Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

Around this time last year, slightly before my finding of the backloggery website, I saw the game Resident Evil 4 available pretty cheaply for the Wii. A friend of mine had once spoke very highly of it, and even though I hadn't played any of the previous entries in the series, I gave it a shot and loved every minute of it. I'd say it's one of the top 10 game I've played, and a must-play for anyone with a Wii. Just two months afterward, Resident Evil 5 came out for the 360, and while it didn't have quite the charm of 4, was still a very fun play. After finishing that one, I decided that I'd eventually like to get around to playing the rest of the series and see if they're as good. Although I haven't returned to the main series yet, I did manage to score a used copy of Umbrella Chronicles for the Wii, an offshoot game that revisits some of the old storylines and connects the series as more of a cohesive unit. Umbrella Chronicles is a rails shooter, which I thought would work well on the Wii- the motion sensing capabilities are basically the same as the ones you'll find in an arcade shooter. I decided to grab my wussiest video game loving friend, Sheridan, and give it a play a week ago. The opening few minutes have you gunning down zombies on a train- how this was set up, I don't really remember. It was a bit slow, and a few people watching us play seemed bored; I was starting to wonder if I had wasted my money. Sheridan and I blasted our way through the first level fairly easily, but in the second level the game really picked it up. Level 2 revisits the huge mansion from Resident Evil 1, and though it does a good deal of ret-conning, it was an awesome chapter and provided all the fun I was looking for. There were plenty more zombies, and the bosses got more and more ridiculous- a snake that must have been a quarter of a mile long, a man-bat- they're simple ideas that are almost cliche, yet they worked so much better than "generic strong looking guy who needs to be shot in the head," which have been used so many times. After the mansion came Raccoon City, which I believe is the location of Resident Evil 2. Raccoon City was the first level to really provide a challenge, and was right up there with the mansion in terms of fun. At this point we had put in something like 5 or 6 hours into the game, and I was ready for it to wind down with the last level, The Fall of Umbrella. Unfortunately, instead of the final level becoming unlocked, I had to go back and play some extra levels that were one-player only. What the hell? I bought the game with all intentions of being able to beat it with a friend, and yet just when we were enjoying it the most, I had to say "sorry dude" and solo it for a few hours? Not a great decision. I get that the stories for these levels would only work with just one character, but why not allow a second player to shoot anyway? This seems entirely doable in a rails shooter. The levels were fun, sure, but it could have been so much better with a quick tweak. Oh well. I finished them off, and with Sheridan back in the game, we finished it off tonight. The final boss was a little easy, but I feel like we improved our gameplay ability markedly over the past week. So now the entire two-player campaign has been beaten, but a few single-player levels remain. I'll call it beaten, not completed. A sequel to Umbrella Chronicles came out late last year, and I'm sure I'll get around to it at some point, but I've got no rush. Rails shooters aren't very deep, so I'm not exactly craving more. For now, I'll worry about getting back into the original series.