Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City Review

The whole Mass Effect 3 ending debacle really highlights how entitled modern gamers really are; it doesn't help when there's so many rabid fanboys on the internet demanding 'their' franchises remain sacred.

So it's easy to look at a game with the Resident Evil name and curse the lack of whatever particular elements these devout fans consider important – because change is a terrible thing, right?

The thing is, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City has only ever been touted as a co-op focused, action-led third-person shooter and so that's all you should really hope to expect. The problem is, it's just not a very good one.

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City slots in-between the story of Resident Evil 2 and 3, which means a lot of name dropping. William Birkin, Nicholai Zinoviev, Ada Wong, Leon Kennedy and countless others make appearances – to remind you that you're playing a Resident Evil game if nothing else.

Without these characters and the obligatory Resi staples like herb-based healing you'd be hard-pressed to remember it's a Resident Evil game at all.

This is mostly down to the lack of personality Slant Six Games has imparted into the franchise. There's as much character in the six playable here as a brain-dead T-Virus mutant, and that makes it hard to really care.

There's a lot of characters, but they're all horribly generic.

You play as a member of the Umbrella Secret Service sent in to Raccoon City to acquire the G-Virus and, afterwards, mop up the mess of any incriminating evidence corroborating Umbrella as the source of the zombie outbreak.

There are some intriguing moments that fans will appreciate, such as stumbling through the remnants of Raccoon City, visiting the Dead Factory or catching up with old friend, the ultimate BOW Nemesis.

The enemies you encounter are a who's who of Resident Evil beasties, from the basic shuffling undead to crimson heads and lickers. Then there's the human contingent – the Spec Ops sent in to discover the truth.

This makes for two modes of combat: one that favours sitting in cover to hide from gunfire and one where constant movement is best. Even the situations where the two enemy types are embroiled in battle together are irrelevant, since they almost always drop everything and turn on you.

Yet all of this is tied together with lacklustre atmosphere and gameplay. The shooting mechanics are flimsy, failing to provide any real punch to each bullet and meaning carefully picked shots might as well be ignored.

The AI doesn't aid matters either. Your team-mates will fail to help in any meaningful way and are more likely to cause bother than assistance – often running into fire/trip mines and consistently walking away as you try and get close enough to use the first aid spray.

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is a co-op focused game, not that that should really condone shonky AI. Unfortunately though, beyond no longer having to deal with the awkward AI, there's no real benefit to co-op play.

William Birkin is back, in budget form.

Setting up a game of your own will leave you in a lobby for hours on end, so it's mostly about making your game public and just hoping someone might join in.

Alternatively you could join someone else's game through quick match – but here Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City will just pick a random game, forcing you into playing a level ahead of your current campaign position or completing one you've already finished.

So the emphasis is on friends, then. Which is just as well, since the items in the game (ammo, herbs, grenades) are limited, so joining a random's game will likely result in a war for munitions before each zombie hunt.

There's no strategic depth to co-op beyond picking different classes and there aren't any situations where the assistance of a friend is important – something you think would have been implemented if that was the focus of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City.

As for the different classes: each of the six characters represents a specific class, so Bertha is a medic, Beltway likes making things explode, Spectre is the go-to sniper and so on.

What this means is that as levels are completed and experience points are earned you can unlock new abilities – both passive and activated – that are specific to that character.

But since only one character can be in a session at any time you'll be forced into trying out classes that aren't necessarily your favourite. This sounds frustrating, but it's actually preferably to at least give each class a try.

While this looks creepy, the visuals really aren't that great.

Refreshingly, class and weapon unlocks are persistent through both the campaign and multiplayer meaning you're a little more involved about which weapons and abilities you want to unlock first.

Multiplayer comes in a number of flavours too, the most traditional of which are team deathmatch and capture the flag variants. Alongside the human enemies, each mode also comes with a number of zombies to add to the mix. It's not much, but it does twist the typical multiplayer shenanigans we've seen everywhere else before – even if it is only slightly.

Then there's Heroes and Survivor game types. Heroes plays like a typical team deathmatch mode, except you'll play the role of one of eight famous Resident Evil characters, replete with buffed-up health and an increased horde of zombies to fight against in last-man-standing battle.

Survivor is the most interesting of the lot, where your team must defend themselves against zombies and human enemies until an extraction chopper lands. If you're imagining an exciting Left 4 Dead style standoff with human opponents, don’t.

It's mostly the same as every other mode in the game, except after the timer counts down it becomes a mad rush for the four spaces in the helicopter. It doesn't matter what side you're on either as the winners are the first four that make it to safety – making Survivor mode a hugely wasted opportunity.

It's in multiplayer where the different abilities really make sense, however, giving each player unique abilities and strengths that actually have a decent amount of impact to proceedings.

Not that multiplayer is really the game's saving grace. Like most unnecessary online modes in other games, give it a few weeks and the servers will be dead – there's nothing really that compelling worth sticking around for, and that's largely the problem with Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City as a whole.

It's a fairly generic third-person shooter that isn't broken but does rely far too much on fan service to see it through. It's not saying much when the best thing we can say about a game is that it's functional, but that's all Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City really is.