UMBRELLA CORPS SERIES

The tension, passion and attention to detail of the series fails to reach any of Umbrella Corps leaving a short, barren title not worth the attention of players. They are throwbacks to the heyday of Resident Evil and make this outing even more underwhelming. Some of the maps are homages to the most famous games in the series, from Resident Evil 4’s sun soaked villages to Resident Evil 2’s dead drenched Raccoon City. The entire enterprise of Umbrella Corps feels like an exercise in uninspired design. Guns have no weigh and there’s very little feedback when scoring hits to make the battle feel visceral. Even the heat of battle feels surprisingly dull, chugging bullets at each other before someone dies or runs away. Tiny maps, awkward movement and drape gunplay. It's difficult to say where exactly Umbrella Corps first stumbled, but it feels like the developers lost interest in their product very quickly.

Assuming a match lasts more than thirty seconds, having the placid nature of the zombies change to murderous horde can be quite a surprising change of pace. Each Umbrella soldier is equipped with a jammer that makes them invisible to the ravenous infected, unless its destroyed by gunfire. While Umbrella Corps is far from the first multiplayer game to have computer controlled enemies, their normally docile nature is quite the surprise.

The other interesting little feature buried amidst the uninspired is the presence of zombies themselves. In any other game, it would be a great little touch to help come together, but in the mess of Umbrella Corps it's just another delay between the incredibly short matches. With everything from the vague ‘stick together’ to the precise ‘attack left/right’, players have a rare chance to communicate ever so briefly and coordinate just a little. At the very beginning of the game, you can express your intentions the rest of the team with a selection of tactics. Umbrella Corps hides a few interesting ideas behind walls of uninteresting design, which indicate the tactical aspirations of the game that never reach its goals. Such a small arena would make you think the game was designed to be a fast and frantic multiplayer shooter, but you would be mistaken. It was a singular space where both teams’ spawn points were mere yards apart. What I received was a large foyer with a small raised catwalk and some very cluttered cover. I imagined a catastrophic encounter as you slowly pace through corridors and prison cells attempting to hunt the other uninfected humans. My first match was in the Raccoon City Police Station. Amongst the entire handful of maps available is conceivably about two hundred feet worth of playable terrain. Perhaps the most depressingly lackluster aspect of Umbrella Corps is the level design.

It’s such a simple, standard mechanic that countless games have mastered without any issues, making it even more noteworthy in the case of Umbrella Corps. Soldiers glide across the floors without any acceleration, like they exist in some strange frictionless world. The movement of these characters also feels weirdly artificial too. Weapon loadouts feel identical and the camera is permanently fixed to the shoulder so you can never reap the pitiful benefits of a new gas mask. The game features customizable characters but lacks any flare or interest in doing so. Everything about Umbrella Corps feels like a half completed and completely unloved mess.

The premise doesn’t sound bad, with a sort of tense and tactical element that inspires thoughts of Rainbow Six: Siege with the added fear of a hostile environment as well as hostile players, but the game just never holds up. Adapted from the already wholly confusing mythos of Resident Evil, Umbrella Corps has two three person groups of ‘elite’ soldiers killing each other in zombie infested locations. Not only is Umbrella Corps bad, it is so totally forgetful I had to find the game in my library to remember its name.

Umbrella corps