The Egotastic! Essential Video Games of 2012: Resident Evil 6 (VIDEO)

Behold the new online 'Predator' mode. Six-player-slaying!

In a manner akin to Halo 4 , here was another top-bollock franchise gone allegedly astray.

Resident Evil, as avid shooters of zombie-and-mutant scrote will attest, has been subject to a remarkable metamorphosis in recent iterations. The much-vaunted fourth release introduced free-aiming, a more actiontastic camera, and more ammunition than you could shake your huge, theatrical new Hollywood manplums at. In tandem with this, naturellement, came copious quantities of foes; pissed-off beardy farmfolk and... equally pissed-off albino monks were supplied on a lofty scale the series had never ventured into before.

The game had its detractors, and these steadfast bastards are still photographing their righteous middle fingers and mailing the images/their turds in a Fed Ex box to Capcom. The non-crazy contingent reveled in this deft blend of action and atmosphere, and Resident Evil 4 remains among the series’ most lauded offerings. It was unfortunate, then, that its progeny, entitled Resident Evil 5: Chris Redfield Goes to Africa and Shoots EVERYONE in their Blood-Bleeding Faces. Twice, opted for balls-out action alone. How, then, did the rabidly-anticipated sixth release fare?

Most pertinently, it seems that the Hollywood sensibilities have fully emerged from their chrysalis, like a giant belligerent butterfly brandishing a machine gun at your gonads. Any semblance of horror has been largely excised here, to the extent that the game has been garnished with the moniker Gears of Evil and other such bons mots. At the nucleus of the game, it’s a pure shooter, and the augmentations to the controls reflect this. Our protagonists now have the capacity to dive, roll and shoot while sprawled on their asses, like the movie action heroes they’d seemingly fondle the balls of a hobo with leprosy to be.

What renders Resident Evil 6 an essential purchase for Evil-aficionados? The lore. You will indulge in four different campaigns, encompassing the shenanigans of Chris, Leon and Ada. A playable, adult Sherry Birkin is featured, last seen as a child in her inaugural appearance in the second game. You may be chagrined by the combat-centric turn the series is taking. Indeed, you may have reached such paroxysms of outrage that you spit blood. From your penis. Followers of Resident Evil’s oft-demented canon, nonetheless, may find themselves unable to resist.

Reviewers have hastened to note that a bad game and a bad Resident Evil game are disparate concepts. Among all of 2012‘s big-bollocks-blockbusters, this has been the most critically controversial of all, with reviews running the gamut from maximum to minimum scores. What we certainly do have here is an entertaining-if-generic violence-athon with guns on, and a gargantuan sideorder of MANY MORE GUNS. There is some semblance of variety betwixt campaigns, with Leon’s venturing tentatively into a 'classic Resident Evil’ oppressive miasma of claustrophobia and jump-scares. In summation, it’s a very different beast, as it was predisposed to be in today’s gaming landscape. It’s controversial indeed, but immersive and expansive; replete with content.