Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles (Wii) Review

Seemingly because future Resident Evil games like Resident Evil 5 wouldn’t work on the Wii, Capcom chose to give the Wii its own Resident Evil games in the form of two rail shooters. Strangely Resident Evil 5 seemed to take a lot of cues from these games and was a lot like a rail shooter in more ways than one. This review will judge the first of these two games, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, from 2007 on its own merits.

 

The gameplay in Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is more or less a standard light gun arcade game. Instead of the player controlling movement, the camera imitates the playable character’s perspective as they walk around. Occasionally the player is given the option of going in a few different directions but the game is mostly a set path. The player is able to slightly move the camera with the Nunchuk but it is mostly a way to fix potential problems with the camera system than its own mechanic. While on this path enemies will walk in front of the camera and the walking around will stop until the player shoots them. Shooting the enemies works pretty well, as does pointing with the Wii Remote in general, outside of one issue that will be discussed later. As is standard with most Resident Evil games there are a wide variety of weapons that make shooting enemies interesting. Depending on how well the player does the player gets stars that can be used to upgrade unlocked weapons between missions. Theres also a knife mechanic where the player holds a button on either the Wii Remote or Nunchuk while swinging the Wii Remote that is only used to swipe bugs or similar enemies off of the camera. As the camera moves around there are constantly breakable items that may contain secrets, items interactive physics, and useful items that are on screen for a very short time. All of these contribute to the game never feeling particularly boring at any given moment. Overall the gameplay loop is fun and uses the Wii’s unique features well but it is hardly innovative and is pretty repetitive with little to no development over the campaign. This would be fine for an arcade game or arcade port like this game sort-of pretends to be but one should expect a bit more from a console game. The boss fights are also either really shallow or just annoying to play with tiny weak spots and the game lagging from all of the on screen action constantly. The enemy variety also gets extremely noticeably small by the end of the game where the player fights 50 of the same couple enemies in a row at a time. Still, the game is more fun than annoying overall, though the reviewer recommends not trying to beat it all in one sitting.

 

In terms of sound Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is about average. There are some pretty good songs and a lot of forgettable songs. Many of them aren’t original though so it’s hard to give the game credit for its music. There also aren’t any particularly impressive performances by the voice actors, as one would expect from a Resident Evil game, so it doesn’t get many points there. Sound effects are about what one would expect.

 

Technically Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is both good and bad. The FMVs look quite good and the maps that the camera moves through are all impressive to look at for a Wii game. At the same time there is a lot of slowdown which can make the aiming part of the game feel a lot worse than it should.

 

The story and world of Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is surprisingly fleshed out for a rail shooter game. It essentially takes the player through abridged versions of Resident Evil 0, Resident Evil, and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis in its three main three part missions. There are also a lot of side missions that give new perspectives on these games and even an entirely new mission at the end. The writing is about as good as one would expect from a Resident Evil game, which is really up to the player to decide if they like the style of. There are also some notably strange or meme-worthy moments that are unintentionally(?) interesting too. Overall this is probably the second best reason to play this game outside of the main gameplay. Anyone particularly interested in the Resident Evil story should really enjoy this part of the game.

 

In terms of value Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is better than one would probably expect. There are a surprisingly high number of missions, although many of them are essentially reversed versions of their original versions. There is also a lot of replay value, with three different difficulties that all have separate mission rankings, an insane number of missable collectables, and a multiplayer mode to share the experience with others. Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles also has a lot of story content that should appeal to Resident Evil fans interested in the overall story at all. It is overall just about worth full price as long as you are willing to invest your time into the game to see all that it has to offer.

 

Overall the reviewer would give the game an 8 out of 10.