Why Resident Evil 6 Is The Best Game In The Series (& Why It’s The Worst)

It’s a good time to be a fan of the Resident Evil series. The last two years have seen successful remakes of two of the best games in the series, Resident Evil 2 and 3, there’s a new movie and an animated series on the way, and Resident Evil 8/Village is due out in less than two months.

With so much Resident Evil coming, fans may use this time to revisit and re-evaluate one of the most divisive games in the series, 2013’s Resident Evil 6. It was savaged at the time, but returning to it now, fans can see some of the great ideas it has to offer, although there are still obvious points that let the whole thing down too.

10 Best: Four Wildly Different Campaigns

The Resident Evil games have always had multiple storylines to play through, all the way back to Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield in the first game, but Resident Evil 4 and 5 removed this trend.

Resident Evil 6 offers the player an amazing four completely separate campaigns, each with different characters, different locations, and only a little overlap. Sometimes players will fight alongside the characters from another storyline from a different viewpoint, and best of all, all four campaigns are pretty sizeable in their own right, with wildly unique endings.

9 Worst: Repeating Boss Fights

While the four separate campaigns of Resident Evil 6 generally do a good job of staying unique, with only a little overlap for story purposes, it’s unfortunate that the one area where campaigns repeat is the boss encounters.

It happens several times, including the final boss battle with the main antagonist Simmons and the fight against several giant mutants in some ruined city streets which goes on for ages. This is particularly annoying because these boss encounters are probably the weakest part of the game.

8 Best: The Co-op Play Is The Best In The Series

For a series that often features multiple characters or even teams exploring the same area, surprisingly few games in the Resident Evil franchise actually feature co-op. Often the multiplayer is relegated to an “Extra” or even an entirely different game.

Resident Evil 5 was the first game to feature a proper co-op function built into the main campaign, and Resident Evil 6 continues this across three of the four campaigns. Fans used to the previous single-player-only games complained, but anyone who enjoys co-operative shooters really enjoyed it.

7 Worst: Constant Co-op Partner Is The Best Or Worst

While it’s debatable whether having two-player co-operative play throughout pretty much the entire game helps or hinders Resident Evil 6, the biggest frustration this creates if played solo is with the AI partner.

It isn’t just that this partner constantly gets in the way or doesn’t focus on important things that human players would be aware of. The biggest problem with the NPC companion is that sometimes they’re actually essential to survival (like with constant revivals) or take the fun out of some big action moments. If the player picks the wrong character, for example, they might not get to drive a car in the big chase scene – and the AI handles it too perfectly, taking the tension away.

6 Best: Leon Gives Fans The Resident Evil 4 Follow-Up They Wanted

The debate over which game in the Resident Evil series is the best will continue to rage on amongst the fanbase, but certainly 2005’s Resident Evil 4 is a safe and popular choice. The constantly-surprising campaign was tense, enjoyable, creepy, and reinvigorated the franchise.

Resident Evil 5 backed down from a lot of what made its predecessor popular, which is why Capcom deliberately made Leon’s campaign in Resident Evil 6 a tension-packed throwback to the series’ horror roots – and probably the best chapter of the game.

5 Worst: Ada Wong’s Stealth Chapter

The fourth and final campaign of Resident Evil 6 belongs solely to Ada Wong, the mysterious occasional-antagonist agent who has a flirtatious relationship with Leon Kennedy. It’s the only non-cooperative single-player-only chapter in the game (although optional co-op was patched in) and, unfortunately, it’s awful.

It’s mostly stealth-focused, which wouldn’t be a problem except Resident Evil 6 is not a stealth game, and even simply taking cover is troublesome. Most of the time the player will try to take out a soldier silently and fail because they couldn’t see another soldier down the corridor, who instantly calls every enemy in the base to Ada’s location until she dies and the player angrily restarts.

4 Best: A Lot Of Variety And A Lot Of Gameplay

In terms of sheer value for money, Resident Evil 6 is probably the best game in the series. A single playthrough of all four campaigns could easily take an experienced player around 30 hours to complete. That’s before taking into account co-op, Mercenaries mode, collecting all the game’s hidden tokens, and buying all the combat upgrades.

Plus, there’s a lot of gameplay variety here too. Each campaign has a different feel, from Leon’s horror to Chris’s action shooter to Ada’s stealth action. There are plenty of set-pieces, boss fights, locations, and opponents to face too. There is a lot to do in Resident Evil 6.

3 Worst: It’s No Longer Survival Horror

One of the biggest criticisms leveled at Resident Evil 5 and 6 is that the series had completely moved away from its survival horror roots. The first game was a tense, nervous experience in a scary mansion where anything could jump out at you from the shadows at any time.

While Resident Evil 6 made some attempt to placate these criticisms by having Leon’s chapter be more horror-focused, fans still weren’t happy because the other three campaigns piled on the action. Most importantly, the most effective way of dealing with monsters in the game is running straight at them and punching them, which is the opposite of horror.

2 Best: The Most Epic The Series Ever Gets

One criticism that cannot be leveled against Resident Evil 6 is that it doesn’t think big enough. Whereas most games in the series are set in a single location that the player slowly uncovers over the course of the campaign, Resident Evil 6 is a properly cinematic experience to rival the movies.

The four campaigns are truly globe-trotting adventures where each can start and end in a completely different country. The story kicks off with the killing of the zombified President of the United States and takes on armed insurrections, monster viruses, missile attacks, and a massive plane crash. It’s the most epic Resident Evil has ever been.

1 Worst: It Essentially Killed The Series Until Resident Evil 7’s Drastic Reinvention

While these days fans seem to be getting a great Resident Evil game every year, after Resident Evil 6 there was a five-year gap until Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. While the game sold well, critics and fans complained that the series had lost its way, and while the variety in the campaigns was appreciated, it did feel like Capcom was trying to appeal to all markets rather than focusing its attention.

While Resident Evil 4 was a necessary series reinvention, Resident Evil 7 was a forced one because fans felt like Capcom didn’t know what the series’ identity was anymore. It’s thanks to Resident Evil 6‘s failure that fans are now looking forward to this year’s Resident Evil 8: Village.