The Resident Evil has evolved into something that barely even resembles itself.
Moving from its survival horror roots, and through Phyletic Gradualism, has changed into
something much more action than horror.
This is fully realised with Operation Raccoon City, which would only be considered a Resident
Evil game because of its title and some familiar locations.
You play as part of the Umbrella Security Service, a group of elite operatives that
are dropped into Raccoon City to destroy all evidence of Umbrella’s involvement.
But you are not the only ones out there.
Along the way you will run into members of Echo Six, who are out to expose Umbrella.
And also classic characters such as Jill Valentine, Leon Kennedy, and HUNK.
While this sounds like it could be interesting, it’s not.
You are a generic operative, with no real background.
You don’t really identify with the characters or the missions, which boils down to pressing
a button in front of a filing cabinet.
The gameplay is at least more interesting, but not by much.
The cover-based squad shooting plays like recent entries, with the over the shoulder
perspective only now you can move while shooting.
This makes the game feel fundamentally different, and eliminates much of the tension and replaces
it with straight action.
The cover system is much more frustrating than intuitive.
You take cover by moving towards it and not with a button press.
This leads to taking cover when you just want to walk down the hall.
The damage system is terrible, with some enemies going down in a couple shots with other taking
forever.
The boss battles mix things up a little, but don’t bring the tension that you can see
they were trying for.
The enemy AI is simply pitiful, only outmatched by your squad’s AI.
They will run into mines and right into bullets.
Thankfully you can replace them with online friends.
This makes things better, but doesn’t fix the fundamental problems.
The locations are too dark to see any detail, which is a shame because the game looks fairly
good.
The game just doesn’t offer anything special.
It barely passes as part of the Resident Evil franchise, the story and characters are uninteresting,
and the gameplay is just boring.
The best thing about this game is that this a side-story and not part of the main canon,
so the franchise doesn’t have this as an eternal black spot.