Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City Review

I always heard the game getting a massive amount of hate and not being very well liked by Resident Evil fans but then I realized in recent years that you are better off playing games for yourself and come to your own conclusions on media even if they aren't well liked. Plus, on a side note, I never saw eye to eye on the Resident Evil fandom on a lot of things so it just made me curious about this game all the more.

That out of the way, I can see why Operation Raccoon City never got nearly as much as a vocal cult following as games like Resident Evils 5 and 6 do. As a whole, Operation Raccoon City is a painfully average game that just so happens to be more of a fan service homage masquerading as an "okay" third person shooter. It's similar to Dirge of Cerberus in this regard. Both are spin off games that are reimagining of beloved PS1 games a good while before their respective remakes for both franchises would even see the light of day. So it's interesting in that regard.

As for the game itself, if you ever wanted a Resident Evil themed shooting gallery with elements found in the multiplayer portions of Call of Duty games from CoD4 onwards, with cover based shooting, custom loadouts, perks and playing with 3 npcs at a time that is basically Operation Raccoon City in a nutshell all though to Operation Raccoon City's credit, the coop isn't as forced on you by comparison to RE5. You can also move while shooting which is nice. The guns have a decent punch to them and killing enemies both infected, zombie and humans does feel stimulating enough.

However there are weird and awkward "quirks" about the game that I doubt I would tolerate if the game were longer. First being that you can't dodge or do any evade command but you CAN do such a thing while sprinting which doesn't really make much sense since I want to evade while moving normally. Second there is no dedicated cover button and the player takes cover automatically which isn't very intuitive when trying to run away with waste cover litereted everywhere. Third the player is given a two weapon limit and grenades which is fine but you run out of ammo very often even on easy difficulty and it can be very inoppourtune when there is a large horde of enemies and especially when there are Hunters who can take lots of damage and ammo drops aren't enough, I have to use pistols a lot and it feels like I killed the hordes because I got lucky since it feels like the pistols don't do much damage. Forth, you can only carry one healing item and herbs can be picked up and be used upon pick up, you can buy an upgrade to carry more but it might not be the most helpful during human enemy fights since they use hitscan weapons and there is no way to avoid damage other than hide behind cover and it might not be so helpful when all the healing items are used up partnered with being low on ammo constantly. There is lots of left stick waggling which a lot of 7th gen action games have and it's a carry over from the original RE4, which I never liked since half the time I don't know whether to waggle the left stick with my left thumb or use the palm of my hand to do.

The bosses also aren't that great due to the above mentioned reasons and the final boss is hilariously lame considering this is a Resident Evil game and an action one at that and on top of all that being killed through an infection and turning into a zombie can feel cheap since there are times I can find an anti virus spray and other times I can't and get a game over.

If you combine all these things together than the idea of an RE themed shooting gallery isn't too bad and sounds pretty fun but it's letdown by awkward design quirk after awkward design quirk.

A major aspect that is a massive point in the game's favor is that it checkpoints very frequently and the game levels rarely if ever go on for too long, you can probably beat it in a single sitting if you tried. This helps since if the game was any longer I would be annoyed beyond belief. One final positive is that combat encounters do become more interesting when zombies, humans and occasional monsters like Hunters and Lickers up since you got to prioritize different enemies but this is all let down due to the above mentioned "quirks".

Overall, I did spend money to play Operation Raccoon City so in a sense, I'm glad I got to the end and got something out the game but at the same time, the game is very much mediocre, I did hear the DLC for the game is much better than the main campaign and I wish 7th gen Capcom put these parts on the game on the disc but what can you do. I'd still say Raccoon City is worth checking out if you have an interest in short mediocre games like I do.