"Like Umbrella Chronicles, only better."

“2 Player Reviews” is a series of articles in which two members of the Wing Damage staff separately review a game, so as to give our readers multiple perspectives on the subject matter.

Player 1 – Jesse “Main Finger” Gregory

Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles is Capcom’s latest Wii exclusive rail-shooter and the follow up to 2007′s Umbrella Chronicles. You and a friend (or artificial intelligence in single player) will each take on the role of one of the Resident Evil franchise’s established characters as you set out to unload rounds into zombies and other strange creatures.

The Darkside Chronicles features approximately twenty stages spread out over three scenarios: Memory of a Lost City (Resident Evil 2), Game of Oblivion (Resident Evil Code: Veronica), and Operation Javier. The game begins and ends with Operation Javier which, unlike the other scenarios, is an original story (starring Leon Kennedy and Jack Krauser) not based on an existing game.

What’s interesting about the layout of the scenarios is how they relate to one another. Operation Javier is treated as the “present time”. After finishing the first stage, Leon begins to reflect on the events of Resident Evil 2 which you will then play to completion before revisiting Operation Javier. After another stage, the Veronica virus comes into play, triggering the flashback to Code: Veronica.

It’s not until both flashbacks are completed that Operation Javier really starts to progress. I really enjoyed this method of tying the two old stories in with the new one. It is a much more interesting approach then simply presenting you with three random scenarios.

While I don’t generally find rail-shooters a particularly immersive genre, The Darkside Chronicles definitely took suspension of disbelief up a notch with its camera. The entire game uses a “shaky cam” approach. While it takes a bit of getting use to, it definitely sucked me into the game more than the average rail-shooter.

"Sometimes one player will leave the first person view to perform an action temporarily."

The graphics are yet another example showcasing that Wii games can look great when developers put forth the effort. While I did noticed some minor dips in framerate here and there (mainly in outdoor sections), I was very impressed with the visuals. Some of the lighting effects in Operation Javier were especially noteworthy.

While there are three difficulty settings, the game also features dynamic difficulty scaling. Throughout my entire experience with the game, the difficulty felt like it was steadily increasing in a very logical manner rather than spiking unexpectedly. Checkpoints were reasonably placed as well.

I was very happy to see zombies go down in about as many shots as I expected them to. After all, abnormally resilient zombies were one of my pet peeves with Umbrella Chronicles. Quick Time Events have also been greatly improved on since the last game. Failing a QTE always resulted in a loss of health and never an instant death. Also, they only require button presses. Since the “waggle” QTEs of Umbrella Chronicles were more awkward to react to, I was very happy to see their absence in Darkside Chronicles.

Another big step up from the last game is the soundtrack. Many of the songs featured throughout the game are actual orchestra recordings performed by the Tokyo Chamber Music Association accompanied by a chorus of thirty people. The music really enhances the mood, especially in intense sections.

As you progress through the game, you will acquire more weapons. Each of these weapons can be upgraded with money found in the levels. There are a ridiculous amount of secrets in each stage, mostly found by shooting seemingly unimportant objects. This, in combination with a few alternate paths and online leaderboards, adds a little bit of replay value to a genre that is often devoid of it. However, unless you happen to be a die hard Resident Evil fan, going back to unlock every extra will most likely have little appeal.

Overall, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles is a very enjoyable rail-shooter. It definitely has a slow start, but once it gets going it is a lot of fun, especially in co-op. The game can be beaten in about six or seven hours, but you can spend more time trying to unlock everything if that is your cup of tea. If you liked Umbrella Chronicles, you will probably like Darkside Chronicles even more. It’s enjoyable regardless of whether or not you like the Resident Evil franchise. But if you don’t care for rail-shooters, this probably won’t change your mind.

"The game has plenty of huge boss fights."

Player 2 – Jonah “spambot” Gregory

I have always enjoyed arcade rail shooters. When done well, they can be a very tight and atmospheric experience. It used to be a hassle to try and get the sort of experience a game like Time Crisis II would provide on your home consoles. You needed light guns to play, so most games in the genre had to come with their own, making these generally shorter arcade experiences very pricey to play at home. Worst of all, since they are best played with a friend, you had to fork over even more money to get a second lightgun. Thankfully, there are those out there that have realized the wiimote is perfect for this situation.

Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles takes the arcade rail shooter and brings a touch of the more epic home console games in the Resident Evil series. You and a friend (either a real friend or an AI team member) enter the stories of Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil Code: Veronica, and an all new story that stars Leon Kennedy pre-Resident Evil 4. You battle your way through hordes of zombies, creepy crawlies, and incredibly strange creatures all in a first person perspective with a shaky cam designed to emulate realistic head movements.

Darkside Chronicles is a followup to Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, also for the Nintendo Wii. There have been a lot of improvements over the previous game that made it a more accessible experience. In Umbrella Chronicles, all the enemies seemed to take forever to kill. Traditionally in games and movies, zombies die quickly from headshots, but here they still took round after round without falling. DC has fixed this problem. The zombies start very easy to kill, but as the story progresses and the virus causing all the craziness evolves, the enemies very gradually get harder to defeat.

They have also included scaling difficulty in Darkside Chronicles. The better you are doing, the harder the game becomes. When Jesse and I first started, we thought the normal setting was a little too easy, but by the end it had ramped up enough that we were glad to have done our initial playthrough on that setting. If you are brand new to light gun shooters, there is even an easy mode with a lock on feature.

"After the campaign, there are additional unlockable extras like costumes and Tofu Mode."

The story also feels more coherent this time around. I have never played more than a few minutes of the old Playstation and Dreamcast era Resident Evil games and DC did a good job of filling in all the missing pieces of the story. The pacing is a little disjointed in a few spots. The beginning takes some time to get going, but after the first level it stays fast paced throughout most of the game. There are a few slower moments scattered throughout, but like any horror movie, those are there to lull you into a false sense of security.

All characters have a pistol with unlimited ammo and a knife that you swing by holding down the “A” button while moving the wiimote, but you will also find a shotgun, rocket launcher, grenades, a grenade launcher, a bowgun and a machine gun. All of these have a limited amount of ammo, which is shared between you and your partner (if you are playing with another human player). In our playthrough, we found it useful to split up who was using what weapons because of this. You can even reassign weapons at any point just by hitting the “C” button. All the weapons (besides the knife) are upgradable with money you find hidden throughout each level and based on the score you get after completing each level. Even by the end, we didn’t have a single weapon completely maxed out, which encourages completionists to play through multiple times.

Since this is a rail shooter and not a survival horror game, there is a different feel about the weapons. Normally, you would desperately be conserving ammo in a Resident Evil game, but here you are encouraged to shoot everything you see to find as much money as you can, as well as hidden unlockables. It gives the game a very shooting gallery feel as you spend part of the time shooting monsters and the other part shooting everything in sight just to see how it reacts. Thanks to the inclusion of the Havok engine, most objects will move or explode from being shot.

The shaky cam took some getting used to. It is there to give the game a sense of you being in the thick of the action, but at times I felt it was a little over the top and distracting. I could see people that had trouble with movies like Cloverfield might start to get dizzy while playing this. I got used to it after a few levels, but wanted to throw that warning out there.

Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles is about a seven hour game for a single play-through, not including other game modes which you can unlock from completing the campaign. For a rail shooter, that is a very beefy experience. DC is also a good example to show that Wii games can look good if a developer puts the effort into it. If you are looking for a fun co-op game for the Wii or are already a Resident Evil fan, I recommend checking this one out.

This review is based on a copy of Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles provided to us by Capcom.

Tags: 2 Player Reviews, capcom, co-op, multiplayer, rail shooter, Resident Evil, Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, Wii

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.