Reviews// Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City

I loved all the Resident Evil games set in Raccoon City, including the various remakes and revisits, that was until I put Operation Raccoon City in my console. I’m not going to sugar coat things, this is a terrible game; from its sub-par shooter mechanics to its botched story line, nothing about it works.

The premise of Resident Evil - Operation Raccoon City is a return to where it all began; the outbreak of the T and G-viruses in Raccoon City and all the plot elements from the first two sequels are there. But this time we get things from the perspective of Umbrella’s ‘Elite’ special forces unit: a bunch of hollow avatars that you can choose from... and you can level up.

The whole thing feels like the kind of recap show that you occasionally find in the middle of a cartoon series. The major sweeping story elements are touched upon but are not expanded, which is what I – and many of the people I have spoken to - had hoped for.

We all know that Resident Evil games contain cheesy dialogue; sadly for many fans it's an element that has been slowly disappearing from the series’ newer entries. Here it seems to be either totally lacking, or it falls so flat on its face that it might as well be non-existent.

It made me miss the days before voice-acting in games became a serious business; those pioneering days when a stranger or friend of one of the developers would read lines so woodenly you had to clean sawdust out of your ears if you played for too long at a time.

We all remember Barry Burton’s stilted comic genius. Well, that ham acting would have suited this game. Alas someone at developer Slant Six decided that this game needed neither ham nor expansive exposition on why we should care about the faceless vessels we ride throughout the six to seven hour long single player campaign.

Towards the end of the game things do pick up somewhat with the appearance of series favourites Leon S. Kennedy and my personal top pick, Ada Wong. Your mission then switches to a ‘What if’ scenario where you are tasked with hunting down and executing Leon, Claire Redfield and Ada.

This brief respite from the game's crappiness falters at the finishing line with a final battle that mysteriously moves from the roof of a building in a train yard to an interior location reminiscent of Umbrella’s underground facility that you escape previously during a loading screen. This final encounter is both weak and provides zero closure; this will almost certainly lead to DLC or a poorly conceived sequel that will have the hapless Umbrella gang appearing Spain and Africa to meddle with the other numerical entries in the series

One thing I enjoy about shooters involving zombies is the satisfaction of head-shotting one into oblivion, quickly despatching the Undead back to the hell from whence they came. This is what I expected from this game, after all is said and done I am supposedly one of Umbrella’s clandestine elite.

Imagine my surprise when I stepped into a room and saw a small horde of walking corpses shambling around just waiting for a bullet between the eyes, my practised eye quickly assessed the situation and I picked the order in which I was going to execute the rotting scum...

One clip of ammo gone and I had zero neutralised zombies. Wait, what? That’s right, despite scoring a number of direct shots, the zombie police officer was still coming at me. To make matters worse, out of that clip of ammo most of the rounds went flying past his head to hit the wall behind him harmlessly.

Operation Racoon City could have been brilliant, but sloppy shooting mechanics and enemies that can only be described as ‘bullet sponges’ ( it can actually be hard to tell if you are indeed hitting an enemy) make it incredibly annoying. If there was a list of statistics that include accuracy I am pretty sure that my chosen avatar would be so ashamed she would try and shoot herself in the head... and miss.