Resident Evil 6 Review Summary

Engaging Action-Oriented Co-op Gameplay: Players consistently praise the game as a fun, action-packed experience, especially when played in co-op. The cooperative mode is frequently highlighted as the best way to enjoy the game, fostering memorable and often hilarious moments with friends. This aspect is seen as a significant improvement over previous titles and a core strength.

Diverse and Intertwined Campaigns: The game's structure, featuring multiple interconnected campaigns with different protagonists, is highly appreciated. This approach offers varied gameplay styles, perspectives, and narratives, contributing significantly to replayability and overall content volume. Each campaign feels distinct, preventing monotony and enriching the overarching story.

High Production Value and Spectacle: Reviewers appreciate the game's grand scale, cinematic presentation, and impressive visuals for its time. The cutscenes, dramatic action sequences, and detailed environments contribute to a Hollywood blockbuster feel, offering an intense and visually engaging experience.

Dynamic and Deep Combat System: The combat system is lauded for its fluidity, depth, and dynamic options, including slides, dodges, melee counters, and shooting while moving. This expanded melee and movement system offers tactical flexibility and makes encounters feel satisfying and engaging, distinguishing it from earlier Resident Evil titles.

Leon's Campaign Offers Classic Horror: Leon Kennedy's campaign is frequently singled out for its return to traditional survival horror elements, eerie atmosphere, and classic zombie encounters. It is often considered the most 'Resident Evil-like' of the campaigns, appealing to fans who prefer the series' horror roots.

Lost Resident Evil Identity: Players widely agree the game deviates significantly from traditional Resident Evil elements, abandoning survival horror, puzzles, and atmospheric tension for a more action-oriented, generic shooter experience. Many feel it's the worst in the series and barely deserves the Resident Evil name.

Poor Technical Execution: The game is plagued with numerous bugs, glitches, and poor optimization, leading to frequent crashes, lag, and an overall unplayable or frustrating experience for many. Graphics are also often criticized as outdated even for its release year.

Repetitive & Tedious Campaigns: The multiple intertwined campaigns are criticized for being excessively long, repetitive, and boring, often forcing players to re-experience the same locations and boss fights. This structure, combined with an over-reliance on cutscenes, makes the game feel like a chore.

Weak & Confusing Story: The overarching narrative is described as a convoluted, fragmented, and nonsensical mess that tries to juggle too many plotlines and characters without cohesion. Many find the plot boring, predictable, and lacking emotional depth, with uninteresting villains and character motivations.

Excessive Quick Time Events: The game is heavily criticized for its overabundance of Quick Time Events (QTEs), which are often poorly implemented, interrupt gameplay flow, and lead to instant deaths. Many players find them annoying and a major detractor from immersion.

Action-Oriented Gameplay Shift: The game significantly deviates from traditional survival horror, embracing an action-shooter genre with a strong emphasis on dynamic combat, explosions, and cinematic sequences. This shift is a major point of discussion among players, often comparing it to titles like Call of Duty or Uncharted rather than classic Resident Evil.

Four Intertwined Campaigns: The game features four distinct, interwoven campaigns (Leon, Chris, Jake, Ada) that offer different perspectives on a global narrative. Each campaign has its own characters, settings, and often unique gameplay styles, contributing to a comprehensive story.

Extensive Co-op Integration: Co-op gameplay is a core design element across most campaigns, allowing players to experience the story with a friend. The game supports both online and split-screen co-op, with some players finding it the most enjoyable way to play.

Adjustable Difficulty & Length: The game features multiple difficulty settings, with higher difficulties significantly increasing the challenge. The combined playtime for all campaigns is substantial, ranging from 16 to over 40 hours, offering considerable content.

Fluid Combat & Movement: The game introduces a highly fluid combat system, allowing players to dodge, roll, slide, shoot while moving, and perform various melee attacks. This dynamic movement and combat mechanics contribute to the action-heavy gameplay experience.

Mixed performance and optimization: While many players report the game runs well on low-end PCs and has decent system requirements, others note issues like excessive CPU usage, 30FPS bugs, and occasional slowdowns with high enemy counts. There's also a specific mention of needing to lock FPS to 30 for single-player to work normally.

Frequent crashes and stability issues: Many players experience frequent game crashes, black screens, and launch failures, particularly when changing resolutions, alt-tabbing, or during scene transitions. This significantly hinders the gameplay experience and can prevent players from even starting the game.

Minor and persistent bugs: Despite some claims of being bug-free or having fixes, players still report various minor bugs, including specific progression blockers like Jake's Chapter 4 door bug. Multiplayer also had initial bugs, though some were reportedly patched.

Inconsistent graphics quality: Graphics are generally considered decent for their time, with detailed locations and effective animations for main protagonists. However, some textures are blurry, environmental rendering is inconsistent, and close-up shots can be disappointing compared to distant elements.

Controller compatibility issues: Players using PS5 controllers report significant issues, including incorrect axis mapping, rotated face buttons, and softlocks when changing keybinds. Some even needed to use a PlayStation controller to bypass certain PC control sections.

Mixed Reception & Recommendations: Player opinions on the game are highly polarized, ranging from strong recommendations to outright warnings against playing. Many suggest playing it only under specific conditions, such as with friends or on sale, highlighting its divisive nature.

Best Played Co-op: A significant portion of feedback emphasizes that the game's experience is vastly improved, or even only enjoyable, when played in cooperative mode with a friend. This is often cited as a way to mitigate its flaws or simply to have fun laughing at its perceived shortcomings.

Avoid or Skip Entirely: A substantial number of reviews strongly advise against playing or buying the game, citing it as a waste of time and money. This sentiment is often tied to its perceived poor quality, tedious gameplay, or deviation from series expectations.

Buy Only on Sale: A recurring recommendation is to purchase the game only when it is heavily discounted. Players feel that its full price is not justified, and buying it on sale makes its flaws more tolerable or the experience more worthwhile.

Better Alternatives Exist: Several players suggest that there are many superior Resident Evil titles or other games in general that are more deserving of players' time and money. They often recommend specific other entries in the franchise as better choices.

Ambitious Visuals & Scale: The game was visually impressive for its time, featuring detailed environments, character models, and cinematic presentation. It was an ambitious project with a large budget, aiming for a Hollywood blockbuster feel and an unprecedented plot scale.

Extensive Campaign Content: The game offers substantial content with four distinct campaigns, each following different protagonists and perspectives. This provides a lengthy gameplay experience, with total playtime often exceeding 20 hours.

Desire for Remake: Despite its divisive reputation, there's a notable desire among some players for a remake of the game, potentially with the RE Engine, to refine the story and mechanics.

Ada's Campaign & Bug: Ada's campaign is a notable part of the game, available after completing the main story. However, it is associated with a specific bug causing significant frame rate drops.

Acceptable Core Elements: While not outstanding, many players found the game's individual components, such as graphics, story, audio, and basic mechanics, to be acceptable or 'okayish'.