3/5 ★ – MechaniChris's review of Resident Evil: Outbreak.

There’s a nugget of an idea in this that could be a masterpiece. At times, working with your teammates, all of whom could die at any moment, to solve these puzzles can feel so immersive. I had an AI teammate solve two complicated tasks completely on his own, saving me loads of time running around rooms. I almost forgot he wasn’t a human player. Unfortunately the game is bogged down by some annoying controls, and incredibly slow pacing. This particular game does not lend itself as well to the fixed angles gameplay of the original mainline games, as it feels much clunkier, there’s more characters on screen, and you can barely see what you need to at any given moment. On top of that, there is so much backtracking and going through rooms, all of which have a several second door opening animation, that it feels like it takes you forever to actually accomplish anything. This is especially a problem when part of the game is a countdown clock until the infection kills you. All that to say, this game is HARD. Like, a little unreasonably hard. Unless you know exactly what your doing, a minor mistake could ruin a level for you. For example, most keys in this game are one time use, and you only have 4 inventory slots. So, reasonably, I dropped a key after I used it to pick up something else. Then, later, I needed that key for another door and had NO IDEA where I had left it. Spent nearly 20 minutes looking for it. And by the way, 4 item slots? That’s just asinine. If you have a gun and ammo, then inevitably you’ll have to carry no healing items because you need two keys or jewels or whatever. This brings me to the characters. Having played through 5 different characters for each mission, it’s truly insane how much better Yoko was than any other character. She gets double the item storage, and while her storage system can be annoying at times, having the extra space is a literal lifesaver and removes so much of the anxiety. Always used a gun, so David was useless for me. Jim was supposed to be “lucky” but enemies attacked me constantly. Alyssa was DECENT because she could at least pick locks to get items. And finally, Kevin just had a gun that was no better than any other gun in the game, except that I could find almost no ammo for it. Just choose Yoko every time. I’m starting to ramble, there’s just a lot to say about this game. I forgot to mention how realistic it feels at times. Some of the game mechanics are truly inspiring for the PS2, and it often feels less like a game and more like a survival simulator. I really truly believe that a modern remake to smooth out the edges, and tighten up the controls would be an incredible game. Or even just a third one in the series! There are other scenarios to explore outside of Raccoon City. Let’s bring this series back!