Do
you dread the thought of watching a scary movie or playing a survival horror
game late at night while the gusty wind is howling outside at the windows, the
floorboards of your house are creaking louder than usual and your
over-imaginative mind is consumed with fear?
No? Good, then you will enjoy
Capcom’s latest game in it’s long running Resident Evil series.
Having
not played previous Resident Evil games (although I did play it’s predecessor,
Alone in the Dark on PC a decade ago, which I found very scary), I was
expecting a game which contained enough chills, spills and thrills to keep me
awake at night whilst lying in bed. This
game does include a lot of violence and gore, while the horror was diminished a
bit due to the fact that I happened to play this game only in daylight
hours. Having said that, being
surrounded by zombies without any ammo in your weapon does increase your fear
factor to a whole new level.
Outbreak
File #2 is surprise, surprise the sequel to the original Resident Evil
Outbreak. The game is set in the town of
Raccoon City, where it is being overrun by the undead and your goal is to
survive this horror-fest and figure out what the hell is going on in this
town. You have friends to support you
and this teamwork is essential if you hope to come out of it alive, and I can
assure you, it ain’t gonna be easy.
There are two difficulties level – easy and normal. But even in easy mode, don’t expect to finish
the game on your first try! I’ve yet to
complete any level, due to the fact of limited gameplay. Being a diligent player would ensure success
rather than a lazy gamer!
The
premise of the game is that your character is infected by a virus from the
start of the game. Over the duration of
the game, this viral infection will spread throughout your body until the virus
gauge reaches 100%; thereby overtaking your body and making you die. This in essence is like a time limit,
ensuring that you can’t doodle around in the game. You can use health pick-ups to slow down the
progress of the virus, but you can never eradicate it until you complete each
level.
There
is a tutorial in the first level of the game for noobs (like. me) to get the
hang of controlling and playing the game.
This tute is situated in J’s Bar, letting you pick up & use items,
read notes lying around and also interacting with your surrounding (eg. opening
doors). There are 4 different levels for
the player to… umm play and they range from a zoo, subway, hospital in the
forest to a police station. This might
seem short but the maps are large and exploring every aspect of it is almost a
mission impossible!
The
main protagonist of this game is Kevin Ryman, a police office with the Raccoon
City Police Department. You can choose
to play him or select from another 7 characters. These characters all differ in age, sex,
occupation, items to use and special skills.
This diversity allows for extended gameplay as you mix and match with
each character, deciding whom would be best for the situation at hand. The characters can be classified as either
offensive or defensive. Being a gung-ho
player, personally I prefer playing on the offence, as there’s no greater
thrill than plugging zombies with numerous bullets.
You
are then allowed to choose 2 characters to act as support, preferably
characters that can give you health items or fix things. This is kinda like a WWII game where you
select characters with differing individual skills (ie. infantry, medic,
engineer, etc…). I found these ‘support’
character however to be not as helpful as they should be. Most of the times, they’re running aimlessly
around like a headless chook and not helping you when they should. Playing with human teammates is immeasurably
more enjoyable than playing with the AI controlled ones.
There
are numerous puzzles within the game, ensuring that it’ll take you a while to
finish each levels, never mind completing the game. There are a lot of items to be found and
unfortunately, you can only carry a limited amount at any time, which makes for
realistic gameplay but is irksome for those of us who likes to have any given
item ready in hand for use. The
right-hand analog stick can be used to give commands to your teammates, which
is quite intuitive, but using a headset would’ve been quite advantageous. Also, when you enter the pause menu (eg.
Reload guns, use items, etc…) the action doesn’t stop, which means zombies can
still attack you. While that adds a
touch of realism, it might annoy a lot of gamers.
Controlling
your character can be tiresome as the camera view is never where you want it to
be. Because the camera is in a fixed
position, you can’t move it to look at where you’re going, thus in effect, a
zombie can descend on you and attack you even before you notice it. This is a game killer, since survival is the
name of the game and not being able to defend yourself at crucial moments can
annoy the hell out of players. Maybe if
it used a third-person perspective or allowed the camera to be rotated would improve
the gameplay immensely.
Visually
the game is dark and set at night (which is to be expected) which enhances the
mood of the game. Being so dark, it’s
possible that the player can miss important aspects within the environment,
thus you need to be observant and look carefully at everything if you want to
be successful in this game. Items that
can be picked up have a flashing light on them, allowing you to see these
pick-ups when you wouldn’t otherwise.
The character models animate smoothly and accurately, although when a
character runs down stairs, their arms don’t move, Riverdance-style, which does
seem funny.
The
sound is very well done in this game, giving you a sense that this is indeed a
spooky game. Being eerily quiet, this
lets you hear approaching zombies, screams from your teammates and the
unmistakable sound of bullets being unloaded from guns. Even the loading screens (which are frequent)
use the thumping of a heart beating, which complements the game intensely.
There
is single player and Network play, allowing you to play online with other
players. Unfortunately, I don’t have
broadband, so this mode of play is untested.
There’s no multiplayer, so you can’t play with a friend at home. Having a two-player game would make it fun,
fun & fun!
There’s
a Collection option in the game, which is a bonus feature that you can unlock,
provided you’ve accumulated enough points during your game. These include a picture gallery, movie, sound
and extras. There is also a costume
select screen, which allows you to dress your character in different and varied
clothing. I’m assuming all the guys out
there would dress their female characters in bikinis! The Character Log option lets you see data of
your gameplay by browsing through the data, records and other information for
all the different characters. There is
also a Data Convert option letting you transfer collection data from ResEvil
Outbreak to this game and vice versa.
Overall,
this is an ok game, which would suit those who like to blast away at the living
dead. There are various ingredients
within the game that makes this the standard for all survival horror games, but
there are some improvements, which could be made to make it more enjoyable. The camera view is the major concern that needs
to be fixed to make it a far more attractive game. If you love cavorting with zombies and enjoy
the Resident Evil series, then you’d probably get more out of this game than
the casual gamers would. This is one
undead game that still has some life left in it.
Visual: 6/10
Sound: 7/10
Gameplay: 6/10
Overall: 6/10