The signs were there, you know. My suspicions were first aroused when my editor asked if I wanted to review Umbrella Corps, the online multiplayer Resident Evil game and Capcom’s second stab at that idea after the atrocious Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City. Not a big deal since he asks me to review games all the time, but I was surprised since there was no marketing, no press releases, no reviews, no previews, or any other indication that the game was out soon. “When’s it out?” I asked. “Last Tuesday” was the reply. Never has a game from such a major franchise been crapped out with so little warning. After playing it, I know why.

First off, the more observant of you may have noticed the absence of the words “Resident Evil” from the title. That’s not a mistake on my part, the game is just called Umbrella Corps which makes it just as likely to be to do with Resident Evil as it does The Penguin or British Summertime. While it’s possible that Capcom felt that after Resident Evil 6 the brand isn’t as respected as it once was, more likely Capcom thought Umbrella Corps is going to be as welcome as a zombie dog at Crufts and so is striking it from the franchise immediately. Yes, Umbrella Corps is that awful and possibly worse than Operation Raccoon City.

Gameplay

---

If you’ve played Operation Raccoon City (poor you) you might be expecting the second multiplayer Resident Evil to be a similar Left 4 Dead/Killing Floor 2-style game, as I was, so you’ll be shocked to discover that it’s not. It’s entirely a competitive team-based arena shooter, with varying objectives but the general rule is that the monsters are a nuisance rather than the threat. They can even be turned off, removing the whole point of this being a Resident Evil tie-in.

There are a variety of modes, which can either be tackled as a single match or a set of three. None are particularly inspired or fun. These include hunting monsters (zombies, dogs etc) and collecting tokens from them, hunting a specific player on the other team (which rotates after they die), holding a position to earn points, straight team deathmatch, and the rather frustrating One Life Match. One Life Match is particularly pointless since matches are only 3v3 and if one player dies the rest of the team is left with an immediate massive disadvantage.

These all take place in highly cramped maps filled with respawning zombies that don’t seem to notice you for the most part. This is due to “Zombie Jammers” your character wears on their back, which can be destroyed by an opposing player but it’s rather pointless since they might as well have just killed you instead since a few shots will do you in. All zombies really do is clutter up the screen to the extent I often couldn’t tell the difference between them and enemy players, which is further heightened by the atrocious far-too-close camera angle which ensures that the player model takes up roughly 40% of the screen.

There’s also a single-player mode with about 20 missions, but it’s one of the worst parts of an already bad game. Basically what it involves is playing an offline multiplayer match with no other players or bots. It’s exactly as fun as that sounds. I don’t mind the goal being hunting monsters, but when the objective isn’t “kill monsters” but “collect tokens” (which you have to wait to appear after shooting a zombie) you begin to realize just how little thought went into the single-player side. A Training mode with bots would’ve been welcome: this is just a pointless no-fun time waster. And the few Tutorials are far too basic too.

Multiplayer

---

With the single-player mode an exercise in futility all you’re left with is online multiplayer, and I really can’t stress enough how frustrating, tedious, and lacking in fun that is. If I had a pound for the amount of times I was killed because I couldn’t see an enemy player due to my gigantic camera-filling character or the amount of s**t on screen I’d never need to write games reviews ever again. The most fun I had was the character creator, and that was just by discovering I could wear a Leon Kennedy mask (which unfortunately gets you shot easier since the all-black outfits are nearly invisible in most maps even without the stuff mentioned above, plus it’s expensive DLC).

Weapon pick-ups are all over the map and enemy players drop them when they die, but every time you pick one up you’re making yourself a target since it costs precious seconds to work out whether the silly hard-to-recognise icon above the weapon is better or worse than the one you currently have. I like how there are vents to crawl through and walls to climb over or up to another level, which at least allow you to get the drop on your opponents, but being able to open doors is pointless when not all doors can be opened.

Now even if you unwisely buy Umbrella Corps, even if you can handle the tiny maps, poor camera, cluttered view, useless zombies, pointless single-player, and uninteresting game modes… then you still might not get to play it. I’ve had the game for over a week now, and despite always choosing a simple non-descript Ranked Match usually I’ll either get an error message or a nearly-empty lobby. I’ve tried playing at different times of day, weekdays and weekends, and I always have to wait to play. And the game is only for six players! Furthermore if a team member quits during a game (which happened most of the times I actually got to play, half of them me) you’re utterly f***ed.

Performance & Graphics

---

MINIMUM:

OS: Windows 7 SP1/8.1/10 (64-bit versions)

Processor: Intel Core i3-4160 @ 3.6GHz or better

Memory: 4 Gb RAM

Graphics: Nvidia GTX 460 or better, DirectX 11

Storage: 13 GB available space
</b>

RECOMMENDED:

Processor: Intel Core i7-4790 @3.20GHz or better

Memory: 6 Gb RAM

Graphics: Nvidia GTX 760 or better

Additional: Xbox 360 Controller Recommended (yes that’s an actual specification)</b>

Well, it’ll run it, but on top of everything else this isn’t a pretty game by any estimation. At full settings the game was extremely choppy for me and still looked like a drab Xbox 360 game, and loading times were utterly ridiculous - it takes more than a minute just to get into the main menu, let alone a game. Until the most recent patch it was actually impossible to play with mouse and keyboard as mouse control was setup like a joystick so felt completely unnatural and hard to move. Not that a gamepad’s much better.

Then we have the problems with other players. Ignoring the lobbies and actually finding games, in-game I am struggling to decide whether there is rampant hacking going on or the connection to the servers is just bad. I’ve seen multiple players teleport around, slide without animation and kill me even though I shot them a dozen times.

Additional Thoughts

---

It really cannot be overestimated just how disappointing and underwhelming Umbrella Corps feels, especially coming so soon after the reveal of Resident Evil 7. I can’t say I was massively excited for it after Operation Raccoon City but I at least hoped for an entertaining game that learnt from that game’s mistakes. In fact it makes brand new ones, and doesn’t even manage to feel ambitious. Was a pathetic, pointless, drab arena shooter really what the fanbase wanted or the best Capcom could do? They could’ve at least made it free-to-play, then at least it might have had a constant player-base. Instead of, y’know, nothing and no one.