Resident Evil Re:Verse (PC) - Review
by Paul Broussard , posted on 23 November 2022 / 3,858 Views
Capcom, we need to talk. I know persistence is supposed to be a virtue, but we really need to stop and maybe think about the possibility that Resident Evil just shouldn’t be multiplayer. No one can say you didn’t try, from the rather tepidly received Resident Evils 5 and 6, to the absolutely miserable Umbrella Corps, and even Operation Raccoon City, an experience about as enjoyable as sticking a fork in an electrical socket. Even when you cut off one of Resident Evil 3 remake’s legs so you could make Resident Evil Resistance it still wasn’t fun. So just… please, let it go.
Unfortunately for me Capcom subscribes to the “sixth time’s the charm” philosophy, so here we go I guess. Resident Evil Re:Verse, a game that absolutely no one had any expectations for and which still manages to disappoint. One would think a game ostensibly designed to “celebrate the Resident Evil franchise” would play like an actual Resident Evil game, but Capcom is of an advanced mindset, so here's a competitive shooter/monster smasher/thing instead.
But let’s set aside our expectations and try to evaluate this game for what it is. At the beginning of matches, at least, Re:Verse functions like a typical third person shooter. Pick one of six currently available characters (and, yes, for a game that spent two years in development there are somehow only six characters), then run around and try to kill people with one of the two guns assigned to you. Each character has a default pistol and a special weapon exclusive to them. Leon has a shotgun, Jill has a machine gun, Ada has a crossbow. Each character has a few exclusive abilities that run on cooldown timers as well; Hunk, for instance, can turn invisible and pull off a high damage melee attack with a lot of invincibility. So far, so standard.
The twist with Resident Evil: Going in Reverse is that when you die, you don’t immediately respawn. Instead, you turn into a monster, the strength of which depends on how many of a certain collectable item you picked up while in human form. Monsters tend to be much tougher and hit harder than humans, but are bigger targets, have a constantly depleting health bar, and kills with them are worth fewer points. Once you die as a monster, you respawn (re-respawn?) as a human, and the process starts over again.
If the absolute dearth of available characters seems like a dealbreaker, then don’t worry, because Resident Evil: Reeling from Boredom makes up for it with a whopping total of two maps. That’s right, two. As in the number of years this game spent in development. I’m pretty sure you could lock a pack of howler monkeys in a room with Unity and they’d produce a game with more content at the end of two years.
But it can’t be all bad as long as the gameplay is polished and works well, right? You’ll no doubt be shocked to hear that Resident Evil: Resigned to Disappointment isn’t a winner on that front either. Shooting functions like a Resident Evil game, which is to say somewhat clunky and stilted. This is a good thing for a survival horror title, which should make enemy encounters risky propositions and force you to make every bullet count. Unfortunately, this is a terrible thing for a competitive multiplayer game, especially one in which shooting people accurately is the entire damn point.
The monsters are somehow even worse. Sure, the first time you run up to a human and slam Jack Baker’s weird scissor weapon into them, you might get a dopamine kick, but it isn’t long until you realize that playing as monsters involves very little skill or strategy beyond just running up to people and deciding which of three attack buttons to use. As bland as the shooting may be, at least wrestling with the controls does require a degree of skill, even if it is with developing experience in fighting with the game. The monsters don’t even have that level of involvement.
Graphically there’s not much to talk about; every environment and character model here has been lifted straight from prior games. New content is being added in the form of new skins for characters, and boy does it show how tiny this game’s budget is when any genuinely new content has to be made. The Resident Evil 5 Jill skin, for example, looks like they slapped her RE 3 face model into her jumpsuit from that game and then made her wear a blonde wig.
I guess the saving grace in all of this is that Resident Evil: Release Me From This Hell is free so long as you own Resident Evil Village, but does that really count as a point in its favor when this is such a bland, uninteresting offering to begin with? If you already own Village, I guess this might be worth a download for the 30 or so minutes of entertainment it can provide before things get old, but you’re not missing much if you don’t. There are better games available for free anyway, and most of them won’t make you wait two years before inevitable disappointment.
VGChartz Verdict
3
Bad
This review is based on a digital copy of Resident Evil Re:Verse for the PC
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They delayed it for no reason!
They didn't even changed the game when they first released the beta in 2021
Well, I did recently figure out how to finally download it on my PS5 (Sony: why do you make this so complicated), so I guess I will play my 30 minutes of fun and then delete it lol
Oh, for the two of you wondering out there, there is no native PS5 version of Re:Verse. It's a PS4 only title, which means when playing it on PS5, you are just getting the PS4 Pro-codepath with a more stable framerate.
Damn! guess i will pass
