Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City Review - A flawed action game.

By Sam Coles:

The Resident Evil series has had a revival recently with the excellent Resident Evil VII, which released in early 2017 however it was in a bad spot in 2012 with the abysmal Resident Evil 6 to the better received Revelations on 3DS. Resident Evil Operation Racoon City was a game that was not well received, to be honest I don’t see why sure it is not a good Resident Evil game, but it is a fun co-op action shooter which still has a decent online community today.

Resident Evil Operation Racoon City takes place during the events of Resident Evil 2 and 3, where you play as a Special Forces unit that are working for the Umbrella Corporation. You are sent in to clear up the infection that has plagued the city, but you are also tasked with securing the G-Virus which you will know the outcome of that if you have played Resident Evil 2. To be honest the story is not great, which the Resident Evil stories have never been great until Resident Evil VII when they got someone to write it.

The gameplay is not a survival horror but instead is a third person co-op shooter, this was the popular craze at the time due to the success of the third person action of Gears of War and the hugely popular cooperative gameplay of Left 4 Dead.  You have a vast array of characters you can pick from, these are the standard classes you would expect from a military style shooter with assault, scout, recon and medic it is not original but it gets the job done as you can get through a scenario by just shooting everything that moves.

The gameplay can get a tad repetitive but fortunately the missions are not too long and end when things start to lose steam. My biggest issue is that I found myself constantly running out of ammo during fire fights, look I know they had to acknowledge that it is a Resident Evil game but it gets a tad annoying when you’re holding down the trigger only to realise your gun is clicking like a jazz dancer. You won’t only be fighting biological weapons such as zombies, Lickers and of course Mr X you’ll have human opponents to face which turn it into a standard third person shooter.

Visually the game is up and down, character models looks serviceable however the zombies look like something from the PlayStation 2 with blurry textures but if you are a normal gamer you’ll probably won’t notice them in the carnage. Environments are very bland consisting of dark corridors and grey and blue hued streets, I know it’s to be expected with a setting like this but that doesn’t mean you can’t have variety. I noticed that there was a lot of screen tearing and this is something I noticed a lot with Capcom games during this generation of gaming, I have similar issues in Resident Evil 5, 6 and DMC: Devil May Cry. The framerate does struggle but to be fair there are a lot of enemies on screen, it doesn’t drop to unplayable numbers but it does stutter like Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day.

Overall Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is an average shooter, which you can get some enjoyment if you play with friends but on your own it becomes rather tedious and somewhat frustrating in later levels.