It breaks my heart to have to say this, especially given that Capcom have made the (almost) only video games I have legitimately enjoyed in the past five to ten years. But I would only recommend Resident Evil: Outbreak if you can find it for about ten dollars or less at a clearance sale. This goes against everything I have said about the other Resident Evil games I have played to date, and with good reason. Unlike the other Resident Evil games, where one could eventually master the scenario if they kept calm and did not attempt to shoot everything in sight, Outbreak marks the first time that Capcom have resorted to making their games utterly unwinnable. Which is a real shame, too, because Outbreak has shown the most potential from a Resident Evil game to date.
The game starts out in a bar within the very traditional Resident Evil location of Racoon City, where numerous characters are having a good drink. Soon, all hell breaks loose when the rapidly increasing zombie populace drops in for a visit. From there, it is a mad scramble to escape and join in the evacuation of the city. Unfortunately, in contrast to the single-player, plot-based Resident Evil games, Outbreak goes off the rails very soon after it starts, and never finds its way back on. The scenarios are, put simply, unwinnable. In the little time one gets to escape their situation, they can not possibly find the weaponry required to mow down the literally limitless zombies they encounter. In contrast to previous Resident Evil episodes, where the proportion of ammunition to zombies was exactly right, one will run out of ammunition here faster than they can make so much as an inch of progress in this game.
To be fair, the locations are extremely well-rendered, and when it is allowed, exploration is still as much fun as was the case in other Resident Evils. The lag time, in which a player winds up roaming around already-explored areas, wondering what the hell to do, is also no longer an issue. Unfortunately, the exact opposite problem has occurred here. The player is often left feeling that they are playing to a routine, and playing to a routine is generally about as much fun as putting your finger into a power socket. I almost believe, as a result, that Capcom were kidnapped and replaced by a bunch of lame imposters for this episode.
The voice acting is also a problem. From the melodramatic title voice, we are also treated to cutscenes in which the subtitles say one thing, and the voiceovers, at least in the English version, are saying quite another. Being that I don't understand Japanese, I have never bothered about trying to import the original. Perhaps the subtitles shown in the cut scenes are literal translations. Perhaps they are just renderings of the original English script, which was changed at the last minute without the subtitlers being informed. Being that there is no option to turn the subtitles off, it gets on the nerves after a while. Is it asking so much that the graphical and voice-over departments at least talk to one another? Anyway, if I had to give Resident Evil: Outbreak a score out of ten, it would be a six. I know the other video game makers out there feel inadequate because they cannot produce a game that remains fun for more than five minutes, but this is no reason to try and coddle them. Come on, Capcom, you are capable of much better than this.
