Resident Evil: Chronicles HD Collection

When the call went out that we had a review available of Resident Evil: Chronicles HD Collection, an on-rails shooter using the Playstation Move peripheral, my hand shot up. While not any kind of expert on Resident Evil, I’ve always enjoyed a good light-gun shooter, and I haven’t played one in ages.

What you get in this Collection are two games, originally made for the Wii, tidied up with HD graphics and made to work with Move rather than the Wiimote. The games work as you’d expect, with you simply aiming with the Move and firing at the enemies on screen. You waggle the Move to reload, and occasionally to dodge some of the bigger enemies. The game makes a big fuss out of the fact that you should use a normal Dualshock controller in your other hand, which allows you to look around a bit. However, the amount you can actually look around extra is a bit like the amount you could look around while wearing a neck brace and a motorcycle helmet, so I quickly ditched the second controller. (I could also have used  my other Move to adjust the camera but that seemed even more extraneous and pointless)

In terms of the actual gameplay, this is very much a review of two halves. The first game, The Umbrella Chronicles, feels much more like an old school Resident Evil game. It’s surprisingly slow and clunky, for a shooter, and you plod around the levels popping zombies in the head with a gun that fires very slowly, and does very little damage. The checkpoints are far too far apart and it is punishingly difficult on anything but Easy. It also has some clunky game mechanics like having one button to switch between weapons, and it doesn’t auto skip the three weapons you’re holding that you have no ammo for. For a game based on a survival horror, it doesn’t really throw any decent surprises at you, and never really made me jump once. I found it a dreary, plodding experience, and graphically felt that it was pushing its luck using the acronym HD in the title. It does offer a decent range of enemies, though, and a great nod to the fans in a creepy mansion corridor with two windows just waiting for a dog to burst through them.

The second title, the Darkside Chronicles, is a much more polished affair, but offers a very different feel to it. Now you have different buttons to switch to specific weapons, the graphics are far better, and there are some genuine scares. It’s also a lot more fast paced, with your characters actually seeming to want to live, and running and dodging far more frequently than the first title. This faster movement makes the game far more frenetic, and the much wobblier camera makes it harder to score decent hits. However, this time your characters appear to have swapped out their spud guns for actual handguns, so the guns offer some kick, making up for the lack of accuracy caused by the movement. The “dodge” motions and buttons that pop up in quick time events for the bosses are less punishing than the first game, although it is still difficult and offered a decent challenge even on Easy. After struggling to maintain interest in the first game, I much preferred the second title, and found it quite fun.