ZOMBIES! - The Game's I've Played

This was a birthday present from one of my friends because they said it was the best game ever. It is also part of the reason that my 'no series games without checking with the earlier numbers' rule came into effect.

It's a simple game, there's zombies in Africa - you kill them.

The only thing that it sort of forgets to tell you if you're a new player (like I was) was why in the world you should care about anyone. They seem to all know each other. They've apparently met before, and they know exactly how strong each other are and respect each other for that, but then I show up and I don't know if Wesker is just a Nero- Matrix fan boy or what's going on with him.

As a person who was expecting the best game ever. . . I didn't quite get it.

What I got was a chapter based, over the shoulder, third person shooter. You can't even say that it was a puzzle game or survival horror because the puzzles all went along this line- oh no, there's a funky shaped hole that requires you to get a funky shaped key! You'd then look around for half a minute and go, 'oh look a funky shaped object that might fit in the key hole thingy!' and bam, the puzzle is solved.

As for the survival and horror, not so much. There was never a moment that I can remember being on the edge of my seat, praying that nothing jumped out at me, counting my ammo down to the last bit so that I could survive just another second. I just kept on shooting, living, and if I made a stupid mistake I'd get eaten by a zombie, and then respawn and not make that mistake again.

It really wasn't 'fun' because I didn't know what was going on, and there wasn't anything that could save the story (like amazing graphics, or amazing gameplay). Once done I went back and played a few levels quite a bit to farm them to try to unlock a few things. Even with the extra playthroughs, I can still look back at this game and not tell you a single thing about the story line.

I know at one point I had to fight some blond chick who I think was the main character's old partner, but having never played any of the previous Resident Evil's, I can't say. I also know that the big bad at the end of the game was Wesker. . . but what he had to do with any of the rest of the story is a mystery to me.

There was a significant amount of racial profiling, and doing some pretty racist stuff from the game developers in their portrayal of Africa; mindless loin-cloth wearing African zombies and what not.

One thing that I don't get is why people were freaking about the AI companion that you're stuck with. She's annoying, but she's not as great as what people make her out to be. Maybe it was, again, comparing against previous games AI, but that should never be the judge for anything. It should never be okay to say, 'well in the previous story/game. . .' each one needs to be a great thing all by itself. If they need to be compared together, then make/sell/market them together. You don't get to make one at a time and then try to tie them all together just so you can make an extra buck, and you can't say that just because the previous ones were really bad in one thing like AI, that this one is amazing, just because the AI doesn't suck as much.

 The only other thing that was notable from the game, was the lack of color. Part of the reason that I wasn't a huge fan of the graphics was that it just all seemed to be covered in a thick layer of grey/brown dirt. Everything seemed dull and lifeless. It's Africa, there's color there. There's a whole world of color, but it seemed to blur together with no difference between one thing and the next. Everything seems to want to be the same color as your shirt or your arms. Just look at the picture below, the majority of his surroundings are REALLY similar to what is on his body. It's like he was the color palate for the entire game, and if it didn't show up on him, then they weren't going to use it. Even the sky is the funky color of his pants.

All in all, I don't get why the game is called RESIDENT evil any more. It used to be back in the day that it was based around a single RESIDENT (the mansion) and even after that, the chaos was at least stuck to the RESIDENTal areas where people were living around the mansion. Now, we're all the way in Africa chopping our way through the savanah, and you're still trying to tell me that it's going to stick with the title Resident Evil? I get it, it's a brand, and you're trying to save customers just on the name alone, but at least think about what you're naming your product before you release it. I'm just looking forward to NBA2k20 where it's a baseball simulator.


If I knew the story, and I knew who everyone was, I'm pretty sure that I would have enjoyed this installment of the series, but because I didn't know what was going on, and it was essential to know what happened before to understand the entire game, it became more of a chore to work through the story line, than it was something that I looked forward to because of just how confusing and lost I got at points. I'm okay with having questions and not catching everything, but this just got out of hand. Great game if you know the series, not a great game to start the series with.
The worst part- we're not done with bad suggestions from friends quite yet. We've got a few more to go before I take a bit of control over my gaming choices.