Resident Evil: Outbreak for PlayStation 2

Up until now, I have loved every single game in the Resident Evil series, with exception of the two really bad first person games they came out with a few years ago, one of which was Resident Evil: Survivor. The typical Resident Evil games are the best video games I've ever played, period. The graphics are works of art, the puzzles are intriguing and challenging, the monsters are scary, the storylines terrific, the cinematography entertaining...and on and on. They're perfect games. My husband and I love them so much that, when we heard that Resident Evil Outbreak was coming out this month, we reserved a copy first thing, picked it up as soon he got off work tonight, and sat down to play.

Currently, we have just gotten off the phone after an unsuccessful plea with the store to take the game back because it is so bad that we can't even play it! It's almost as bad as the first person game we played, or maybe it's even worse. I guess it's worse since we did keep the first person game and tolerate playing it for at least a few months. With Resident Evil Outbreak, however, we find ourselves fighting to resist the urge to incinerate the thing in angry effigy.

First of all, the graphics in this game aren't nearly what they are in the others. Whereas the people in the preceding Resident Evil games look three-dimensional and real, the people in Resident Evil Outbreak look hand-drawn or like clay-mation figures or something. The bad art extends to the maps, too. You can barely tell anything about the maps, and you have to look at them with the main screen semi-transparent in the background. Oh also, even if you can tell something about where you are going on these pitiful excuses for maps, there's no pausing to look them over like in preceding Resident Evil games. Resident Evil Outbreak's action continues while you are trying to look at the map, so that a zombie can munch your butt before you can even figure out which end of the map is up.

Second problem: This game has something no Resident Evil game before it has ever had...a load time. It is a long load time, too, like 15-20 seconds, and you have to sit through it every time you enter a new room or go up a flight of stairs. And unlike in the other Resident Evils, you don't get the creepy pictures of decorative, haunted-house looking doors squeaking open, or stairs creaking as you go up them to at least attempt to entertain you during waits. Instead, you get a blank, boring black screen. My husband actually joked that he and I would have time for lovemaking between loads. That aspect of the game, along with the aforementioned crappy graphics, makes Resident Evil Outbreak remind me more of an early 1990's retro game than a modern video game. Heck, when you get down to it, I didn't even have to wait for loads in the much older video game ancestors, such as Mrs. PacMan, Frogger, and Centipede.

Loading's not the only thing that's slow. The controllers are slow, too. It is difficult to use the controllers at all as their layout for this game is very user-unfriendly. And even if you can figure out the nonsense scheme of these buttons, there is actually a lag time of a few seconds between when you hit a button and when the action you're aiming for is actually carried out--for instance, when you are trying to shoot a zombie or get through a door to avoid him (all very important actions to be able carry out when you get the limited ammo that you do in this game). You are able to kick zombies in this game, but that's another slow and almost impossible maneuver to carry out. Don't expect to get any help with automatic actions either, like you have in other Resident Evil games, you know, like characters automatically reloading, using daggers to stab zombies, and stomping on zombies' heads. Instead, you have to do any and all of these things yourself. We haven't been able to step on one head yet. You don't automatically get your gun reloaded, either; you have to reload it yourself. And like with looking at the map, you no longer get the pause in action you got in the other games to allow yourself time to reload. Like when you're looking at the map, while you're trying to load, a zombie can and will come upon you and bite you in the butt. The way the controllers and the graphics and everything are, it reminds me very much of Sega DreamCast's Illbleed. You see, Illbleed was an incomplete game, released as so because its makers got in too big of a hurry to get it out on the market before Sega folded as a game system. And Resident Evil Outbreak strikes me as incomplete, too, though I don't know what PS2's hurry was to release this crap.

One of the only things that's cool about Resident Evil Outbreak is that there are five or six brand new and different characters you can play as, and each one has a different strength (one can pick locks, one can mix medicines, one gets a good gun, etc.). The others that you don't pick are moving around the game scene along with you. But the thing that sucks is that, whichever character you take, you have to listen to the remaining characters saying the same crap to you and to each other, OVER AND OVER AND OVER--AGH!!!. We've heard "Did you find anything/Find anything new?" about fifteen times in a row thus far, and "What's going on?" at least twenty. We've heard, "This is shaping up to be a bad day" many times more. They also repeatedly say things that are completely out of context with no deducible prompt for saying them, like the waitress Cindy's "I understand." ("Understand what, Cindy? That we're stuck in a game that sucks?! Yeah, we understand that, too!") This becomes unbelievably irritating after awhile, so much so that, though one of your goals is to keep the other characters alive, you just want them to die so they will shut the h#ll up! It is also highly irritating to see subtitles of the characters' dialogue flashed at the bottom of the screen and to sometimes hear it and sometimes not hear it. All of these things make them seem much more flat and one-dimensional as characters, unlike the characters in the preceding games. Not to mention that, also unlike in other Resident Evil's, there's not much story going on in Resident Evil Outbreak, which further detracts from the characters and the game as a whole.

Oh, another "wonderful bonus" is that, as an average character, you get less spaces to carry items (only four). And there are no item boxes. You can exchange items with characters for different ones, but even having the other characters around is almost more of a hindrance than an aid. See, part of your goal is to keep the other characters alive. But while you are doing everything you can to stay alive yourself among the madness of multiplying zombies and an uncooperative and slow set of controls, these stupid other characters are constantly wandering out into the hallways and getting bitten by the zombies. Then you have to use YOUR power-ups to heal them. You will try to get them to stay in a room unoccupied by zombies, but then they just wander out and get bitten again. After having to heal the same character four times in a five minute period, we were ready to tell him to "bite" us. Basically, in the other characters who are supposed to be working with you, you are stuck with a bunch of "Sherry" types (a la Resident Evil 2). Of course, despite the fact that she was a pain in the rear, at least Resident Evil 2's Sherry was useful sometimes and she could be controlled by you sometimes, which is more than can be said for the alternate characters of Resident Evil Outbreak.

Trust me, Resident Evil Outbreak is nothing like any of the other wonderful games in the Resident EvilResident Evil series. Resident Evil Outbreak instead is totally awful, and it saddens me that Capcom and the other Resident Evil makers would trash their reputations by allowing a game this bad and untrue to the series to carry the Resident Evil name.

Resident Evil Outbreak is a PlayStation 2/PC game. I hear another Resident Evil game is coming out on the Nintendo Gamecube in November, Resident Evil 4. Resident Evil 4 is said to be a continuation of the story of Leon, Claire Redfield's impromptu partner and friend in Resident Evil 2. I'd suggest saving your money to buy that, not to mention the Gamecube if you don't have it already. Unlike Gamebcube, it seems that PS2 lacks enough of the Resident Evil game rights to be able to put out games of the same quality as the others in the series (I think what happened is that, between PS2's release of the epic, wonderful Resident Evil Code Veronica X and Gamecube's release of the also wonderful, epic Resident Evil Zero, Gamecube bought exclusive rights from Capcom for the Resident Evil series. I guess this is why Gamecube is the only system that can seem to offer a true Resident Evil game these days.) I can also assure you that Gamecube is worth the purchase for Resident Evil Zero and Resident Evil, both of which are outstanding games.

But seriously, hold on to your money and don't waste it on this game. Or if you have to see how bad it is for yourself, rent it as opposed to buying it to keep your fifty bucks safely in your pocket. We wish someone would have given us the same advice.

UPDATE (4/6/04):

My husband and I obviously aren't the only ones who felt this way about Resident Evil Outbreak. When we took it back to GameStop the following day and sold it back for half of what we paid for it, I asked the salesperson behind the counter if anyone else had brought it back. The salesman told me that one guy had, the guy who had been the first customer in their store to reserve a copy of the game before it came out. The day the game arrived, this guy was there to pick it up as soon as GameStop opened its doors. By early that evening, he was back with the game. The salesman was of course surprised and asked if there was something wrong with the game, as in a physical flaw or a glitch that was making it not work right. The customer answered, "No, the game just sucks. It's just really bad."

UPDATE (4/23/04):

Since I've posted this review, some folks have been writing asking why I think the game is so terrible and saying they disagree. So I've decided to update a bit here and clarify, just for some folks who may still be unclear where I'm coming from. I'd put this in the Epinions "bottom" line, but they limit me to 30 words, so I'll just have to settle for putting it here.

So here goes: I feel the other Resident Evil games are great (Resident Evil: Dead Aim and Resident Evil Survivor excluded), but not this one. I feel that Resident Evil's technology should improve with every game, not regress, as it has with Resident Evil Outbreak. Have those of you who've played Resident Evil Outbreakalso played any of the other Resident Evil games? If so, you should know that, simply put, this game does not hold a candle to the others, and that especially includes graphics, controls, and story. The people looked real and three-dimensional with the others, particular CODE VERONICA, with reflections and everything. But in Resident Evil Outbreak, they looked like fake clay-mation puppets. They were also flat in personality, too, repeating everything over and over like a broken record and getting in one another's way during play as opposed to helping each other. It's like babysitting, and that sucks! The controls are choppy, too, and let's not even get back into that crappy excuse for a map.

Some say, "Well, the game loads faster if you get the PS2 hard drive. Um, may I ask a a question here? When I've already paid $300 bucks for the PS2 system brand new, X amount for a memory card, and $50 for a brand new copy of Resident Evil Outbreakitself, why should I pay more for an accessory just to make a brand new game load faster when there shouldn't even be a load to start with? There's no load with the other, older, better Resident Evil games, and I didn't have to buy hard drives to make THEM work--why should all that be necessary with this one? Or why can't they give me an animation or picture to look at to at least entertain me during long loads, like the other games did during transitions from room to room?

My husband and I, both of whom have been gaming since the dawn of video games, agree that this game sucks, and according to store personnel, we're not the only ones (see 4/6/04 update). Maybe the PC version where you play online with players helping you is better b/c, with the collective effort, you all have more control. I don't know. All I know is that I have the PS2 version, and in comparison to all other Resident Evil games, this one plain stinks. In my opinion, it is incomplete, and if it is more complete as an online game, it should have been released only in that format until PS2 had it perfected. But I'll bet they just hurried its release for marketing purposes because, according to a post on this comment board thanks to Epinions member anderclayton, the newest Resident Evil movie, also called "Outbreak," is coming out this summer. And by the way, the first Resident Evil movie sucked, too.

If you've never played any other Resident Evil games, you might find this game suitable or even enjoyable. But if you have, and you've adored the others as we have, again I emphasize, don't waste your time and money with this one--at least not the PS2 version. Even you do have a PS2 hard drive and a faster load time, that still can't really save this game, in my opinion.

One final note: The naysayers keep saying to me, "Resident Evil Outbreak is not THAT bad." Well, "not that bad" is not nor ever will be the same as "good" or "outstanding,"--particularly when the bar of standard has already been set much higher, as it has been with preceding Resident Evil games. As consumers spending our hard-earned money, I don't think we should ever settle for less (a.k.a. "not that bad") on ANY PRODUCT when we know from prior experience that the producers are capable of better, and that we can purchase those better products whenever we choose to do so.