Resident Evil: Outbreak File 2 – Review

Raccoon City – Why don’t they nuke this town from orbit? – Resident Evil, the game itself seems almost undead as it rises again and again in all its new incarnations, but that’s okay because Jono and I love them.. usually. So what we have here is Resident Evil Outbreak: File 2, essentially a sort of add on to last years Capcom title Resident Evil Outbreak, which infuriated fans of the genre who were upset at the awful online play features. With no keyboard or voice-support players were left with a few preset commands that essentially amounted to a big mess, not to mention frustration. When I saw File 2 I was like, hey maybe they fixed that? Sadly this isn’t the case. Still it is another Resident Evil title, which as mentioned I’m a fan of as is my co-writer on this review, so let’s see what it has to offer…

Gameplay
To start with we’ll mention the intro credits, which as so beautifully done it really added some anticipation as to what this title was going to hold. Even the music in the intro sequence reeked of big budget movie but then the actual game started. When you start a game you have a few options, we headed for the ‘Training Ground’ which is essentially a level to teach you the controls, nothing new here, the same basic control system is firmly in place though it does utilise analogue functionality. The one nice addition to the title gameplay wise is the ‘Aim and Move’ function! YES! You can now Aim your gun and move at the same time, locking onto a target and strafe away! It’s a shame about that fixed camera, still causing problems and putting you in position of Zombie dinner at varying times. Still as gameplay goes we found this one is loyal to the franchise, the puzzles are here, the Zombies are here and the gigantic prehistoric zombie elephants are here… oh wait… Jono covered this nicely with one of his quotes “Zombie Elephants?!?! Wow! Run for my life!”. As you can probably tell Capcom have tried to add something different to this title, even letting you choose level type, but it still feels lacking somehow.

What about online, we didn’t even go there, because for some strange reason Capcom kept that god awful online play from the last one. So we thought for the safety of ourselves and others we would forgo this journey into archaic online hell.

Graphics
Graphically this title is nice, as mentioned the intro did lead way to some false hope, when what you really have here is ‘more of the same’. Character models are nicely done, though the collision detection between characters leaves something to be desired since they react more like ghosts than people, merging in and out of one another. Textures are nice and there’s some nice lighting effects but nothing that made us fall off the couch, though Jono was heard saying “ooh more cut scene goodness” so they can’t have been all bad.

Audio
Sound too is very much ‘more of the same’ with the same cheesy wooden voice acting and music that is rarely audible. There’s the usual ‘ding’ for clues and some labored breathing that is just way too rhythmic to have any sense of realism and it will really get on your nerves, not to mention the incessant repetitive sound bites of the various characters “son of a bitch”.. ok we heard you the first 20 times. For the hard of hearing or deaf gamer all dialogue is subtitled, though there’s no feature for this, it’s just standard for this title.

Female Gamer Angle
When we first played this title we chose Alyssa, one of the female characters but we got into bother when Alyssa couldn’t kick a door down, this was annoying. Kevin we figured would be able to and we ran into the same problem. We therefore feel this wasn’t meant in a sexist manner because all the player characters seemed to have things they could and couldn’t do, whether male or female. All in all there are 8 characters, 5 of whom are male and 3 female, still not an even number but overall not so bad.

Overall
Jono kind of summed this up for me when he said “Maybe we’ve just played so many of these that we’re immune to the effects?”, he was referring to the lack of ‘scares’ we both felt whilst playing. Although some of the enemies are tougher, they lack that scare factor some of the older Resident Evil titles were known for. If you’re a fan of the series you’re probably going to purchase this title anyway, based purely on the name but you may be a little disappointed. That’s not to say this is truly awful because it isn’t, it’s just… the same. Some of the little things that could have made this title great just seem to kind of suck, the partner feature is really of no help and numerous times we just thought we’d have been better off alone as yet again you’re helping up a fallen comrade as he squeals for your assistance. Although it did have some nice additions, Zombies can now open doors or bash through them so they seem smarter, but oddly where this would have been scary in the old games it just doesn’t do that here. Overall a worthy rental.

Review by Amanda and Jono

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