Resident Evil Re: Verse, the tried and tested of the closed beta
Free-for-all for fast-paced gameplay
The number of players for Resident Evil Re: Verse ranges from four to six, enough to both avoid excessive downtime and start a massacre indiscriminate where it is not clear what is happening. The only mode for now is Deathmatch, which doesn't need any big introductions: free-for-all, in a five-minute fight for survival and ranking. The game offers a couple of clever mechanics to push us to games that cannot really be defined as tactics but not even devoted to frenzy without any logic: first of all, the accumulation of kills, useful to multiply the score obtained every time we eliminate a new opponent, and later revenge. The latter is activated when we are the victims and marks our killer with a skull to make him recognizable; if we succeed in killing him, obviously avoiding dying for any cause in the attempt, not only will we get more points but we will get back our kill multiplier as if we had never been eliminated from the start. Nothing revolutionary, we realize it, however it helps to set specific objectives and aim to conquer the top of the ranking in a reasoned way.Like any PvP deathmatch, Resident Evil: Re Verse has a substantially predatory soul. and that's why, in addition to the aforementioned mechanics, the game points out to others the top three players in the standings and also the one with the most kills - always with a view to getting the most points. Hunting them and eliminating them will result in a strong push towards the best positions. Finally, this predaceful approach is underlined by the presence of B.O.W. in which the players can transform themselves to death, taking advantage of the limited time available to bring even more chaos to the game: however, there are negative sides to this, which we will deepen in the next paragraph.
Beyond this , the flow of the gameplay is good: the small number of players allows you to have a certain breath, explore in search of viral capsules, bullets for secondary weapons and possibly for exclusive ones (which will appear one minute from the start of the match ), or herbs for healing; you can even plan the next action based on the sound design, whose performance is excellent and allows you to get a precise idea of who or what is nearby. Once defeated even in B.O.W.form, the ranking updates in real time to show you the progress of the match and in a matter of seconds you are ready to get back into the game, benefiting from a temporary invincibility just to avoid being eliminated immediately afterwards. Speaking of invincibility, the B.O.W. they have an advantage in this regard during and after an execution, becoming immune to any blow for a very few, vital seconds.
We would have preferred a better management of the spawn at the beginning of the game, as it is not uncommon to happen in two in the same room and being under enemy fire before you even know what's going on. The addition of dodging, side or backward, gives more dynamism, even allowing you to save yourself in a corner from dangerous situations and turn them in our favor. The same cannot be said for the shooting times after being knocked to the ground, especially by the BOWs: many of their shots stun, allowing you to chain attacks until the target dies, human or otherwise, and should they knock us to the ground. they would leave us at their mercy a little too long. In short, there are some aspects to be reviewed, not surprisingly it is a beta, especially in light of the presence of new maps. The Raccoon City police station is undoubtedly iconic (above all it is a ready-made model and we will talk about this too later) but not optimal for moving in BOW form, therefore it remains to be seen how they decide to combine these aspects so that they are homogeneous. br>
Between Survivors and BOW
Resident Evil Re: Verse has six playable characters available for now: Chris and Claire Redfield, Jill Valentine, Leon Scott Kennedy, Ada Wong and Hunk. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses between health, weapon / skill potency, mutation survival, and mutation potency when transforming into B.O.W. for a balance that on the whole seemed well calibrated. Where, on the other hand, some sin more is in the loadout, because some are much more effective than others: let's take for example Hunk, who has a pistol as his primary weapon (all primary weapons have infinite shots) and a machine gun as a secondary but, above all, the ability to make oneself invisible and to inflict a lethal stab at human enemies. In itself it wouldn't be a huge problem, if only the beta - and perhaps the full game - didn't allow you to choose the same character: imagine ending up in a game consisting of just Hunks, where most of the time they are all invisible and when they are not they turn into BOW lethals wandering in search of the other Hunks.If compared, for example, to Ada's loadout, in our opinion the worst, the imbalance is evident: the spy par excellence has a gun as a weapon main, the same as Resident Evil 2, but the crossbow as a secondary. In a fast-paced game like Resident Evil: Re Verse, assigning a single-shot weapon, not lethal as long as you hit in the head, when everyone has a submachine gun, or a submachine gun, and a rifle makes it the less versatile character than all even in the face of the grapple ability that allows it to evade enemy blows. Also because with the other he makes a backward kick, to be landed at very close range, and being able to use it effectively is rare. The same can be said for Leon, always unlucky when it comes to loadout (just think of Mercenaries from Resident Evil 4), but he balances with the shotgun and the ability of the double guns taken in weight from Resident Evil 6.
In short, in terms of character balance we could do something more, as long as the rule of practice that makes perfect applies. Regarding the B.O.W. on the other hand, we found the potency all in all balanced: the transformation depends on the quantity of viral capsules collected, starting with the Obese Micomorph which is the simplest and does not require any capsule, passing from Hunter γ and Jack Baker (one capsule) up to get to Nemesis and Super Tyrant which require two. In the case of several transformations with the same quantity of capsules, the choice is random and this enhances the adaptability factor: not knowing until the last what we will become, we will have to be able to adapt our style according to the B.O.W. Where in general the stats and abilities of these creatures are well managed, the biggest problem remains mainly in their control.
It is possible to target an enemy, although in cases where there are several in the same spot it becomes more complicated to distinguish which one you are aiming for, but despite everything we found a certain level of inaccuracy especially with the BOWs more powerful, which tend to hit empty despite having the target in front. Every mistake has its weight in Resident Evil: Re Verse, and given the tendency of players to come together when a B.O.W. (for a matter of points, certainly not for solidarity) it becomes difficult at times to manage them, especially in the confined spaces of the police station. That doesn't mean they aren't satisfying, some are fun to use. The general flaw of the game is that it feels more like a fierce battle between BOWs, in which the human survivors are just the pretext to collect the capsules: the frequency with which the creatures are seen on the screen is high and despite for example the obese micomorph is an opponent rather than within reach, often being in front of a Nemesis or a Super Tyrant, even when you have exclusive weapons at your disposal, leaves room for frustration rather than fun.
Returning to the topic of ready-made models mentioned at the beginning, one of our biggest concerns revolves around this: all the characters and the BOWs present are part of a shortlist of characters present for some time in their new graphics, or it was not necessary to redo them from scratch. This explains, for example, the presence of Chris model Resident Evil 7, which is the worst of his long series, or Jack Baker among the B.O.W. (incomprehensible in several respects), At present and with the characters available, creatures or humans, Resident Evil: Re Verse gets bored in a short time both for the only game mode available but above all because we know these survivors , we have already played, they offer nothing really new. If the game is designed to celebrate the twenty-five years of the saga, we at least expect it to be able to offer characters and B.O.W. taken from all previous chapters; which would mean rebuilding them more or less totally, depending on who you choose.
For example, Sheva Alomar is already a good model that requires a certain amount of work but never, for example, how much an Alexia Ashford. We hope that Resident Evil: Re Verse really wants to be a complete tribute to the saga and does not limit itself, as movies and television series are doing, to re-proposing the exact same story - Raccoon City and its horrors - with just a few touches taken from Resident Evil. 7. Of course we couldn't expect any characters or BOWs for this beta ex novo (although we would have preferred the Licker to Jack, or even a Crimson Head), we hope, however, that in the full game we can have a very full-bodied and in particular variegated squad: find yourself playing again with the same characters against the same enemies Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil 7 would be a total disappointment. And no, it's not worth carrying the characters from Resident Evil: Resistance in here, in fact it would be a very questionable move.
When aesthetics rely on a filter
What a difference it can make a filter in the visual impact and, in particular, in making clear how much Resident Evil: Re Verse is a savings operation? The answer is only one, a lot. In the settings you can disable the comic effect that made many turn up their noses during the presentation, leading the game to plunge into a dark abyss - literally, the brightness drops to peak - in which the models stand out for their being botched. You can compare the image above with the other proposals in the article and if on the one hand the absence of the comic filter brings the experience back to the right level of chiaroscuro for a survival horror, on the other hand it does not hide the lack of care in the characters humans, without any distinction: Chris perhaps suffers a little more because he is the only one who has never been transposed into the third person but on the whole they are all mediocre to see. Which, again, leads us to fear that Resident Evil: Re Verse will not enjoy the presence of truly historical characters, but rather of skins to apply on the character in question to see him in a different key.We don't know , we're just speculating, but the way a game that should be part of the series' 25th anniversary celebration turned out doesn't give us much hope. Nothing to say as far as performance is concerned, they have always been stable and even in terms of netcode they have not given problems. For once, though, there would be some improvement elsewhere before focusing only on those.
Resident Evil: King Verse could be potential proof that multiplayer and Resident Evil in the same sentence don't fit. We do not give certainty because we have tried a game still in beta and because, all in all, the foundations for a good job are there: the main problem remains to understand if they will be exploited, so much regarding the roster of characters and the B.O.W. available as of modes and maps. A game designed to celebrate the twenty-five years of a saga that does not only consist of Raccoon City and its biological disaster has all the credentials to offer a fun multiplayer, without necessarily being innovative. However, there must be the will to develop something that really wants to respect the brand and not become a mere filler of Resident Evil Village when, to fulfill this task, a Mercenary mode like in the old days would have been enough. The first impressions following the closed beta are not positive, everything will depend on the complete game and any support it will receive post launch.
