If Capcom can spare me as a customer, then Capcom is free to create games that will not have me included in the target audience. I can find other games to play from other studios, maybe I even find another genre to prefer, as the number of survival horror games in my collection is big. I will, however, miss the Zen that could be found in older games, when all you heard was music and a synthetic clock-clock-clock of your characters footsteps. I might even find other things to do with my free time, it is not like playing video games was the apex of my existence.

I actually bought RE6, giving the series another chance. After one step in the wrong direction with RE4 and a game I will probably only remember for its co-op gameplay, I finally saw the return of zombies, around ten years after the last proper Resident Evil game with a canonical story. While the game is not very interesting, neither in terms of story nor gameplay, it is an enjoyable co-op shooter. The controls have improved, our main reason to die in RE5 were the screwed up movement and the broken cover system.

Yes, that is all. I am in the middle of Leon's campaign, so there is still a lot to explore, but there has not been anything interesting about the story so far. I don't want to go into details, ruining as little as there is in the first place, so all I say is, that they keep tearing their own plot holes to fill them up with the digested remains of what was once a fond youth memory of many gamers.

Due to the linearity of modern games (wider audience, yes…), I rarely remember locations and maps. I had this discussion with many gamers many times, they all decided that backtracking is bad, feeling a lack of satisfaction when being too long in the same area. I really love exploring areas, finding out more about static entities in the gaming world, when a simple statue I walked across so many times turns out to be a keystone, solving puzzles that require me to analyze the map, making me plan my routes carefully so I don't have to walk back and forth too many times, saving ammo for a second visit and so on. RE6 is like most modern games, it's a typical travel story, where the heroes have to go from where they are to where the party is, in order to save the day. There are also no notable riddles. I can no longer marvel at my goal for subsequent sequences, work hard to obtain a key by first solving ten other riddles. If there are any keys in RE6, then you either already have that key, because some NPC gave it to you, or there will soon enough be a monster that will drop the key.

Then there is this EXP system. Some monsters drop experience points and those points can also be found in boxes. You can use those points to buy skills, like better aim, higher drop rates, influencing the partner behavior and so on. Since the concept seems to be "co-op online game", a certain amount of RPG elements are appropriate and it helps coming back to the game for some grinding. On the other hand: It totally ruins any immersion into the role of a survivor of the zombie apocalypse. I don't feel like I'm in there anymore. I cannot feel sympathy for Leon. How could he fail? Did I not give him all the levelups he needs?

The character is no longer my avatar in the world of the game. They **** up too often in the video sequences, they have conversations about things I don't care (like the plot, ironically) and Leon's save-the-weak patriotism does not give me the feeling, that I really want to go into that dark room filled with monsters now.

The female part is even worse, I usually prefer female game characters (because, honestly, I am a heterosexual male, therefore I prefer to look at a well-formed female's rear hour after hour after hour, instead of some well formed dude's ass), they often add another layer of experience to my gaming session (as I cannot experience being female in real life) and they are often the lesser douchebags, because females with guns are stereotypically pictured way more civilized, than males with guns. Honestly, this female main character makes me sad. While being a good fighter, every video sequence makes her look the the weak princess in search for her prince, who will come to the rescue. Was Claire weak? Never. Was Jill weak? Well, at least not before RE5. Even Rebecca Chambers kicked ass, but seemed weak in RE1, fortunately not because she was a 17 year old girl in a special force unit, but because she was a rookie. RE4 introduced the concept of "Leon and the Princess" and since then, women in RE were mostly there to be decorative, like that irrelevant RE5 sidekick. At least Sherry Birkin grew up to be strong and independant, but then again the FMV and QTE relevant character is that new guy, so I don't keep my hopes up too far.

So, Capcom needs money. People who would have never bought the old Resident Evil, will now swarm to the stores and buy RE6. The trick is, that half of the old fans buy the new game as well, even if they don't feel the old thrill anymore, just because they already have anything about RE, out of loyality or just because most of us grew up from teenage gamers to nostalgic adults, who have a job now and do not need to weep over 59,99€ for a not-so-good game. It's perfect for the publisher, why should they even bother trying to satisfy their former core audience?

I honestly don't need any more Resident Evil, be it the old or the new style. I'd love to see the story come to a conclusion, one final blow to the horn, once again we ride, once again my brothers. I also do not feel the urge to play anymore remakes, I am perfectly fine with playing the old games, as long as my old hardware works or they run in any kind of emulator (official or not).

Resident Evil, Metal Gear, Silent Hill, Devil May Cry, Splinter Cell… one would not need more game series to write a lenghty and detailed paper about story-driven popular media and how they turn after the fan-based apex, when they start sinking into the existence of money print licences for the publisher.

I recently started to grow bored of the constant repetition. I want something new, something like Mass Effect was, when it came out in 2007. The Mass Effect makers did it right, by the way: The core game was a trilogy, telling a story and then comming to an end. Everything that will come from now on, will be spin-offs, based on the really big and interesting universe of the ME world. This is great, as great as Star Wars, where there is so much to explore beyond the single main plot of one hero saving the universe.

Something like that won't happen with Resident Evil. We already had Dead Aim, Outbreak, Survivor and Gaiden, it was one or a group of survivors, trying to, well, survive. Even the movie adaption abandoned the RE canon after the second movie entirely (or: after movie 2/5), because Resident Evil always told the tale of some nutjob researchers making tests with humans and release a virus that makes even more humans mutate and eat each other. This is, by the way, why I call Glados the Red Queen and vice versa.

I could go on and on about this, and I really hope this fits in the textbox, because I have much