If Capcom made House of the Dead, this would be it.
by Matt Casamassina
April 13, 2007 - Capcom producer Masachika Kawata wants to make something clear as he takes the stage at the company's Gamers Day 2007 press conference in San Francisco. He's speaking about the studio's new Wii project, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles. "It's a brand new, all original title that has been developed from the ground-up," he says. "It's a title that isn't a port of any way, shape or kind." That much is true. The project features a storyline that finally exposes what happened to the devious Umbrella Corporation. But Chronicles won't be entirely new to those who've played through the survival horror franchise's many offerings because it takes you back into the mansion, on board the train, and into the police station before you finally get to Umbrella's stronghold. And did we mention that this is an on-rails shooter?
"[The game] has been developed focusing on the point, shoot and aim feature of the Resident Evil franchise and we're trying to deepen that part of the experience," explains Kawata. He's not kidding. To play Umbrella Chronicles, all you really need is the Wii remote because the action is pre-set and auto-choreographed for you. At the most basic level, you point the Wii remote at the television screen and blast zombies as the first-person view camera takes you through the eerie locales. So if you thought you were getting a true sequel to Resident Evil 4 when you signed up for this effort, think again.
The genre is hardly unexplored. SEGA has House of the Dead and Capcom itself has Resident Evil: Dead Aim, but these are light gun games and Umbrella Chronicles is not. It survives by the Wii remote and you will survive only if you learn how to wield it to point and kill with speed and accuracy. The gameplay mechanics may be reduced or simplified compared to the Resident Evil norm -- we won't argue that they're not -- and yet having played the title's first mission, there's no denying that the end experience is still a fun one. It looks good, too.
Kawata is promising that the title will run between 15 and 20 hours long and while many of the environments will look familiar -- you'll play through portions of Resident Evil 0, 1, 2 and 3 -- this will be the first time most of them have been realized in true 3D. Remember, for as pretty as the remake of the first survival horror entry was on GameCube, those backgrounds were pre-rendered, not true polygonal 3D. Unfortunately, we only got to see one of the locales and it was the famous mansion from the first game.
The camera takes you through the mansion in cinematic fashion, slowly peeking around corners to reveal shambling zombies, making dramatic 180-degree turns to showcase speedy Crimsons and wobbling up and down to illustrate that your character is actually running. While the first-person view is dominant, you will not traverse the entire game without having ever seen the heroes and heroines you're playing as -- a roster that includes everybody from Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine to Billy Coen, Rebecca Chambers and Carlos Oliveira. The characters will not really have different abilities, although some will use unique weapons. You'll see them in brief cut-scenes as they interact with each other -- you might be controlling Chris, but Jill could be fighting alongside you during a sequence. You'll also see them during contextual maneuvers -- when hordes of zombies approach, you can tap the A button to counter their attacks, at which point the camera will pan back to show your character send a powerful kick their way, knocking the enemies down.
Umbrella Chronicles isn't merely mindless shooting -- there is that, yes, but there is also much more to consider. The Wii remote affords you pixel-perfect shooting accuracy. You can cap zombie heads without a second's hesitation or you can alternatively shoot them in the arms and legs, at which point they'll drop to the ground. Your reticule decreases in size the longer your hold it over a zombie's face and the smaller it is, the greater chance you have of pulling off a single-shot head explosion, from what we could gather. A button picks up items and chooses paths (occasionally, you can select to go in one direction or another), and B button is your trigger. Press it and you'll shoot -- that simple. But you can use nunchuk's analog stick to look around the game world -- left, right, up and down -- as you glide on-rails through the areas. You'll want to do this because it's how you find the hidden items such as guns, ammo and health that are strewn about the levels.
The 10-minute demo of Umbrella Chronicles featured only three weapons: the handgun, shotgun and machine gun. The latter two guns require you to manage your bullets because if you don't you may eventually run out of ammo. However, you have an infinite supply of bullets for your handgun. Your shooting reticule is represented on-screen by an orange circle. The orange color depletes from the circle as you burn through a round and when it's gone altogether you'll need to quickly reload. Fittingly, you'll keep tapping the B trigger to shoot off round after round from your handgun and shotgun, but you can simply hold it down to stream bullets from your machine gun. Additional weapons planned for the final version include everything from rocket launchers to knives and grenades, according to Capcom. You switch between your weapons at any point by pressing down on the Wii remote's D-Pad.
Items are hidden within the stages, which feature highly interactive objects. You can shoot apart doors and windows, knock out lights (the rooms will darken -- we haven't figured out the benefit of doing this), gun down paintings (they'll eventually fall off the walls) and even blow apart chandeliers, which may fall from the ceiling and land on enemies if timed correctly. The animations and particles -- doors splinter, windows break apart, bullets line walls -- add a lot to the atmosphere.
The mansion demo we played was simple to pick up but also very challenging -- it proved to be more difficult than we anticipated. For the record, we made it through the mansion without being killed, but just everybody else present died several times. Yes, we're patting ourselves on the back as we write this. Men from boys, right? Anyway, it's clear that Capcom isn't going to make the shooter easy, which is a big plus because the added difficulty has a way of keeping you on your toes. When your health is low and a zombie charges forward, biting into your neck (blood sprays the screen), you really feel the terror and want nothing more than to gun the creature down. The demo ended with a boss fight against the giant, slithering snake from the remake, which died after we continued to blast its mouth.
Asked about the completely new locations in the game, Kawata said, "I think that will have to remain a secret for now."
There is a chance that Umbrella Chronicles can be played by more than a single person. Asked about a multiplayer mode, the producer responded: "We're still looking into it so I really can't say anything definite right now."
Umbrella Chronicles looks pretty impressive on Wii. The game is running in 480p and 16:9 widescreen at a fluidity of 30 frames per second. Some of the world and character textures blur up close, which is disappointing, but nevertheless Capcom has really used light and darkness to great effect. Shadowy environments become illuminated in quick flashes of lightning and the silhouettes of characters and objects project and distort onto walls and walkways. Animations are smooth and particle effects over-the-top -- blood splatters in every direction as you decapitate zombies with well-placed bullets. We'd wager this is one of the prettier Wii titles and we'd expect nothing less from Capcom.
The title has been in development for nearly a year with a team 40 people strong, according to Kawata-san, and is scheduled for a summer release on Wii. We'll have much more on the game just as soon as we get the opportunity to play deeper into it, but even from this early junction it seems clear that the developer has another winner on its hands, even if it doesn't follow the more traditional Resident Evil formula.
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Wii: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles
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