Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles

Conclusions

It’s a little disappointing that the Wii Zapper proved to be such a let down – especially since it isn’t a particularly complex thing to get right.

All that is really required of the Zapper is for it to be a controller case which is comfortable and gun-like. Sure, the Wiimote needs to have a line of sight to the sensor bar, but why not just have Wiimote at the back and then have the nunchuck ahead and below it?

Needless to say, this little preview of the Wii Zapper hasn’t left us with very favourable impressions of the device. It is worth pointing out though that it isn’t on sale yet in the UK and that we did only get a chance to try it with the one game. I don’t see how it’s possible, but there’s always the chance that some games will make better use of the Zapper.

Honestly though, Link’s Crossbow Training will have to be a damn good game to make me change my mind. But that's enough of the Zapper – what of Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles? How did that fare in my judgements?

Well, with the Wii Zapper I didn’t think that it played particularly well, but that was more of the fault of the peripheral than the game. It’s also the reason that I decided to play the game without the help of the Zapper after a few hours.

Playing with just the Wiimote, Umbrella Chronicles was a lot more fun. It was easier to defeat baddies, the controls made a lot more sense and the game was more about the game and less about the agonising pain in my wrists.


Still, the game didn’t manage to bowl me over with excellence. It may have the Resident Evil story in its favour and the benefit of the Umbrella logo on the front, but that doesn’t guarantee quality and the game is still just a on-rails shooter when everything else is boiled down. It doesn’t bring anything really new to the genre, though it does try to bring a new genre to the franchise.

The graphics in Umbrella Chronicles are as good as one might expect on the Wii – possibly even better than. Pretty much everything is just a different shade of brown with a weird over-exposed and dirty filter, but the zombies do look mean and the bosses are appropriately large and menacing. The sound is exactly what you’d consider as normal for a Resident Evil game and the gameplay is basic, but never really bad.

The game occasionally edges towards being exciting by clustering dozens of enemies on the screen and increasing the pace – plus, the latter stages of the game where you get to play Albert Wesker are pretty good – but the game never really breaks the on-rails vibe.

One part of the game which sticks in my head as being indicative of the whole experience is a portion where I was on a balcony. The game had done a long, automated cutscene to get there and for the last two minutes there had been nothing to fight. An undead monkey drops into view – bang, bang, bang, dead.


Then the camera does an about turn and leads me back the way I came, stopping me to fight two or three bats on the way and making me question if it was worth the detour just to kill a single zombie monkey. It’s not like this is Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead and that monkey will spell doom for the world, is it?

It got worse when I was killed moments later by a horde of monkeys and had to replay the section again. When I returned to the same horde of monkeys who had just dispatched me, I was able to wait and watch them for about twenty seconds before they decided to attack. From that point onwards, much of my excitement was destroyed.

Umbrella Chronicles isn’t a bad game in the light-gun genre, but it is a bad game by the standards of Resident Evil. As with any light-gun game it also ends up suffering from having very limited replayability, making up for it by providing an intense and interesting co-op experience.

A perfect game to rent for a week or so if you’ve got a friend you want to slaughter some zombies with, Umbrella Chronicles offers further glimpses into the Resident Evil universe for series fans and presents a challenge for those with a love of the genre. It’s certainly not one for casual gamers though and most gamers will have more fun if they head down to the arcade with a fistful of fifty pence pieces instead.