Resident Evil 6 Debuts (prodution slowed by the fact that developers can't aim and code at the same time.)

On the same day as the release the pathetically poor Sony commercial that had some Resident Evil: Retaliatbutionogenesis footage slapped on, Capcom has answered the SlimShadyian call, "Will the real Resident Evil please stand up?"

And now lumber forward.

Hit the jump for the debut trailer and post-game analysis.




From the brief gameplay snippets interspersed between the melodrama, we can discern that the game seems to be divided into three gameplay styles, each linked with a particular character. Leon S. Kennedy, last seen dispatching not-zombies in España, brings back Resident Evil 4's classic gameplay in a setting that looks an awful lot like Resident Evils 2 and 3. Leon even remarks in the trailer, "It's like Racoon City all over again."

Indeed. Yet not quite. Because Chris Redfield, last seen emasculating zombies to death in Resident Evil 5, seems to bring with him the cover-based combat that randomly appeared about 3/4 of the way through his last outing. The mysterious third character, who seems to have special blood that he's trying to be all mercenary about, is tied to a free-running and fisticuffs system.

In perhaps the biggest renovation that the series has ever seen, it would seem that the player is now able to actually move their character as though they were controlling a human being, instead of the legged tanks in past iterations. The moment in the trailer when Leon does his slide/spin/shoot move looks to set a new standard of movement for the series.

After the largely failed experiment that was Resident Evil 5, this definitely looks to be a step in the right direction for the series; one that simultaneously returns the series to its roots, but pushes the gameplay further into the present.

But the real question is why the dev team didn't take advantage of Redfield and Kennedy's headlining of the game by giving it a catchy subtitle like Resident Evil 6: Bangs and Biceps.


And now for a brief coda on why I love the internet.

Total time between rumor and confirmation: 33 minutes.

Screenshot from Joystiq.