Welcome to Hyrule Forums. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!

We are also on Steam as Hyrule Community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Resident Boredom: Gaming Chronicles; Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, 56k
Topic Started: Dec 31 2007, 05:28 PM (329 Views)
Mr. Storm
Member Avatar
Child of Dust
Minor Spoilers Within.

Posted Image


Enter Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, (referred to as UC from now on) the on-rails shooter from Capcom. It’s Wii exclusive. An able compromise for not getting RE5, amiriteguyz? Well, we’ll see. There should be two things I should note before getting into this review.

A: I didn’t play Resident Evil 0, 1, 2, or 3.
B: I’m not a fan of rail shooters.

UC relives the events that fell to Umbrella’s downfall, thus the title Umbrella Chronicles. You’ll take the role of the heroes from 0, 1, 3, and kind of 2, but I’ll get to that later. The game is quite simple, you walk through a variety of locations and blow things up. Zombie humans, zombie monkeys, zombie dogs, zombie leeches, zombie sharks, zombie… well, you get the picture. There’s not a lot of strategy to the gameplay, which I found upsetting. You kill things. You can rarely choose your path you wish to walk, there’s little interaction with the environment except random goodies you rush to grab before the screen turns away from it. And the zombies generally don’t respond to specific attack points causing it to feel like you’re fighting paper cut-outs. Even with added “counter-attack” features which harkens back to Resident Evil 4, it just feels stale and average.

Posted Image
Woo…more zombies… Yay…


The graphics and sound are overwhelmingly mediocre as well. Sure, the frame-rate is fluid. The game doesn’t look awful, nor eye-catching. The game also throws you in the game and story rather rapidly without any introduction to the system. I don’t mind it, but some people might, so I thought I should mention it.

Posted Image
Behold! The vanilla rail-shooter desperately trying to liven itself up.


The story of the game is pretty satisfying. It brings to light areas that even I know weren’t in previous games. There are all kinds of playable characters from all the Resident Evils with the mainstay and story-binder being the notorious Albert Wesker. I was bothered though by the fact Resident Evil 2 was completely excluded from UC, save a bonus mission you can earn and play as Ada in. Perhaps RE2 just didn’t have much to tell regarding Umbrella, but I thought that was odd and deserved mentioning. Other than that, the story does a good job of tying the previous games together. Don’t, however, make the mistake that all of the previous games stories will be explained too. That just doesn’t happen. But, that isn’t a problem for those who have played the old REs to death.

Posted Image
The epitome of RE bad___ery


The extras will be what no doubt make the game in the eyes of many. Tons of little pieces of information about random things in the Resident Evil world can be found throughout the game. Local multiplayer also adds some fun. The game shines with a friend next to you blasting zombies along side of you, well, as much as a game like this could shine. You can also earn other bonuses also by going back and playing the old missions with harder difficulties and better rankings, with or without a friend. All this data is pure Resident Evil fan service. It will no doubt keep the hardcore RE enthusiast happy. It almost makes me want to care.

Posted Image
Who is this horrid man? Gotta play to find out.


In the end, UC is the definition of average to me. It does nothing great, nor nothing horrible. It merely is. Is that a bad thing? No, not really. It is if you wind up spending fifty hard-earned dollars on it, unless you’re a hardcore RE fan. I wouldn’t mind giving it a rent, it can be some fun with a friend shooting at your side. However, it will be long forgotten in a few years except for the most dedicated RE fan.

Posted Image
*sigh* Do I have to?


FINAL GRADE: C
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use." - Galileo Galilei
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Tedyz
No Avatar
Ultimate pwnage.
I'm probably gonna get this game. It looks really awesome. I love arcade shooters and I'm a resident evil fan so..
Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Mr. Storm
Member Avatar
Child of Dust
You would be one of the few people I would reccomend it to then.
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use." - Galileo Galilei
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Fullmetal
Member Avatar
Moblin
Played it. It's really nothing special, unless you don't care about the gameplay and just want to know the storyline. Gets repetitive and boring very fast.

Fixed the typo in the title btw.
Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Tedyz
No Avatar
Ultimate pwnage.
I know this is an old review but whatever.
I got the game, and I think it is quite good. Not the best, but hey, it's resident evil. The only thing I found annoying was the fact that Nemesis doesn't have his old voice :(

Anyways. Not a bad game, but diff. not the best.
Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
« Previous Topic · Game Reviews · Next Topic »
Add Reply

Theme by Sith of Outline