Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles

Umbrella Chronicles succeeded for a few reasons: it was based on memorable moments from the Resident Evil franchise; it came out when Wii rail-shooters weren't an epidemic; and it kept its content simple, and easily digestible. Darkside Chronicles, while mechanically superior to its predecessor, thoroughly ruins those advantages to the point of being more annoyance than video game.

It falls victim to its own tropes with depressing regularity: every five minutes, if not more often, you will see bodies on the ground - obviously about to turn into zombies - but unloading ammo into them does nothing. The game proceeds past them, then the camera turns around, and they rise up to attack you. It's a moronic gimmick that the game delights in repeating, and is downright insulting in its frequency.

Similarly, in boss fights, you will deplete the screen-filling health meter long before the boss dies. Each one has more phases than you expect, and in every case, the amount of time you spend fighting a boss after "killing" it is ludicrous.

For that matter, the amount of time you spend in the game, period, is outlandish. Of its three scenarios, the wrapper story, Operation Javier, is not terrible (if somewhat retarded); and the Resident Evil 2 flashback is fine, though a bit long in the tooth; but the Code: Veronica section is absolute garbage, and frustrating in its refusal to end. It is ridiculous.

Lengthening the Umbrella Chronicles experience might sound like an obvious goal for a sequel, but Darkside Chronicles is really too long for its own good. My cohort and I found ourselves wishing for characters to die, and for the game to end, more than anything else. That it's been a month and a half since my last post on the game - which syncs up with the last I played it - should speak for itself.

And of course, it doesn't help that inbetween Umbrella and Darkside, Dead Space: Extraction has shamed it and set a new bar for the rail shooter genre. Frankly, Dead Space makes this Resident Evil shit look like cheap parlor tricks.

Darkside Chronicles isn't all bad: with the exception of the endless Code Veronica segments, and the kind of insipid plot you've come to expect from Resident Evil, it's fun to sit down with a friend and shoot up some zombies. But, in this post-DSE era, that's far from enough.

Better than: until the Code Veronica part, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles
Not as good as: after the Code Veronica part, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles
Really not as good as: Dead Space: Extraction

Progress: Finished in co-op