch of tools at your disposal to ensure that the team isn't always together. You look around the map though cameras (similar to the 'Hacker' mode from 'Battlefield: Hardline') and mess around with doors, camera turrets, lights and elevators in order to get your band of heroes to be confused and ready for the kill. Then come the zombies. The Mastermind is put in control of a deck of cards that can be spent to summon an enemy of some type, or buff an already placed enemy. Each action has a power cost (with an acceptable maximum pool of 10 'power points' at any given time) requiring for strategy and planning in order to overcome your foes.

Most exciting of all the new abilities, however, and the one that the advertising team really wants to push, is the ability for The Mastermind to take over zombies. This means that, for the first time ever (As far as I am aware) Resident Evil fans can control the stars of the series, the undead themselves. This means that you can really get into the action of tearing of a college student's face (Sorry Claire) by using all of that zombies abilities in order to throw a wrench in the survivor's plans. (Similar to the 'play as the enemy' mode from Left 4 Dead, Dying Light and 'PREY: Typhon Hunter'.) This also means that players have the chance to don the cape and fedora of the least conspicuous assassin of all time; Mr. X, and pummel human-beings to death as him.

All of this is achieved through the robust power of the RE engine, and that means that this game already has one advantage over all of those potential competitors that I named earlier: It looks beautiful. The RE Engine was conceived during the creation of Resident Evil 7, with the intention of creating a life-like environment with great atmospheric controls. (essential for crafting an effective horror game) One of my personal favourite features of the RE Engine, however, is it's ability to apply damage layering on a model in order to create some of the most fantastically dynamic structural damage that I've ever seen in a video game. This was shown off, to great effect, In Resident Evil 7 against the, tough-to-kill, Jack Baker, and would go on to become my biggest selling-point for all the undead in the 'Resident Evil 2 Remake'. To see this Engine make a return in a multiplayer environment is a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

Fans haven't all be as excited as I am, however, with some taken to divorcing their displeasure on the official series' Reddit. (Which I happen to be a regular browser of.) Cries of "This isn't a true Resident Evil game!" were voiced alongside the general disgruntled vibe that arises everytime Capcom opens their mouth and 'Resident Evil 3 Remake' doesn't come out of it. Discourse went so far that one of Capcom's Producers; Matt Walker, took to the forum of the Internet (Twitter) in order to defend the game, calling it "Survival Horror at it's core". (Actually he said "its" but I felt that an apostrophe was needed.) Mat started his tweet thread by noting "Been seeing a lot of people who are not pleased with- Project Resistance." Before explaining his own opinion on the matter. "My take: we as a company need to continue to branch out and try to offer up new things - If we just continue to offer up the same thing over and over again, people will gradually lose interest with what we’re making." (Which is such a 'producer' thing to say!)

Joking aside, I understand what Matt is trying say there whilst I hope that he understands that there are incredibly valid reasons for the community's concerns. The very idea of "We have to try something new in order to keep the franchise fresh." is what gave us the weird; Resident Evil 4, the inconsistent; Resident Evil 5; and the, jack-of-all-trades master-of-none; Resident Evil 6. (And yes, they were 3 of the 5 games that I recently re-bought in HD. RE 4 Leon is still best Leon.) Not to mention that fact that, everytime Resident Evil has tried to go multiplayer, it has ended in disaster.

Who remembers 'Operation: Raccoon City'? That was a 4 person 'what-if' story during the events of RE 2, in which players took the mantle of 4 Umbrella operatives, (With gear that was incredibly advanced consider the Raccoon City incident occurred in 1998.) as they tried to erase all evidence of Umbrella's involvement in the outbreak. (Note to self: Write a blog about how scatter-brained Umbrella's attempts at 'damage control' were for this outbreak.) The there was 'Umbrella Corps', a third-person shooter built on the bones of 'Resident Evil: Revelations 2' and catered towards the (Urgh) E-Sports crowd. (The less said about that game, the better.)

Fans were just starting to mourn at the loss of the Resident Evil franchise when 'Biohazard 7: Resident Evil' popped up and granted the series a second life. (See what I did there?) Finally, the game came back to traditional, great, survival horror experience; something that fans had been begging for since 'Code: Veronica X' (Which is another of the games that I bought. It's going to be my first time too!) Resident Evil 7 didn't perform amazingly, however, so people were worried that Capcom might relapse despite the critical acclaim that the game earned. Fears were only put to rest once the brilliant 'Resident Evil 2 Remake' dropped. (One of the only games that I have ever pre-ordered.)

I'm sure that Capcom want to change up their portfolio every now and again, but Resident Evil fans are so tired with their favourite series being 'ground-zero' for hair-brained (and often unsuccessful) experimentation. That is exactly what 'Project: Resistance' is, an experiment. I don't mean that as a play on the title, either. Capcom have shared that 'Resistance' is more of an idea then a set-in-stone product. Therefore, despite the impending closed Beta, the Project's fate is very much in limbo regarding whether or not it will ever see the light of day. (It's at least nice to see developers be up front and open about this stuff every now and again.)

Despite my ample misgivings, I will admit that the game looks like it might be fun for an hour or two. (Judging purely by footage that I have seen pop up.) I'm just not sure how sustainable this type of game will ultimately end up being. That's the problem with Asymmetric multiplayer games; once the gimmick wears off, it is all to easy for the fanbase to wander too. What happens when you have players who only want to play as The Mastermind? They leave once it's their turn to be a survivor. This sort of mentality makes it hard for a game like this to foster the sort of dedicated fanbase that Fortnite and Overwatch have and Apex Legends had. I suppose that the only solution is to watch from the sidelines and see how this 'Project' turns out; will it be a revolution in asymmetrical horror experiences or the first sign that Capcom are beginning to slip back into their old 'throw anything at the wall and see what sticks' habits.