Remember how House of the Dead felt to play in the arcades? Remember that rush of excitement or surprise that lurked around every corner? Yeah, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is not that. Actually, think of those good times in House of the Dead, imagine the opposite, and that's what you have in Umbrella Chronicles.
And you know what the surprising part is? It's not even the Wii's fault. In fact, this game COULD work on the Wii if done right. If there's an FPS style that can function correctly on this system, it's one in which you are on rails -- a game like Rayman proved that to me.
Check out my full impressions after the jump.
Let's first get this dirty stuff out of the way: Of course the graphics and sound are not up to par. We expect that, right? While the look of the game certainly was dark, it just lacked that real polish that you'd like to see in a "next-gen" game. Besides a large snake that popped up during the demo, there was really nothing that made you sit back in eye-stimulating delight.
You know how when you see something you'll nudge a pal, saying, "hey, did you see that? Cool, huh?" Yeah, none of that was there. The game was just bland, at best.
In fact, the enemies and environments of Umbrella Chronicles were just plain ugly. Certainly a limitation of the Wii, but nothing a little time and effort couldn't have helped quench. While developers may be be limited by the technology, that's no reason to just abandon all hope -- the fact God of War 2 looks as it does is a perfect example.
So, yeah, we all knew that would happen, but what I didn't know would happen was how boring the game actually felt to play. There was no rush, no excitement, no anticipation for something that may surprise you. The game felt slow, sluggish and extremely forced. All I could think to myself while playing was, "Why am I standing here playing this?"
And speaking of forced, let's touch on the controls. In the build we were given to play, you essentially only use the Wiimote. Not a problem, you would think, because like I said, the game is on rails. But, when you're forced to reload by shaking the remote (you know, the thing you're trying to aim with), the whole thing feels like a massive failure in game design.
Why in the world would you choose to map a reload to something that is meant to be your main way of playing? For example, would you ever consider reloading in a game like Halo by moving one of the sticks in a circle? No, you wouldn't.
Hopefully this major flaw will be fixed by the developers with either a remap of the function or incorporating the nunchuck as a reload option, ala Rayman.
As far as the story, obviously we couldn't tell if there was one in the demo we were handed. But apparently, this one is deep and closes out the series. Capcom did promise to have something much more meaningful with this edition, but we'll see about that.
Overall, the game is bad right now. But hey, so was Elebits right? And you may be shocked by this, but the game could actually be worthwhile for the Wii and something you'd want to have. It's the kind of game that I could think and would want to work on this system. I don't want to be relegated to just party and non-games. I'd like to see something like House of the Dead work on the Wii, this just doesn't do it right now.
All the developers have to do is take a step back, look at what they have, and improve and tweak those big problem areas. The foundation is there, we just need some better window dressings.
Contest:
6:12 PM on 04.14.2007
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Yea, me too. Capcom, stop with the RE FPSer's, they don't work and yes, that includes the Wii.
Other reviews I read, mention using the nunchuk.
Wired's Chris Kohler really liked it and mentioned the nunchuk was used to look around.
"By using the analog stick, you can look around, which you pretty much have to do in order to hit every zombie and evil dog and other horrible monsters."
Whats up with that? Were there different control schemes available?
He also went on to say,
"The biggest surprise of Capcom's recent media event was that Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles was actually playable. Another pleasant surprise was that it was fun. I practically had a perma-grin frozen on my face."
I wonder why he was grinning when this sucked so hard.
Thats why I come to destructiod, to get the most negative opinion of the Wii possible, just to balance out all the unbiased stuff I've been reading everywhere else on the net.
You never let me down.
Here's hoping for the remaining 70%..
As far as what others think, that's fine. I'm giving you my impression.
Anyway, it's no wonder you hated it when you couldn't figure out the controls so you couldn't look around. I imagine that was pretty important to the experience.
The nunchuck is basically just used to look around for hidden goodies, right? Shaking the chuck to reload would make a lot more sense. Hopefully they'll switch that. I love zombies and shooting things, so with luck they'll end up improving this before release.
I really want to see a House of the Dead collection on Wii. Hello Sega, mind taking a break from raping Sonic's corpse and making it happen?
That said, if the game comes with some sweet pistol-like add-on for the Wii-mote, I'd be all over this.
Where is it Nintendo?
@Deiga what if they remove the shotguns and make it lasers...or better yet, phasers, Star Trek on the Wii ftw! haha.
here's your answer:
http://www.gamestop.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=802669
This game is coming out in MONTHS. Is that when i should come back to the post and point out that Summa omitted an important detail in the control scheme that EVERY SINGLE other hands on made a point to mention? Ok, cool, I'll bookmark this thread and come back and comment in 4 months. Yep, thats a great idea. I wish I had thought of it.
Anywho, everyone is just blasting on the wii, and it's like I said, there are things I like about it, and things I dislike. I do know beyond a doubt, summa is right on one thing, this game doesn't look that great. The wii is capable of more than people realize, it all ends at lazy developers.
To be honest, I'm sure of the reasoning behind the 'wii hate wii' attitude of destructoid, I have 2 Theory's, 1.) Summa is just a hardcore brand whore. or 2.) Summa keeps forgetting that the console has been out for less than 6 months, and that 'The Godfather' has been the only real title to release for the Wii that was playable, I like my wii. I just hate that there are no games. The 360 had crap titles for almost the first year, and the PS3 has been far from impressive.
I am disappointed of the other recent thread about RE4 concerning the wii. Summa, I like you, but butch it up a bit buddy. I have written reviews before, games, movies, ect.. You have got to be able to take the criticism with a grain of salt and move on. Someone is always gonna disagree and come down on you hard for your opinion. You just have to realize when you are showing biased judgment. You just can't be biased, no matter how much you hate the Wii. Just like when I make my posts, here or anywhere else. I can't be biased against the PS3, I like to keep and open mind. If you don't, it just sounds like you are spewing off Fanboy Propaganda.
Just do everyone a favor and don't walk on eggshells, say what you really want to say, and don't punk out. You have a very direct writing style, and it was obvious in your writing that this isn't what you wanted to REALLY say.
I haven't had that problem, I aim directly at the screen.
Someone needs to tell Subnet that the fact you can LOOK AROUND is not enough to save just how.....boring the actual game is at this point.
Slightly plodding pace, weapons that generally lack punch (except the shotgun-- but why does it take 4-5 headshots to kill a zombie with anything else?) and questionable control issues (whose idea was it to shake the remote to reload? I see a ton of accidental reloading in the future..) are the real issue here.
So he missed a detail. Does it invalidate everything else he said? No. Being able to look around in a rail shooter is not a startling innovation the likes of which the industry has never seen before (read: Panzer Dragoon series). Let it go.
Hmm, maybe I'm too close to the tv then...I've been wondering why it's been getting harder and harder to see.
yeah, if you get too close to the TV you lose accuracy, I have a rather small TV only about 26 Inches or so, maybe a little larger.
I have to be back 5-7 feet to get decent control response. If you stand right up on the TV or sit right up on the TV, 1.) you will go blind and 2.) you get horrible response from the wiimote. The farther away you are, the more accurate and smooth the wiimote usage is.
Theory 3: He's trolling because it's entertaining to piss off fanboys.
As far as the light gun accuracy thing goes, does anyone actually sight up and aim with those things? I could never get my Dreamcast light guns to calibrate perfectly unless I was sitting 2 feet away from the screen. So whenever I wanted to play House of the Dead 2 from the couch I just got it as close as I could and shot from the hip. Pretty much the same thing as using the wiimote to point, you adjust to it really quickly. It's never been an issue for me at all.
yeah, but summa pushed it to the point it just wasn't funny.
It just became the daily 'I hate Wii' blog.
He has the right to his opinion, but frankly, why do we need to hear it when we can form our own from vids and screen shots?
This isn't a critisism of this pticular preview, but previews for games in general.
I'm sick of reading a review or preview of a game that says "the graphics are amazing!" and then watching the vid and thinking the exact opposite, and vice versa. Seems like a needless event to have reoccur so frequently.
The graphics are NOT GOOD. And it isn't because it's on the Wii.
It's like everything is some variation on brown.
As far as I'm concerned, they should make the game in black and white. Or as colorless and life less as possible.
Brightly colored zombie games don't work for me. Dead Rising, HoD, RE2, all good games, but thet didn't work fo rme visually. Too colorful.
The best zombie game never made was the scrapped RE2 where all the backgrounds and characters were washed out, either shades of grey, brown, or blue. That was the lifeless, dead world atmosphere that works for a zombie game.
It also worked for the original Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the dead. It's part of what makes those films effective.
The original Dawn of the Dead was in color. Fail.
What this game needs is a pedal...meh...