Forgotten Ideas

Everybody remembers Resident Evil when it was still a Survival Horror. We all know where we were when we first played the 1996 title and we all jumped a mile when the dogs burst through the window. We all agreed it was getting stale by the time Resident Evil 0 came out, and rejoiced when Leon became a laser dodging hero who could burst out of first story windows with style in the brilliant fourth installment. Some of us, though, started pining for ‘Old Style’ Resi when we realised that if Chris could punch the crap out of a rock, survive the heat of a volcano, and not break a sweat when a giant troll threatened to crush him, he probably forgot he was ever in a mansion in the first place.

A few weeks ago, while nosing about in my local game shop, I spotted two games that I had completely forgotten about – Resident Evil: Outbreak and Resident Evil: Outbreak File 2. I remembered being rather excited about Outbreak before it came out, as it seemed to embody exactly what a Survival Horror should be. It was supposed to be an Online Multiplayer, where you could play as one of 8 survivors. These were just normal people – a doctor, a barmaid, a student, etc – who happened to be in a bar when the chaos began. Each character had unique skills, and the idea was to work together to reach the end of the chapter. You could become infected by the virus, and actions had consequence, so if you decided to use the other characters as zombie bait so that you could reach the end, you may have found that you needed their skills in the next chapter and so had to take a much more difficult route as a result.

It was a brilliant idea. It’s not a bad game, for its time. One problem, though. Online Play. It’s amazing how nowadays, we think nothing of popping onto Xbox Live to play online with our friends all over the world when less than ten years ago, it wasn’t nearly so smooth and effortless to get online. The first Outbreak game was released in Europe in 2003 without Online Capability in the end, instead having the player team up with AI characters. AI wasn’t so great back then, either. It was released in Japan with Online Capability. Result? Mediocre reviews here, great reviews in Japan.

Resident Evil: Outbreak File 2, released in 2004, was seen as more of an expansion pack than a sequel, with not much new content, and not much improvement of the graphics or gameplay. After that, the whole idea died, never to be mentioned again.

When I first heard of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, with its 4 player Co-Op, the first thing that came to mind was the Outbreak series. It would be great to see how 4 people would use their unique abilities to work together against the zombies (REAL zombies!), scoping out for survivors. It’s not exactly the same; you’re still playing as Mercenary types, instead of normal people, but the idea will still hopefully be there. Of course, there are a lot of people who think that Resident Evil should go back to its creepy, deserted-mansion roots. I can see why, but I can also see potential here. Done right, this could be one to beat Left 4 Dead. Of course that’s no small feat, but we’ll see.