| The Bee's Knees Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: The land of rain and trees (Oregon) Gender:  Posts: 29,754 Thanks: 1,649 Thanked 5,700 Times in 2,580 Posts | Resident Evil The Darkside Chronicles Review for the Wii from 1UP.com Quote: At some point, the Resident Evil series stopped being considered scary by the masses and became a simple zombie-shootin' action-adventure. So, it wasn't too surprising that Capcom tried to bring some of the scares back in the light gun-style shooter Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles. But there are still more classic Resident Evil games to revisit, so now we have Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, which still does a good job of keeping the "theme park ride" feel intact, and also improves on most of the little things that counted against Umbrella Chronicles. Still, a few issues remain that make the ride a little too rollicking for its own good.
The main differences from Umbrella Chronicles mostly deal with the controls, and they're all for the better. First, there's no more manual camera movement with the Nunchuk's analog stick, which is fine, since it was often useless, if not easy to forget about. A more desired change is better weapon management. My biggest problem with Umbrella Chronicles was the ammo meter embedded in the aiming reticule, which Darkside fixes perfectly by just moving the ammo display below the characters' life bars in the corner of the screen. On top of that, the aforementioned Nunchuk stick now handles weapon switching. When in the inventory menu, you can arrange your weapons according to an up-down-left-right formation, and then you tap the stick in those directions to quickly switch between guns. It makes much more sense visually than Umbrella's simple vertical list of weapons, and is a good repurposing of the analog stick. Of course, you can play Remote-only, as before, but when it comes to convenience, I much prefer having the Nunchuk to handle the secondary stuff while my aim remains steady with the Remote.
Darkside Chronicles features two scenarios based on past Resident Evil games: "Memories of a Lost City," a.k.a. Resident Evil 2, and "Game of Oblivion," a.k.a. Resident Evil: Code: Veronica. However, it all opens with a third, brand new story, "Operation Javier," that ties it all together... sort of. In it, longtime RE hero Leon S. Kennedy travels to South America in 2002 along with then-partner Krauser, in order to stop a demented military leader from unleashing the Umbrella Corporation's bio-warfare viruses on the rest of the region. Three episodes of it play before, in-between, and after the main two scenarios, but it doesn't shine much more light on the whole mystery of the RE mythology.
As in Umbrella, creative liberties are taken with the older games' plots to accommodate two heroes at a time (seeing as RE2, for instance, followed two separate stories for Leon and Claire), essentially becoming a mash-up of key sequences in the games. It's nice to see familiar locations in places like the Raccoon Police Department done up in present-day graphics, though. While Umbrella Chronicles was mostly based on games that already had some updated graphics applied to them, Darkside has a relatively all-new look (being based on RE2 and Code Veronica, after all) -- and it looks great. Operation Javier, in particular, is filled with excellent lighting effects that will remind you of Resident Evil 5 (no doubt Capcom's intent). Sure, most of your time in the South American facilities is spent indoors shooting giant spiders, but for those few moments when you step outside, you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Another familiar "feature" of Darkside Chronicles is the camera, which tries to emulate real human head motion. In general, it's well done, but just like in Umbrella Chronicles, sometimes the waviness is overdone to the point of having a cheesy "shakycam" horror movie effect. It's as if the developers really want you to lose; a big ol' boss can stand still in front of you, but god forbid you try and nail it with even 3/4 of your gun's clip.
The camera is only part of the frustration, though, as even the enemies themselves can provide a challenge -- and especially bosses -- whose fights often require you to shoot away an incoming head/tentacle/claw in a split second. Given the precision needed, I at first opted to use the shotgun to ensure a hit, but by the time I could fire the next shot, the enemy would hit me. Lesson learned: Either pick a different gun, or start upgrading the firing rate stat as early as possible. And if you're a completest who wants to get all the "Archives" items (character models, story texts, cut-scenes, etc.), you'll have to play through the entire game on all three difficulties, which isn't a terrible undertaking, but still pretty annoying when you have to face the same tricky bosses and camera movements, with the main difference being you take greater damage on higher difficulties.
And though I'm sure Darkside Chronicles can elicit a yelp or two from more casual players (co-op monster killing is always better with a friend or loved one!), storied Resident Evil fans likely won't bat an eye at the umpteenth zombie ambush. About the only moments of real tension I had were when I spotted an herb or other valuable item, and frantically tried to grab it before the camera swung in the other direction. Not to say the game is boring, though, because even though it's a little more passive, this will probably be the closest thing to a complete RE2 remake in our lifetime. Darkside Chronicles looks great, has a good amount of content, and is mindlessly fun without the mindless gaffes of its predecessor. | They gave it a B+. I might pick this up sometime... RE2 was my favorite of the entire series, and CV was good too. Check the link for pics and vids. |
08-19-2009, 06:02 PM 
