Everyone has had that old friend who claims that they're trying to find themselves. The one who tries a ton of new things to find their niche, only to have them all turn out to be a disastrous mess. Resident Evil 6 is that old friend; it's a blockbuster of a game that doesn't know who it is, or even what it wants to be, and the result is nothing short of a messy experience that substitutes actual gameplay for frills and the series traditional scares for Michael Bay style set pieces. Resident Evil 6 may not be a failure, but it's an easy low point for a once proud series.

It's not that Capcom didn't try with Resident Evil 6, it's that they tried too hard. Rather than rely on the brilliant pacing employed by earlier games in the series, Resident Evil 6 merely takes a handful of ideas and throws them at the player at the same time and hopes for the best.  Take the game's unconventional narrative structure for example -- rather than telling one coherent story, RE6 gives you four separate campaigns with Resident Evil all-stars, that connect to tell one tale.  One puts you in the shoes of Resident Evil 5's Leon Kennedy in what can be viewed as the most traditional Resident Evil experience of the game, while BSAA agent Chris Redfield's feels much more like a run and gun shooter. The two other campaigns, featuring Jake Muller and Ada Wong respectively are easily the weakest of the game, and rely on outdated puzzle mechanics and scripted events to drag the player through a rather dull and boring experience.

"...say that the pacing in Resident Evil 6 is a bit off is an understatement..."

While Resident Evil 6's style of storytelling has it's upsides -- mainly the fact that to get the entire experience you're going to want to play through multiple times, but it also tends to leave things rather messy. To say that the pacing in Resident Evil 6 is a bit off is an understatement, as Capcom obviously had to stretch a bit to make the stories connect at some places, though it admittedly does have its fair share of moments.  What's worse, the story wasn't allowed to naturally unfold, as the game repeatedly leaves major questions unanswered and takes more than one cheap way out of something they had no idea how to write their way out of.

Regardless of what campaign you're playing, you better hope you love long-winded cinematic button prompts and quicktime events. Included to the point of nauseum, many of the game's sections play out like this: walk five feet, encounter a door (press a button to proceed), walk five more feet, watch a five minute cinematic, encounter a monster, wiggle the thumsbstick to get away, shoot. Resident Evil 6 seems determined to take you out of the action, as if it's more interested in being an interactive film than a game, and it's a shame as even though they're plentiful, some of the set pieces make for some awesome moments that will leave you on the edge of your seat.

"...those moments are few and far between..."

The game also features a co-op mode for each of the campaigns, which falls rather flat when held in conjunction with some of the game's other problem areas. Ever wonder what other characters do in games when their partner is participating in quicktime events? Apparently they just stand around waiting for their partner to finish. When the co-op works, it works all kinds of well, and is a blast to play through with friends, but those moments are few and far between thanks to unfriendly camera angles and uneven difficulty spikes.

Much like previous editions of the series, Resident Evil 6 features some amazingly grotesque monsters that are fun to shoot..in the face. Some of the game's best moments revolve around the first time you see some of these freaks and are forced to react in a very instinctive way, which gets your heart racing...until you're forced to wiggle another thumbstick.

In the search for Resident Evil's identity, Capcom seems to have given up and just thrown all of their ideas into the game and hoped for the best. The result is an ambitious but sloppy, tense but mislead blockbuster of a game that only serves to disappoint. There are moments in Resident Evil 6 that are new benchmarks for the series, but unfortunately, they're few and far between and Resident Evil 6 feels like a major letdown.