It is always a bit interesting when an established franchise makes changes to its formula, and it’s especially interesting when the changes are so drastic and the series in question is the Resident Evil franchise.
Umbrella Corps is a third-person shooter set in the universe of Resident Evil (obviously). Normally, I would start to describe the story, but being mostly online the game doesn’t seem to have one. From digging around the Wikipedia article, I can tell that the game is set in 2015, two years after the events of Resident Evil 6, and is focused on several companies competing with one another to find the now disbanded Umbrella Corporation’s lost secrets.
Obviously, the plot is just a flimsy premise on which to stage several battles between human opponents in zombie infested environments, which is good really because the plot is basically non-existent in the actual game.
I’ve had an interesting relationship with online focused games in the past, as a rule I have tended to prefer games that have a decent amount of focus on single player. However I have spent an indecent amount of time in games like Black Ops 2 multiplayer and even more time in Dungeon Defenders, both of which I’ve enjoyed. I am sad to say that I did not get the same enjoyment out of Umbrella Corps.
Firstly, I would like to say that the actual mechanics of the game are pretty solid, for the most part. It’s a standard third person shooter with guns that work well enough for their purpose, and the basic run, shoot and cover mechanics that are typical of the genre. You also have access to a wide variety of customization options including masks that turn you into classic ‘Resi’ characters, and the ability to choose your own weapon load out and attachments.
There are a couple of mechanics which are interesting and worth drawing attention to. The first is the climbing mechanics, if you press the cover button while pointing at a large blank section of wall you can run up it and climb onto the surface above, something that can be very useful for taking shortcuts that avoid crowds of zombies. It’s always interesting to see good movement mechanics in a primarily shooting focused game, and it adds a nice layer of maneuverability to the gameplay.
The second mechanic is a melee weapon that is something similar to an axe. You can pull out this device at any time and hold the secondary fire button to charge the weapon with heat, making the attacks you can perform with it deadly. While you have the weapon drawn an orange triangle appears in front of you, and anything caught in that triangle will be instantly killed when you perform the attack.
The final interesting mechanic actually involves the zombies themselves. The zombies In all of the maps spawn from piles of gore that are lying around the stage when you start a match, meaning that certain areas tend to become heavily infested throughout a single game. However when you kill a zombie they turn into their own pile of zombie spawning gore, which at first just seems annoying, making it impossible to clear out an area. It becomes apparent the more you play that this idea was actually a stroke of genius, making games more and more frantic as the matches go on longer and longer, adding a layer of tension to an otherwise mostly dull game.
Now we get into the part of the review that I have been dreading: actually talking about the online matches. The first thing that is easily noticeable is the fact that there are very few options when starting an online match. The matches are split into two types, available in both ranked and custom forms, the first is one life match, a game mode which is a very basic 3v3 deathmatch were players only respawn between rounds.
The second of these types is multi-mission, a game-type that pits players once again in 3v3 matches with many different objectives, this time with infinite respawning. The objectives in these games are pretty standard, things like capture the flag, domination and the ever present team deathmatch, but there is at least one game-type that is unique to this game. The mode in question involves killing more zombies than the other team to collect their virus samples, something you’ll get used to doing a lot in this game, and also something that as far as I know no other online shooter has done.
So, with the dry technical details out of the way, how enjoyable are these online games? Well, to tell you the truth they’re pretty rubbish, due to one simple issue: the axe mechanic. Although the ability to one shot kill an enemy with a superheated axe might seem cool (because it really is), it quickly becomes annoying in online matches against real opponents because of the aiming triangle that appears in front of you. A lot of the maps are very close and claustrophobic, meaning that matches tend to devolve into 6 people running around with axes slashing at each other with vigour. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but the axe attacks lock the victims into a killing animation, meaning that you basically cannot dodge these attacks, putting the axe into the region of Urgot before he was nerfed (ha! LOL joke)
So thanks to this one fatal flaw, the main component of the game is entirely excruciating, so that should be it then, yes? An online game with terrible online play? That should end the story. Well, it basically does, but there is something still to discuss here, a little game mode called ‘The Experiment’.
The experiment is basically the single player campaign of the game, taking the form of a single agent tasked with various missions pitted against zombie hordes of different kinds. Unfortunately, these missions aren’t particularly varied or interesting, mostly being single player versions of the different objectives found in the multi-mission mode. It seems clear that ‘The Experiment’ was thrown into the game at the last minute, and with little thought, simply to satisfy those of us who like to have a single player option.
Having said that, there is at least some interest to be found in the single player, as I said earlier in the review the mechanics of the game are actually pretty fun, and it’s nice to be able to actually use them under your own steam without getting sliced in the neck by an axe. Although the game types are pretty repetitive at first, they do change up a little as you get further into the game, and the maps may start out small and claustrophobic, but they do eventually open up into some areas taken directly from Resident Evil 4 which give you lots of freedom to use the climbing and running mechanics.
Graphically, the game looks fine for the most part, but it does seem to have some…interesting, animation issues. When you use certain weapons your arm seems to bend at weird angles, and don’t even get me started on what happens when you switch to first person mode. The animation of you switching between third and first person is literally humanly impossible, if you were to attempt to perform the action in real life your neck would probably stretch to giraffe-like proportions.
At the end of the day, the single player ends up being a nicer addition than it at first appears to be, but this simply cannot save what is a very dull and flawed online shooter. Even big fans of the series won’t find much worth experiencing here, with little plot to ‘enjoy’ and nothing to tie it to the rest of the series.
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Platforms: PS4, PC
Release Date: 21st June 2016