When Resident Evil 5 was announced to have a co-op mode I was annoyed. My first thought was about how co-op would turn RE5 into a generic action game as opposed to a survival horror game. What I really wanted was more of the same standard set by Resident Evil 4. I didn’t want to have to play with someone else to fully enjoy the game – lets face it co-op AI generally sucks.
But then the game came out and after I had played the story on my own, I started again with a second player joining in. What happened next, I was not expecting, I enjoyed this second play through even more than my single player adventure. Capcom had changed the traditional formula of Resident Evil in such a way that co-op felt natural and not something thrown in at the last second.
Fast forward to 2012 and the recently revealed Resident Evil 6. The general view around the internet is that they want the game to go back to its roots and emulate the earlier Resident Evil games. I don’t agree with that opinion, I recently tried to play the PSone classic of Resident Evil and it was terrible, the tank controls bog down the game and everything moves at a snails pace. The atmosphere is another thing entirely and while I agree that Resident Evil 5 was often too bright and failed to create a scary mood, its also worth noting that gameplay influences story. The slow cumbersome controls of the first Resident Evil lent itself to a more claustrophobic setting. Capcom needs to try and create the scariness of the early games while continuing to develop and refine the gameplay mechanics.
