Umbrella Corps (2016)

This easily makes it into the top 5 worst games I've ever played. I only stuck through it at all because I challenged myself to play through the entire Resident Evil series this year and this game technically has a single-player campaign so I thought I'd do that. If I ever do a series playthrough again, I will definitely skip this one. I wouldn't justify that choice by saying it isn't Resident Evil. After all, the series has had some pretty goofy spin-offs and this one's not too outside of those others. However, I would rule it out because I'm not sure it counts as a game.

I'll mostly just cover "The Experiment" since that's the single-player campaign I played (and even if match-making still worked, I don't think I'd bother with the multiplayer, despite it technically being what the game is about). The Experiment is a series of stages following different modes that require you to kill enemies, capture certain points king of the hill style, or collect briefcases scattered around the map. Most of this means killing stuff and generally it's just kind of a map modeled after areas in other games that full of stuff to kill. There is...well the game kind of acts like there's a story, but it really is just a couple paragraphs on the mission select screen with your overseer talking about the experiments they're going to put you through. It's poorly written and doesn't go anywhere. Though I do theorize that the researchers talking about manipulating and tormenting our protagonist with miserable experiences may cleverly be a metaphor for the game torturing the player with its depressingly awful gameplay.

I did have some dumb fun with the game for about 5-10 minutes. The controls feel super weird but at least for a bit, it's kind of fun how you can zip around the areas and just blast your way through stuff. Though the novelty quickly wore off, especially after the game dares to become challenging in the worst ways possible. The vast majority of enemies are almost trivial, be they zombies, ganados, or majini. Dogs are introduced and are not only more agile but are super hard to kill for some reason. But then there are mini-boss enemies that are super-powered zombies with life bars. These enemies move super fast and will kill you, at most, in 2 hits from full health, and they take A TON of ammo to kill. Worse yet, several stages have multiple sub-parts you have to complete in a gauntlet to finish the whole thing, and the game loves putting these enemies in the 2nd or 3rd section so that when they kill you in a fight that feels like awful RNG stacked against you, you have to restart all the prior parts and run over weak and easy enemies a few minutes to even try to roll the dice again. Other cheap ways to die exploit the fact that enemies clip through each other, meaning they can stack up and sometimes will dogpile on the other side of a door and all hit you at once when you come through, essentially instant killing you before you could possibly even start shooting them. Your character has very little health in general, so it doesn't even take that many stacked up to do this.

The game also features a slew of other aspects that are just plain annoyingly designed even when they aren't game-breaking. Crow enemies will fly down and harass you, somewhat hilariously always remaining in frame just above your reticle so you can't shoot them while they do crazy damage for some reason. Your character loves to latch onto bits of the environment and climb or scale them just because you were nearby. There are also walls you can push up against for "cover" in a game featuring nothing but melee enemies. These cover options light up the map constantly. Weapons also do extremely random damage with dogs sometimes requiring 3 magnum rounds to the face to take down. The game also features the most bizarre perspective I've seen for a shooter as it is technically 3rd person but like RIGHT next to your head to the point it might as well be 1st person. It looks like a work-in-progress 3rd person mod. This perspective also allows you to see close-up the extremely bizarre fighting style of our hero as he holds his gun right next to his ear to ensure he will never hear anything again after about five minutes of fighting. There's plenty more bad I could go on about, but what's worse is that there's really nothing good about the game to even try and make up for it.

If I were to say anything positive about the game, it's the the graphics at least are somewhat good at times. Things do generally look pretty smooth. Even if your character has some of the most awkward animations ever, the environments have a nice sleek look. Though even this plus side occasionally gets in the way with the Raccoon City street map looking pretty cool at a glance, but being so over-saturated with rain and reflection effects that it's really hard to see anything, especially the constant army of crows descending on you. There are still plenty of bad visuals too though, like the blood effects that cover way too much of the screen and plenty of assets that look a lot less polished.

I've always heard this was the worst Resident Evil game. While the series has had its ups and downs, even its worst games I generally don't find that painful, despite their bad reputations. But I had to wonder how this one had earned such definitive notoriety. Now I realize it's because this game is completely unfinished to an extent I've never seen before in a game that was sold for actual money. I'm pretty sure I got this in a humble bundle or something because I already had it on Steam even though I've never played it before now. I'm really glad I probably essentially got it for free because I feel terrible for anyone who paid full price for it. They should really be able to get their money back.

My other Resident Evil reviews:

• Resident Evil (1996) - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 2 (1998) - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 3 (1999) - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil: Survivor - ★★★
• Resident Evil: Survivor 2 – Code Veronica - ★★
• Resident Evil Remake - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil Gaiden - ★★
• Resident Evil 0 - ★★★
• Resident Evil: Outbreak - ★★★
• Resident Evil 4 - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil Outbreak File #2 - ★★★
• Resident Evil Deadly Silence - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D - ★★
• Resident Evil Dead Aim - ★★★
• Resident Evil 2 Remake - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 3 Remake - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 4 VR - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 4 Remake - ★★★★★