from its survival horror roots, and through Phyletic Gradualism, has changed into something

much more action than horror. This is fully realised with Operation Raccoon City, which

would only be considered a Resident Evil game because of its title and some familiar locations.

You play as part of the Umbrella Security Service, a group of elite operatives that

are dropped into Raccoon City to destroy all evidence of Umbrella’s involvement. But

you are not the only ones out there. Along the way you will run into members of Echo

Six, who are out to expose Umbrella. And also classic characters such as Jill Valentine,

Leon Kennedy, and HUNK. While this sounds like it could be interesting, it’s not.

You are a generic operative, with no real background. You don’t really identify with

the characters or the missions, which boils down to pressing a button in front of a filing

cabinet.

The gameplay is at least more interesting, but not by much. The cover-based squad shooting

plays like recent entries, with the over the shoulder perspective only now you can move

while shooting. This makes the game feel fundamentally different, and eliminates much of the tension

and replaces it with straight action. The cover system is much more frustrating than

intuitive. You take cover by moving towards it and not with a button press. This leads

to taking cover when you just want to walk down the hall. The damage system is terrible,

with some enemies going down in a couple shots with other taking forever. The boss battles

mix things up a little, but don’t bring the tension that you can see they were trying

for. The enemy AI is simply pitiful, only outmatched by your squad’s AI. They will

run into mines and right into bullets. Thankfully you can replace them with online friends.

This makes things better, but doesn’t fix the fundamental problems. The locations are

too dark to see any detail, which is a shame because the game looks fairly good.

The game just doesn’t offer anything special. It barely passes as part of the Resident Evil

franchise, the story and characters are uninteresting, and the gameplay is just boring. The best

thing about this game is that this a side-story and not part of the main canon, so the franchise

doesn’t have this as an eternal black spot.