The Ultimate Operation Raccon City Post

Well, after noticing that most of you (us) have a special hatred for the game that came to be known as Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (http://www.residentevilforums.net/t5237-resident-evil-letdowns) and having replayed the game recently 2 years after its release, I decided to make the ultimate post about why ORC dissapointed us all.......and besides I have an hour free at work and I'm so bored and shit.

First of all, what I think it is really important about this subject is the hype that was built around it before its release. A deadly combination of awesome trailers, nostalgia for the early games, a shit ton of games modes, weapons, melee combat, abilities, cameos from every single RE character that ever set foot in Raccoon City, blah blah blah blah...

Let's take a look at this trailer, and possition yourself, a fellow RE fan, as a naive gamer that didn't own a wii at the time (Darkside Chronicles) and never revisited Raccoon City after the PS2 era:



"My god, that looks awesome" you must have thought, before going to your room to change your pants.

If you, just like me, watch this trailer now, after playing the game, you kinda get a feeling that you got ripped off :'(.

For example, half the cutscenes of the trailer don't exist, take my word for it...besides I'm sure you won't play the entire game just to prove me wrong

Next, we also see what appears to be a huge roster of characters. You can feel your blood boiling now, can't you?.  We see Leon, Ada, HUNK, Jill, Carlos, etcetera etcetera etcetera....and some new guys.

So, let's say you've been wanting to play in Raccoon City as Carlos of Jill in a hd console taking down Nemesis on a reimagining of RE3 (in a better way than Umbrella Chronicles) and emulate battles like the one on the church or the factory. Or better yet, play as Ada trying to get the G sample, or escape like HUNK did in UC, or have some spin off stories with Leon and CLaire in the police station...

Needless to say you'll be dissapointed, the main game only results in the story of the USS (Umbrella secret service)  "the Wolf Pack" as their perform random missions in random places from RE2 and 3 that were presented inaccurately (Birkin's lab) or so revamped that were irrecognizables (Raccoon Hospital) to "avoid" someone proving Umbrella's implication on the outbreak.....MAJOR PLOTHOLE, if they would have sent a secret service to destroy the evidence...then why the fuck launch a missile to destroy the city???Yeah, I know that it was originally meant as a solution to sterilize the outbreak but as newer RE games taught us (and degeneration) the original purpose of the nuke was to cover the evidence. Even as a non-canon spin off it doesn't make sense.


The Wolves characters are.....okay I guess?? since there can only be four at a time and there are a total of six, each one with different abilities and starting weapons which is cool, you can't never really relate to them as a "team", they are barely expressive and they just carry orders, at least until the end of the game. But, yeah, that's basically the storyline of the main game, or as I call it....GET TO THE TARGET!! (as I'm sure more than one of us shouted a partner in co-op)

So if the main story has the new Wolves as protagonist...where are Jill, Leon and the others?? Well, as empty cameos of course!!

The first character that interferes with the Wolf Pack is Nicholai Ginovaef from RE3, so when we see Nicholai we find out a lot about his back story, how he betrayed his team, and we even get a boss fight...a shitty one, but a boss fight. So, who's next in this gallery of old characters to make it back that we saw in the trailer?

Well......if you count out the b.o.w. (we'll get to that) we see how Leon and Claire get divided and Ada doing her spying gig on the fifth mission. We chase Leon for a while, he gets away, we chase Ada, she get away....that's it.

Then, at the end of the main game, Leon, Claire and SHerry trying to get away, Leon fights, decide to kill him of help him, face your own teammates and bum, congratulations a winner are you. game over, you beat it , hurrah!........wait a sec, where's Jill?, where's Carlos?, what the fuck happened to Claire and Sherry after that?, and who the hell are these other people we see in the trailer? Well ,they are the spec ops field unit, Echo Six, but how do I gain access to play their awesome missions?? PAYING MORE MONEY OF COURSE!, 6 out of the 7 missions from the Echo six team are paid dlc, the first one being free dlc...so if i just buy the game disc I only get half the storyline that was advertise in the trailer???

and to add insult to injury, no splitscreen for co op or versus....so the only offline mode you can play, without the dlcs, is the main 7 wolf pack missions, basically...just shit, that can't take you more than 4 hours total.

So after all of this drama of content and story, we should talk about the gameplay. the game plays...fine I guess, a third person shooter that differs too much in my opinion to RE4 and 5 and get closer to Gears or wars, the idea of Capcom to adapt I think. the main problem with this is the target thing on the map, as long as you make it there, you can keep moving on in the game, no matter how many spec ops or zombies are in the way (except one or two
cases where you have to eliminate everyone) which kinda make it pointless to try and fight the enemies.

The main problem a lot of people had with the enemies, were the hunters. Traditionally a couple of shotgun bullets did the trick, now......you have to endure in a deathbattle firing hundreds of machine gun ammo to take just one out. There rumors somewhere that their super strength was a bug....or we are just a bunch of suckers.

The main bow of 2 and 3 are  here, both Tyrant "mr. x" and the Nemesis. Mr X is just Mr X, going around trying yo kill you while you shoot his head (there's even multiple Mr X). Nemesis on the other hand, is a different story, he went rogue and wants to kill everyone, and succeeds most of the time, so the main boss fight with him is to take him down (which takes forever with spec ops and zombies and crmson heads and shit hitting a fan try to kill you) and inject a parasite that will reboot the Nemesis so he can continue his search to hunt down stars members.


So yeah, overall this game failed because of the expectation that it had among RE fans, and their false advertising of a product and the release of a turd disguise as a product, the lifespan of this game died pretty soon, and when word got out after its release many cancelled their pre orders (which I don't approve, but certainly proves the point that the game was a dissapoinment)

Thank you for reading this huge ass post, let me know what you think

Source: Your Mom

Let it go Paul, it's been three years. Wear the grudge like a crown of negativity!

Honestly at this point i'm so indifferent about ORC. I don't play it, don't think about it. It's just meh.

But to acknowledge a few disappointments, honestly, 4-player split screen was one of the major things Teh Spike was looking forward to. I had a few friends that we all used to take turns playing RE5 Mercs, and so this sounded pretty boss. Plus it actually being a story mode and Raccoon City, zombies, etc.

I did like seeing Nicholai, and some BOWs like Nemesis and the T-103 model Tyrants. BTW they aren't all "Mr.X", PAULSAMSON, only Mr.X's name is Mr.X. The one from RE2. And DSC. The rest are just generic, although you could give them names if you wanted. "Oh no! Look! It's Mister E!".

All of the Umbrella guys sounding russian kinda reminded me of like the Empire and how all of the Imperials sounded British.

But obviously the game was bad. Even a super-duper optimist such as Mass couldn't find much positive in this game. Obviously even despite the false advertising and the fans' expecations there is still a handful, or at least a couple, or maybe just one thing that was kinda cool. But the negative outweighs the positive, big time.

The most fun i've had with the game was simply watching other's play, and seeing their frustration with ORC and it's awful broken gameplay. Hunters and Birkin FTW.

I don't hate Operation Raccoon City at all. In fact, I love Operation Raccoon City. Is the game perfect? Not at all. Even with all the flaws though, I still enjoy playing it.

The reason why more than half of the CGI cutscenes are missing is because of the addition of Lupo and Four Eyes. By adding Lupo and Four Eyes, the cutscenes will always be different depending on the team members you choose for your squad. The amount of CGI cutscenes that Slant Six would have had to create in order to accommodate all of the different combinations of characters would have been ridiculous. In fact, they probably wouldn't have been able to afford all of those cutscenes. Notice some of the cutscenes with characters like Leon, Claire, Jill, and Carlos are CGI. That's because you don't see the WOLFPACK or the Spec Ops in the cutscene, and there can't be any variation to the cutscene.

As for the real characters like Leon, Claire, Jill, Carlos, etc not being playing in the story, I don't know why you would expect them to be. It was stated from the beginning that the game was not about them, they were just meant to be cameos. This whole game was meant to be a retelling through the eyes of completely different people.

I do completely agree that we shouldn't have been charged to play the Spec Ops side of the story, but that doesn't mean that it should be discredited because we have to pay for it. The Spec Ops campaign is just as important, if not more important. The reason why Jill and Carlos probably are missing from the WOLPACK missions is because the WOLPACK campaign seems to focus more on Resident Evil 2, while the Spec Ops campaign seems to focus more on Resident Evil 3.

As for the gameplay, there could have been improvements. However, Slant Six is only an indie game developer so they did pretty good with the resources they had available. Capcom probably didn't do much with Operation Raccoon City, hence they outsourced it to Slant Six Games. And yes, I was very disappointed that the game didn't feature split-screen, considering it's a four player shooter. I thought split-screen would have been an obvious feature.

So overall, the game definitely has a lot of flaws. However, I still enjoy the game.

The one thing that ruined ORC and continues to ruin Resident Evil is fast-paced action. Resident Evil was always a slow-paced horror game that focused on atmosphere and detail. I believe that Resident Evil Outbreak was the final title to have these things.

It’s not difficult to make a good Resident Evil game. You need slow-moving zombies. You need a great atmosphere (late night, cool architecture, eerie weather), detailed weapons, and realistic, believable characters. ORC fucked that all up. I will literally be somewhere at night and be like, damn this looks like Resident Evil or Raccoon City. When a 1990s game can do that, Jesus Christ, don’t change the formula.

Amadeus31B wrote:

It’s not difficult to make a good Resident Evil game. You need slow-moving zombies. You need a great atmosphere (late night, cool architecture, eerie weather), detailed weapons, and realistic, believable characters.

Well that sounds like a good RE game. Since I guess Vandal wasn't going to answer.

Except for one thing Amadeus, we don't need the zombies to be slow-moving. Some? Sure. But we also enjoy those, "Oh shit!" types of enemies. The ones you don't even want to fight. Hunters, Lickers, Dr.Salvadors, Reapers.

Also, i think RE4 fits your description of a good RE game, minus those slow moving zombays of course. Just because RE4 had superb action as well as the horror shouldn't omit it. Twas just a perfect blend.

Teh Spike wrote:

I did like seeing Nicholai, and some BOWs like Nemesis and the T-103 model Tyrants. BTW they aren't all "Mr.X", PAULSAMSON, only Mr.X's name is Mr.X. The one from RE2. And DSC. The rest are just generic, although you could give them names if you wanted. "Oh no! Look! It's Mister E!".

Deja vu? I think we had this conversation before..., still I said mr x as a reference, and because I didn't remember his t number

Teh Spike wrote:

All of the Umbrella guys sounding russian kinda reminded me of like the Empire and how all of the Imperials sounded British.

I find your lack of faith disturbing

DampRevil wrote:

The reason why more than half of the CGI cutscenes are missing is because of the addition of Lupo and  Four Eyes. By adding Lupo and Four Eyes, the cutscenes will always be different depending on the team members you choose for your squad. The amount of CGI cutscenes that Slant Six would have had to create in order to accommodate all of the different combinations of characters would have been ridiculous. In fact, they probably wouldn't have been able to afford all of those cutscenes. Notice some of the cutscenes with characters like Leon, Claire, Jill, and Carlos are CGI. That's because you don't see the WOLFPACK or the Spec Ops in the cutscene, and there can't be any variation to the cutscene.

Then, why keep the cutscenes on the LAUNCH trailer? I mean, at launch they already included Four Eyes and Lupo, they could have thought something else, atleast don't fool the players.

DampRevil wrote:

As for the real characters like Leon, Claire, Jill, Carlos, etc not being playing in the story, I don't know why you would expect them to be. It was stated from the beginning that the game was not about them, they were just meant to be cameos. This whole game was meant to be a retelling through the eyes of completely different people.

How about his cover for the 360 version? Leon takes a huge part on the back cover to be just a character on one online mode

\r\nResident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (2012) NTSC Xbox 360 Front cover

The cutscenes were probably still in the launch trailer because they had the footage available and just put it in the trailer. The fact that Leon is on the coverart doesn't necessarily mean he's a huge part of the game. It's called advertising/marketing. By putting Leon on the back of the case, that secured a lot of sales for Slant Six Games. Any Resident Evil fan would have seen Leon and felt inclined to buy Operation Raccoon City, that doesn't automatically make him important.

Leon is not only featured in Heroes mode. Leon plays a prominent role in both of the campaigns, he's just not playable in them.

PAULSAMSON wrote:

Then, at the end of the main game, Leon, Claire and SHerry trying to get away, Leon fights, decide to kill him of help him, face your own teammates and bum, congratulations a winner are you. game over, you beat it , hurrah!........wait a sec, where's Jill?, where's Carlos?, what the fuck happened to Claire and Sherry after that?, and who the hell are these other people we see in the trailer? Well ,they are the spec ops field unit, Echo Six, but how do I gain access to play their awesome missions?? PAYING MORE MONEY OF COURSE!, 6 out of the 7 missions from the Echo six team are paid dlc, the first one being free dlc...so if i just buy the game disc I only get half the storyline that was advertise in the trailer???

Plus, IIRC, one of those paid missions is a complete rehash of one of the main missions.

PAULSAMSON wrote:

DampRevil wrote:

As for the real characters like Leon, Claire, Jill, Carlos, etc not being playing in the story, I don't know why you would expect them to be. It was stated from the beginning that the game was not about them, they were just meant to be cameos. This whole game was meant to be a retelling through the eyes of completely different people.

How about his cover for the 360 version? Leon takes a huge part on the back cover to be just a character on one online mode

The same reason Nemesis isn't playable in RE3 despite it being named after him, they're both antagonists and they can be important without being playable.

You already mentioned some of them, but the main complaints I had about ORC were:

• They butchered the environments.
  
• The AI was terrible, I remember there were many times that I was firing my gun and a teammate just ran into my line of fire.
  
• The boss fights sucked. The Nemesis and Tyrant fights were particularly notable. Nemesis, who was previously known for being able to outrun the player, now just stands in place and keeps firing his minigun that Paul Anderson gave him; he's just a glorified turret (his "STARS" yell sounds stupid too). The Tyrants have the wonderful ability to stun-lock you the whole fight when there's two of them.
  
• Combat as a whole was tedious, the hordes of enemies spawning out of shipping containers and stuff got old really fast and I don't play Resident Evil to fight against armies of humans with machine guns.
  
• The way they implemented the kill/help Leon decision was lazy as hell; Leon and two of your team members just teleport across the area and suddenly start helping him with no explanation or dialog whatsoever.
  
• I heard that the game is better on multiplayer, but balancing a game around co-op multiplayer without split-screen is just idiotic. I'm not going to waste my time playing with random people and hoping I get someone good.
  

I still have my copy of RE6, but I gave this piece of trash away for free.

DampRevil wrote:

The cutscenes were probably still in the launch trailer because they had the footage available and just put it in the trailer. The fact that Leon is on the coverart doesn't necessarily mean he's a huge part of the game. It's called advertising/marketing. By putting Leon on the back of the case, that secured a lot of sales for Slant Six Games. Any Resident Evil fan would have seen Leon and felt inclined to buy Operation Raccoon City, that doesn't automatically make him important.

Leon is not only featured in Heroes mode. Leon plays a prominent role in both of the campaigns, he's just not playable in them.

OK, yes, it is marketing and advertisment....but false advertisment, if your game sucks then suck it up, don't fool people, especially when some of them can watch youtube videos and feel so dissapointed to cancel the pre-orders. They knew the game sucked, so they tried and disguised it as a super Raccon City nostalgia game, the "secured" were mainly insatisfied people, money matters, but reputation matters even more.



"Leon plays a prominent role in both of the campaigns"....really??

37 Narwhals wrote:

The same reason Nemesis isn't playable in RE3 despite it being named after him, they're both antagonists and they can be important without being playable.

Come on, Nemesis chase your ass around trying to eliminate you, one of the toughest bosses in video game history, I don't think Leon's role on the campaign can even compare to that.

I don't see how that's false advertising. Nowhere did Slant Six confirm that Leon was going to be the single most important character in the game, nor did they mention that the game was even going to feature him heavily. Putting him on the back of the case was not their way of trying to show how important Leon is to the game, it was all for advertising. You have played both campaigns right? Leon is more prominent than any of the other real Resident Evil characters. Just because he's not as important as you would like him to be doesn't mean he's not important.

Screen-time doesn't dictate how important a character is. Take Resident Evil 5 for example. Jill's hardly in the game, but she's one of the most important characters.

Code:

DampRevil wrote:

I don't see how that's false advertising. Nowhere did Slant Six confirm that Leon was going to be the single most important character in the game, nor did they mention that the game was even going to feature him heavily. Putting him on the back of the case was not their way of trying to show how important Leon is to the game, it was all for advertising. You have played both campaigns right? Leon is more prominent than any of the other real Resident Evil characters. Just because he's not as important as you would like him to be doesn't mean he's not important.

Screen-time doesn't dictate how important a character is. Take Resident Evil 5 for example. Jill's hardly in the game, but she's one of the most important characters.

Looks like he gotcha there, PAULSAMSON. Check and mate! haha

But i think the point he is possibly probably trying to make is that ORC sucks.

DampRevil wrote:

I don't see how that's false advertising. Nowhere did Slant Six confirm that Leon was going to be the single most important character in the game, nor did they mention that the game was even going to feature him heavily.

One of Slant Shit's selling points was that you got to kill Leon and change history, so their is the importance part for Leon...he was just canon fodder.

37 Narwhals hit the points perfectly in why ORC sucked...it really had potential...until they started crapping over the games cannon, changed everything storyline wise, gave us Sam Fisher using a different name, a hunk clone who could be like Ninja in MGS...and then they had the cheek to charge for Spec ops campaign...if they had given that away as un-lockable content after the USS campaign they might have had something...they sadly didn't.

If they had made it tactical, made it so that nemesis did pursue you through raccoon, or zombies and your only option was to escape into a building and run that would have improved the experience imo. No crimson heads...clearly they didn't pay any attention too REmake at all. The fact you have Spec ops everywhere as well...hey Raccoon went too hell so lets set up sniper points to shoot potential survivors, if those had been there back in the days of re2 and 3 would the situation have being worse?

They had a good idea...just badly implemented it, if they adopted the outbreak approach more it would have sold a lot more..

DampRevil wrote:

I don't see how that's false advertising. Nowhere did Slant Six confirm that Leon was going to be the single most important character in the game, nor did they mention that the game was even going to feature him heavily. Putting him on the back of the case was not their way of trying to show how important Leon is to the game, it was all for advertising. You have played both campaigns right? Leon is more prominent than any of the other real Resident Evil characters. Just because he's not as important as you would like him to be doesn't mean he's not important.

Screen-time doesn't dictate how important a character is. Take Resident Evil 5 for example. Jill's hardly in the game, but she's one of the most important characters.

If the game would have been a little better I won't be focusing so much of the things that should have been there (according to trailers and box art) but since the game really fell short of expectations I can't help but think that they knew it was shit and started making anything possibly to mislead people into buying it. Think for a minute, of course that slant six won't say that Leon was the most important character, but no one can deny that what they advertised as "nostalgia" were crappy cameos (with awful graphics I may add, Jill for example).

I know what they were trying to do, you know that too, but it isn't justified, especially for us the players AND customers. That's just my opinion though, we both agree that the advertisment for this game wasn't something that reflected the game's true content. I don't like that, and you're indifferent, that's it.

This game requires an AVGN Review.

DXP wrote:

One of Slant Shit's selling points was that you got to kill Leon and change history, so their is the importance part for Leon...he was just canon fodder.

While killing Leon was a major selling point for ORC, that doesn't necessarily make him important. I think it would have been better if the players actually got to see the effects of Leon's death. If we got a detailed epilogue or something, that may have made Leon's death more interesting.

PAULSAMSON wrote:

If the game would have been a little better I won't be focusing so much of the things that should have been there (according to trailers and box art) but since the game really fell short of expectations I can't help but think that they knew it was shit and started making anything possibly to mislead people into buying it. Think for a minute, of course that slant six won't say that Leon was the most important character, but no one can deny that what they advertised as "nostalgia" were crappy cameos (with awful graphics I may add, Jill for example).

I know what they were trying to do, you know that too, but it isn't justified, especially for us the players AND customers. That's just my opinion though, we both agree that the advertisment for this game wasn't something that reflected the game's true content. I don't like that, and you're indifferent, that's it.

As for the advertising and character cameos, people shouldn't have been so naive. The same thing happen with Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6. The fact that people still look at advertising as a reference for what the final product will be like baffles me. I never watched the trailers for ORC and thought that it would bring back nostalgic memories from Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3. I knew what we were being told and what we were going to get would end up being two completely different things. Game companies will always tell fans what they want to hear, even if they have to lie. Once people stop falling for the advertising, people will stop getting disappointed.

Well, of course that after seeing the final product everyoen was naive at the time, for the lawls and rolfs just read this post http://www.residentevilforums.net/t3159-resident-evil-orc-community-thread and especially this thread http://www.residentevilforums.net/t3276-resident-evil-operation-raccoon-city-triple-impact-trailer, trust me it will make you cry with as you see how everyone's hopes and dream were shattered

That's what happens when you outsource your property to a company that has only ever made mediocre hand held games on the PSP.

Resident Evil 4 had more atmosphere than Resident Evil 2, so I agree. It did release the same time as Outbreak though, too.

Lack of originality and short missions are the downfall of ORC, I say. There isn't much that veteran players of Splinter Cell or Spec-Ops have not seen before. I wish there had been. Also, the enemies are the same old ones and aside from the gun wielding opposition, I didn't find much new material to really sink my teeth into.

Still, I enjoyed the chance to get to know Raccoon City better. Some of its key locations and some that hadn't been seen before were revealed.

Pau Diaz wrote:

Lack of originality and short missions are the downfall of ORC, I say. There isn't much that veteran players of Splinter Cell or Spec-Ops have not seen before. I wish there had been. Also, the enemies are the same old ones and aside from the gun wielding opposition, I didn't find much new material to really sink my teeth into.

Still, I enjoyed the chance to get to know Raccoon City better. Some of its key locations and some that hadn't been seen before were revealed.

I gotta admit, one location from ORC that i really liked was City Hall. There was this one beautiful view in one of the areas where this pinkish/purple light was shining down upon the statues and trees.

Otherwise they did a straight up retarded job on the already established locations, like RPD.

But basically the game has no replayability. No extras, no multiplayer(offline), no nothin'. ORC is pretty whack.

Weak AI and lack of reason is indeed two of the problems of the game. I mean, none of the monsters, even the boss ones are hard to fight. They could have been more challenging and many of the levels seem either unfinished or free runs through Raccoon City without much to see or do.

Also, why did the two Tyrants attack the USS in the streets of Raccon City? I thought one was transported to the RPD and the other five to the Dead Factory.

That is the worst boss fight I've ever endured. I was playing it by my self on the hardest available difficulty and I had just narrowly survived the Hunters before that fight and ran past all the Spec Ops in camo. Facing two tyrants was ridiculous. I ran out of ammo and my entire team kept dying. I had to keep running around the bus and reviving them because they were the only ones who could keep shooting at them.

I never died but it was the worst boss fight in my own personal history of boss fights I've had to face in video games.

I want to give this game a bit of justice..........I've replayed the Echo six missions a few days ago, right after I've replayed the wolf pack missions before my initial post, I must say the Echo six pack is a 1000000 times better in all aspects, the fact that they are dlc upsets me even more

The Echo Six DLC have a little more human content in them. The inclusion of Jill, Claire and Sherry help add more depth, I must admit, but the boss fight with Nemesis in the steel furnace... my god.

I must have pumped 500-1000 rounds into his head and that would not defeat him. Jesus, nothing can take that amount of concentrated gunfire. Also, pouring the molten steel onto him three times? Please, it is just not possible that any living creature, whose head is exposed could survive that!

I'm not spending $70 on the game then spending $25 for DLC. Screw that. It shouldn't be that way. I got half a game for fucks sake.