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N64
Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 363
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Umbrella Chronicles Bad Review
Before I start, I must point out the this game seems to be widely getting reasonably good reviews, scoring in the region of 70% or so, and most people I know who have played it seem to like it - so bear in mind that this isn't a representative view of the game amongst most gameplayers.
The only reason I'm bothering to write a review, is not to be pointelessly negative, it's just that I'm one of the minority who think it is a bad game, and I haven't seen many really bad reviews of it so far - so I just want to put across what I think are the bad things that ruin the game for me, just for the sake of anyone who is thinking of buying it - so if you are thinking of buying it, then if all the bad points that I describe sound like the sort of things that annoy you a lot in other games and ruin them for you, then maybe like me you won't like this game - however if these points all sound like minor quibbles that haven't stopped you enjoying other games, then you'll probably be more like the majority of people who think it's reasonably good.
First off that graphics, are not exceptional, but they're fine for a game like this. The voice acting is ok, about the standard you'd expect from Resident Evil games (ie. not that good, but works fine.)
Secondly, the gameplay, this is the big problem for me.
I'm sure most people are aware that this is an "on-the-rails" shooter (I have seen some very bad reviews on Amazon etc. from people who bought it not realising this, but I don't count them as a critisism, that's just unfortunate that they bought it not realising what kind of game it was.)
For anyone who doesn't know, it means you don't control where you move, you just control you gunsight to shoot enemies as you follow a preset path around the levels (although you can use the nunchuk to look a little way up and down and to each side, which is mainly useful to grab items that are just dissappering off the screen.)
I came at this game from a point of view of loving the Resident Evil series (with the sole exception of Code Veronica and thinking Zero was good, but flawed by the different inventory system), and quite liking light gun games like House Of The Dead/Virtua Cop/Time Crisis etc, so after seeing decent reviews it seemed like a no-brainer that I'd enjoy it, even if it wasn't the best game ever.
The 1st think that struck me when I played it, was that the shooting doesn't feel right, there isn't a feeling of weight to your bullets as the hit the zombies - it felt a little more like I was clicking on zombies with a mouse pointer, than shooting them with a lightgun.
(Of course the Wiimote isn't a lightgun, it's a device for moving an on-screen pointer, and while it's quick, there is a very small delay when you suddenly move the wiimote before the pointer catches up - it's very tiny, no different to moving the pointer around on the Wii screen when you turn your Wii on, but it does make shooting fast moving targets a little bit harder than it would be using a lightgun, where you would just point and shoot, and know that it would instantly be registering the right location on the screen. Most of the time this isn't a big issue, but there are some occasions, especially during boss fights, where I think they should have taken this into account and gone a little easier on making the weak-point on a baddie jerk around so fast.
Which brings me to the boss fights - which I think is the biggest problem in the game. Depending on whether you're a casual gamer (or even a really inexperienced gamer, a lot of people seem to be buying the Wii who haven't played games much before) or a hardcore gamer - I would say that the boss battles will take up somewhere between 70-90% of your playing time (TBH, maybe even more than that if you're a very casual/inexperienced gamer).
That doesn't mean that around 90% of the game consists of boss battles, it just means that while the main sections of levels aren't generally too difficult to get through if you choose an appropriate difficulty level (there will be bits that surprise you and maybe kill you during the main level, but they are in the same place each time, and you'll soon learn to expect them), the boss battles are so time-consuming and often so difficult to get through, that you'll be playing them over and over and over again trying to get past them, and long after you've mastered getting through the main level easily, you might still be having to keep trying over and over to defeat the boss at the end of it.
I found this a big problem, because the boss-battles are by far the least enjoyable part of the game. Shooting the ordinary zombies and dogs and leeches etc. isn't bad, it may not feel perfect, but it's passable, and if the whole game was like that, it wouldn't be too bad a game, but when you're spending 5 or 10 minutes getting through that part of a level, then having to make 20 or 30 attempts at the boss battle at the end - then if you're not enjoying the boss battle, it means most of you're time on this game isn't very enjoyable.
The boss battles are, on paper, pretty much what you'd expect from a rail shooter - the boss has typically one very small weakspot, and lots of energy, and you have to keep shooting at the weakspot while you dodge his attacks (in this game by either shaking the wiimote, or hitting a button, or eg. when the scorpion attacks with his sting, shooting his stinger) - that's the sort of thing you get in House of the Dead etc., and is exactly what you'd expect to see in this game.
But, the weakspots are typically very small, and in some cases, the bosses or just your camera move about so much, that it's frustratingly difficult to hit it with the wiimote pointer (if you were using a real lightgun it wouldn't be quite as bad, but they haven't given you much leeway with aiming or reaction time).
And, the amount of stamina the bosses have, even on the easiest setting, can be ridiculous. I get the impression that they made a point of making the boss battles take so long because there isn't anywhere near as much content in here as say Resident Evil 4, so they have to drag it out.
Some of them (not all admittedly, but enough of them) could be described as if they'd taken something like the final battle from Resident Evil 4, and made you go through that, with very little ammunition for your powerful weapons, so that once that's run out you have to complete 75% of the battle using only your basic pistol, and maybe double the amount of damage the baddie can take before he dies.
All of that could maybe be forgiven - if the boss battles were enjoyable. But (and maybe lots of people will disagree with me here) I don't think they are at all.
After 60 seconds you're thinking "Ok, I get it, that's the weakspot, those are his attacks I have to dodge, just keep doing it etc."
After several minutes you're thinking "Right I've used up all the ammo for the powerful weapons, all the grenades, have to keep using the pretty underpowered pistol, better be really careful with dodging the attacks, this is going to take a while."
Many more minutes later you're looking at the bosses still 75% full health bar thinking "How much longer?"
Later still, you're wondering if there's anything good on TV, whether it would be more fun to just switch the console off an go do something fun.
The boss battles are challenging and some of them will take many many tries to get through - and that's fine if they were fun. But when they are as unenjoyable as this, it really makes you wonder why you're paying money to buy a game, and spending your time on it when you're not getting any enjoyament from it.
I could write a PC game where you have a fast moving blob moving around the screen and you have to click on it many times with the mouse pointer - and by adjusting the speed and number of clicks needed I could make it realy challenging, but nobody would bother playing it because it wouldn't be fun.
That's what a lot of this game is like - with decent graphics and sound on top - but that's all the gameplay is for a lot of the game.
I think games like House of the Dead worked better because even though the gameplay is in theory the same, in practice you're moving through the levels, meeting new creatures, being surprised by zombies leaping out etc etc - not spending most of your time in one location with one baddie with one weakspot trying to shoot his small fast moving weakspot again and again and again and again.
I tried really hard to like this game, but eventually gave up and traded it in for Metroid Prime Corruption, which makes for an interesting comparison.
Metroid has some very time-consuming boss battles, some of which can be quite hard - at the moment I'm stuck on one particular boss - but I'm enjoying each attempt at it, and am looking forward to my next go - because the boss battles are enjoyable.
With Umbrella Chronicles, the problem isn't that it's too hard (although personally I think for a game that's going to be picked up by a lot of casual or inexperienced gamers, I think they've made the easy setting a bit too hard), having sections of a game that take lots of attempts to get through and force you to learn new techniques to get past them etc. is fine - but only if they manage to make the game enjoyable in the 1st place. In all the hours I spent on this game before I gave up, I genuinely got less actually enjoyment out of it than any other game I've played for a long time. Most of the parts that I moderately enjoyed were the main level shooting normal zombies etc, but the vast majority of your playing is going to be in one location with one boss shooting at one fast moving weakspot again and again and again, and it really isn't much fun at all.
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lol). And then he came back in and i died again...
Linear Mode
