Resident Evil: Outbreak has been a much talked about sequel in the series. Its main pull when first announced was that it was to be the first fully online survival horror game, where you and three other humans could play through the game’s five scenarios. If you died you turned into a zombie, and could hunt down the remaining players, and even play dead on the floor, wait for them to go past then bite them on the ankle! It all sounded great, and the game proved very popular in Japan and USA. Popular enough, in fact, for a sequel to be made that has just been released in the Far East. However, for reasons which I’d really like to know, the PAL version of ‘Outbreak has had the online component stripped from the game, so it’s a completely solo experience, with computer-controlled AI making up the two other characters in your party (not sure what happened to the fourth player).
As I said, the game is set over five scenarios, which are set in various times between the first three games, RE1, RE2, and Nemesis. The areas are nicely varied, from a burning hotel to a zombie-filled university. One scenario even puts you into the area Leon and Clare visited in RE2, which I thought was quite neat, and connected the stories nicely. Your character, along with the two players that join you, are infected with the fatal virus developed by the sinister Umbrella Corporation that is turning everyone into zombies, and this is how your health gauge works. Over time, the amount of infected cells in your body rise, and when the counter hits 100% it’s ‘groan and shuffle’ time for you. The meter creeps up slowly, but will go up very quickly if you get bitten or attacked by a zombie, dog, Licker, Hunter or any other ‘Outbreak’ resident. You can pick up various medicines that will slow the process down, but basically unless you finish the scenario in an hour or so, you’re finished.
There are eight playable characters to choose from, and they have different skills, start-up items and abilities. Characters range from a cop (with a decent handgun to start with), a woman who can open small locks, and a character that is good at healing people. The game also randomly picks two AI characters for you in each scenario, so the game varies nicely each time you play.
The controls have changed slightly since previous RE games, and using the analog stick now gives much more control over your character. You can still use the D-pad for traditional control if you wish, but I found the game plays much better with the left stick. The rest of the controls are the same, with R1 aiming at enemies and R2 aiming at objects. You still have to press a button (circle) to run, and X is shoot. The right analog stick is used for communicating with the two other characters, so you can shout “Help me!” or “Come here!” to them and they will come to assist you. They don’t always obey though, and some of the characters have quite comedic responses. If you press L2 you get a further four commands too. Your AI companions aren’t too bright however, and half the time will happily stand there as a rabid dog goes to work on their leg.
Capcom have decided to not change the main game mechanics for this sequel, so you still need to have the item juggling skills you learnt on PlayStation in 1996. Out of the eight playable characters, only one of them can carry more than four items at a time. And this is where the game’s flaws start to appear. As the game was designed to be played online, with a total of four people, that’s a total of sixteen items slots to play with, as you’d work in a team. Although you can still use the AI’s item slots to hold stuff, half the time they have disappeared off to some random location, so they are no use to you. So for the most part, you’re on your own, with only your four item slots. This requires even more juggling of items in the inventory screen. There are no magic item boxes anymore either. Unfortunately, being an online (offline) game, Capcom don’t want you to pause the game, so whilst you’re in the inventory screen, the game is still running instead of pausing like every other Resident Evil game in the past. The inventory screen is see-through, so you can see the zombies running towards whilst you are s-l-o-w-l-y reloading each bullet in your gun, or shuffling items between Yoko’s handy extra 4-slot rucksack (although you can’t ‘use’ items in her bag, you have to move them to the main slots first - annoying isn’t the word). So you have to run away, go somewhere safe and reload. You can’t move whilst in the inventory screen like you can in Phantasy Star Online – that would’ve helped no end.
This works sometimes (and not wanting to give away too much about the game), but later in the game there are extremely fast-moving enemies that follow you around (in 90% of the rooms in one particular scenario, in fact). The inventory system then gets incredibly annoying, as you’re desperately trying to get health or shuffle weapons and you’re being battered by the undead at the same time. Pressing L1 will reload your weapon, but it’s very slow indeed, and you can’t walk or run at the same time as reloading. Back when Resident Evil was first released on PlayStation, you’d forgive this sort of thing, but for the inventory system to still be the same way eight years later really is crazy. Why does a key take as much space up as a rocket launcher Capcom?
Well at least you don’t need to carry typewriter ribbons anymore, as the machines dotted around have an infinite supply. Fans of the series will go along with it, but I can’t see many newcomers enjoying the system to be honest. Worst of all though, is the loading between rooms, cut-scenes and FMV. Between each room (remember the door loading sequences? Well, they are no more, now it’s a blank screen with the name of the upcoming room on screen) you get a fifteen second load, which is incredibly slow, and even between cut scenes you get a 5-10 second load screen. Think about that when starting the mission “Hellfire”, which is set in a burning hotel, with many, many rooms to explore. You’ll want to pull your hair out at times, especially if you go into a room by accident.
I am not sure why the load times are so bad, but it may have something to do with the amount of detail in the levels. Everything looks really, really nice, and it’s a fully 3D world, like RE Code: Veronica. It doesn’t look as nice as the GAMECUBE Resident Evil games, but it is very impressive. In one scenario, you go outside near a large river with a huge bridge, towering above you. The sense of scale is incredible, and in the distance you can see the city skyline, with a mist hanging in the air. You then follow a huge metal staircase up to the ground level (you come out on river level), and it looks awesome. Effects such as fire, ice and smoke are lovely too, and really bring the levels to life. Character models are well detailed, with reasonably good animations, and the zombies shuffle very realistically. There is a lot going on, which does at least go some way towards explaining why the load times are so long. The FMV sequences are some of the best I have ever seen, and as good as the ones seen in Capcom's recently released Onimusha 3.
The game won’t take you long to complete. I finished it in about five and a half hours, which even by Resident Evil standards is pretty short. However, as the game has eight playable characters, two randomly generated characters to play with each time and a vast amount of stuff to pick-up, find and unlock, this will keep you very busy for a long time. There is a lot of replay value here I feel, and a RE veteran will want to go through with every character to see all the endings etc. It would just be nice to have the option to play it online, and if Capcom do release RE: Outbreak File 2 over here, it would be nice to see the feature added, or at least a Zombie Revenge style multiplayer – that would work really well, either in single or split-screen play. As it stands though, I enjoyed this, even with its annoyances, but until the series evolves, like Resident Evil 4 looks like it’s going to do, it will only appeal to the real diehard fans of the series, and you can’t get away from that fact.
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