Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles Member Review for the Wii

The eagerly anticipated game 'Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles' reached the UK on the 30th November 2007 and I was lucky enough to get it the day after, and luckier still to be able to go to my friends straight after to play it. The pre-release buzz already had me tingling from head to toe and when I actually started playing it my inital reaction (other than 'SHOOT!!!') was: Brilliant!

To kick things off, I'll start by talking about the graphics of this game so we can get them out of the way (cause I can never go in depth with graphics). If you've ever played Resident Evil 4 (which if you havent, I would be very surprised by (only because of it's overwhelming popularity and re-releases that is)) then you will have an idea of how good graphics can be. So, imagine those graphics...and double them...and again...and then you have the graphics of REUC. The in-game graphics are amazing to say that there is so much action going on and the movie scenes are mindblowingly stunning in comparison to other Wii games I've played. For this, I give the graphics an A.

Next up is the gameplay, something I'm confident I can write well about ^_^ . The controls are simple: Aim and press B, if you want to reload wave the remote and press A to do stuff. That's all you really need to know, not that you even need to read the instructions as there's a tutorial in-game, that's something new! The game works out in scenarios, with different levels IN those scenarios...with checkpointed sections in those levels. It may sound like an absolute ton of gameplay, but you can get through it pretty quickly if you're a sharpshooter (which i wasnt, but still managed to clear through an entire scenario in an hour or so). At the end of each level you get graded in 5 categories (Time Taken, Enemies Killed, Critical Hits, Items Destroyed & Files Obtained) and given an overall grade ranging from C to S. From these levels you get Stars that you use to upgrade the various weapons you've collected during your gameplay (though it could take a while unless you repeatedly get A's and S's). Unlike Resi 4 you dont upgrade certain areas in your guns, you just get an overall upgrade for your weapon. The worst part of the gameplay has to be QTE's, I didn't think there was enough time to react to them...and it's even worse on 2-player because you're given a command each and if player 1 is sitting on the left side of the t.v. and player 2 vice versa... you get the picture. But this is the only flaw I could find.

To finish off this review I'll end on the storyline and the little extras that REUC has. To put it simple, you play through each Resident Evil (except for 2) all the way up to 3. So thats Resident Evil 0, 1 (remake) and 3. After that you play a completley new scenario taking place at another Umbrella Facility entitled 'The Fall Of Umbrella'. In each scenario there is the main story, but as well as that there are extra levels that explain more about different characters and events. Players should note that this is the first game where players can control Captain Wesker canonically, which means we FINALLY get to see what he's been up to (or at least get light shed on it).

That's all from me. Thank you for reading my first review and I hope you liked it, if you didnt then I'll try better next time, lol.