Resident Evil 6 Demo Preview

After being burned by the last Resident Evil Capcom claims to be going back to its roots. Resident Evil 6 releases in October and you will be playing as Leon, Chris and new comer Jake. The demo gives us a brief look into the game. Let’s find out if we truly are going back to survival horror.

Leon Chapter

This is the Demo from having Dragon’s Dogma.

Of all the characters in the Resident Evil franchise Leon is my favorite. His campaign has been boasted as the old school survival horror campaign. While it certainly had the dark creeping feeling to it, the chapter playable in the demo was a pretty big let down.

The chapter starts off by showing that Leon killed the president after he became infected. Your new partner, Elena, then says you need to get to the cathedral so she can explain everything. You are quickly interrupted by Hunnigan and she wants you out of there. Leon covers for Elena and they are off to the church.

You are in some sort of banquet hall that looks as if it was apparently going to have a party for the President. Unfortunately at this point all you do is run on a pretty straight forward path. It is dark and they throw some creeping noises and lighting/thunder at you but without the hordes rushing you it is not scary.

As you keep going you will see a man run. As soon as you see him the objective is to catch him. The game puts you in some tight cornered dark areas in another attempt to scare you but yet again it fails. Eventually you find the man and he is looking for his daughter. Leon volunteers you and now you must follow him for a good portion of the demo.

Now you will go back through the banquet hall and this time the power is out. Leon turns his flashlight on and you must navigate through the tables in the dark. Once you do the man you are following will open a door for you and you will find an elevator. Until you find the daughter you cannot take it though. Keep following the hall and you will make it to the daughter. She is in bad shape and the man you are with offers to let you use his car once you all get to the garage. You go back to the elevator and take it.

During the ride the lights go out and you hear a chewing noise. Once the lights come back on you find the daughter eating the father and she is now going for Elena. Shoot her off Elena and then Elena finishes her off with a shot to the head. The elevator then reaches the bottom floor and you are rushed by about 8 zombies.

After dealing with them you find yourself in an underground garage. You avoid the zombies since you have like no ammo and make it to a security room. You get to see on the cameras that people need help. Leon wants to help but Elena tells him he can’t help everyone. Then the demo ends.

Bad choice for a demo level in my opinion. A ton of running around in the dark and hardly any threat from zombies. Yes it has the older feel to it but I need more zombies in order to be scared. Bad choice for the level but I am still interested in Leon’s campaign.

Chris Chapter

Chris is more of the action hero guy. He was formally part of a group known as the BSAA which fought Bio terror. Now he is in a bar drinking away his memories. A member of the BSAA named Piers confronts him and says he has to come back. Then a few more people stand up and Piers says you are coming back one way or another.

Then you are tossed into the game. Unlike Leon you are armed with an assault rifle and pistol. You also have extra ammo unlike Leon. What you need to do is fight your way to the hotel and find the hostages. These enemies are not just normal zombies though they have guns. They are also the type that once you shoot them enough the have mutations.

After a bit you will run into some breakable boxes. Any RE 4 and 5 player will remember having to pull out the knife in order to break crates. Now all you have to do is press the melee button and you can break them open quicker. That is a nice addition.

Shortly after that you arrive on a roof with some more enemies. Here you can really use the cover system they added. Honestly I had some trouble getting used to it at first. You need to be aiming then hit X to go into cover. Now you need to keep the aim button down the whole time or else you pop out of your cover and use the direction pad to pop out for a shot. It works it just takes some time to get used to.

Right after this you take a zip line which is shot out from underneath you. If you play as Chris you need to climb across a rope while being shot at and if you a Piers then you need to cover Chris. Much like in RE 5 when you would split up one person takes one path and the other takes a different path that leads to the same thing. You can still see each other and cover one another if things get hairy though.

After fighting a couple more waves of enemies you end up at the hotel. Here the objective is simple hold out until bravo team arrives. They come at you in packs but they spawn right by explosive barrels at first so I used those to my advantage. I also had all my frag grenades saved up so I used all of them as well. I didn’t really feel overwhelmed at any point and once bravo team gets there it becomes even easier. After you clear out the rest of the enemies you beat them demo.

Overall this is what I expected from the Chris campaign. Tons of action and lots of explosions.

Admittedly I do not know much about Jake other than he has the blood of Wesker. He is also partners with Sherry Birkin from RE 2.His demo starts off by showing him and Sherry running from something. A huge monster with a metal arm is then shown killing some random person. After a few enemies shoot at Sherry and Jake then monster comes around the corner. Jake and Sherry run and Jake shoots a propane tank in hopes of stopping him. This does nothing to him and you are then thrown into the game running from this guy. Just keep running and running until you have to jump. Once you jump you will need to run and jump again while saving Sherry. Do that and you are in the warehouse and the monster has lost you for now.As you get into the main part of the warehouse Jake makes a remark about the building falling apart. You then jump down and can collect a couple of grenades and a remote bomb from a case. After that you and Sherry kick a door in and another fight begins. The ceiling will fall in and some troops will start to rappel in. Kill them and then head up the stairs. Once upstairs you should see a broken wall that leads into a room. In that room is a magnum so grab that. While up there be sure to kick the ladders down.After that head to the objective and the big monster will come down again. This time you have to kill him. He is pretty simple you just dodge roll his charges and shoot him when he misses his pull. Since it was the demo I just used my magnum on him but the explosive barrels do good damage as well. After you kill him the demo is over.After the demo I was more interested in playing the Jake campaign.

That said if his whole campaign is running from a giant monster that is after him I will be disappointed.While the demo was long they really should have done a better level for Leon. He will be the first choice for most of the old school RE players and after playing the demo most people might not even want to buy the game.The addition of running and gunning is a huge plus for the series but really we should have seen it in the last game.Melee is clunky. It really always has been in the RE series but they are trying to put more emphasis on it in this game.They really need to hit a home run with this one because after 5 people really started to question where the series was going. I am not even going to mention how terrible Raccoon City was. The demo honestly was lack luster as far as innovation goes but the story has me enticed which will get me to play. There is a new version of the demo coming out September 18th which is going to have different gameplay parts for each character. Be sure to check that out before you decide on buying the game!