resident evil operation raccoon city review

Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City Review | January 21, 2013
Xbox, Windows, PlayStation

We were hopeful that the days of pointless really bad games in the Resident Evil series was over but guess what there not. Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City is a 3rd person shooter and it takes place during the storylines of Resident Evil 2 and 3. If you have been keeping up with the mythology you know that when the outbreak happened in Raccoon City and there was an attempted at a cover up by the Umbrella Corporation. They sent in their own teams to take out key people who knew that Umbrella was the reason behind the virus and to destroy all evidence of what really happen. You get to play as the Wolf Pack a group of mercenaries on a “seek and destroy” mission sent into the city. In Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City you are the cover up.

So let’s play “HOW DUMB IS THE AI”. Attack a zombie with a knife when they have ammo, check. Stand right in front of you when you are shooting, check. Charge a group of zombies after you throw a grenade at them, check. And our personal favorite run into every trip wire and stand in fire until they die. We did not make that up, while you are in the middle of trying to take out wave after wave of bad guys and zombies…one of your computer controlled team members will stand in fire until they die. It is like they are trying to force co-op and multiplayer on us by making the computer controlled AI stupid. What makes this even worse is that all of the things trying to kill you are so hard to take down. It is like everything is a Terminator. You only get to carry two guns, a side arm and a main weapon and all of the guns are useless accept for one. They have no power or they do not carry enough ammo.

Ready for more bad news? The only Wolf Pack member worth playing is the medic. If you don’t play as the medic you can’t heal as many times and the computer will not heal you or other team members when it is needed. Oh but wait we are still not done complaining. You can beat the game in less than 10 hours, the camera is always out of place and every level you play through looks exactly the same. The sewer looks like city hall and the grave yard looks like the secret underground lab. Everything is just dull and gray and finally the ending is stupid, pointless and not worth the buildup.

The only good things about this game is the voice acting and reliving parts of updated RE2 and RE3. We did love Raccoon City in a new 3D world and seeing new versions of classic RE people like Clair, Leon, and the Nemeses. If you played Resident 2 and 3 you will get to see updated versions of levels from those games and the game does fill in some holes of what happened. Resident Evil is starting to fall behind in the “survival horror” game style that they created. We liked the idea and what they wanted to do but for some reason Operation Raccoon City was not completely follow through with. Much in the same way Call of Duty a military style shooter has added a zombie element to their games, Resident Evil a zombie style shooter try to add a military style element. The whole thing did not work and was poorly done. This game is barely a clearance bin buy. We are talking $10 if you are going to buy it at all.

6.0 out of 10
Clearance Bin

6.0 out of 10
Clearance Bin

Rated
M for Mature

Rated
PEGI 18