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game ongamegamegamegameTHURSDAY | JUNE 30, 2016 | PAGE 17THE BLADE | toledoblade.com
From Bandai NamcoEntertainment
‘God Eater 2:Rage Burst’
Out this week
‘Umbrella Corps’ a glitchy disappointmentBy WILL HARRISONBLADE STAFF WRITER
CAPCOMA screen shot from ‘Umbrella Corps.’
Umbrella CorpsGrade: System: Playstation 4, PCNo. Players: 1-6Published by: CapcomDeveloper: CapcomGenre: Tactical shooterESRB Rating: Mature
Grades: Outstanding; Very Good; Good; Fair; Poor.
Getting a video game fin-ished and certified requireshard work that consumers of-ten overlook. Impressivegraphics and memorable voiceactors are important, but de-tails and polish are the criticaldifference between quality anddisappointment.
A truly horrible game is adigital natural disaster and re-minder that most games strivefor quality.
Umbrella Corps is a hurri-cane whose destruction leavessadness in its wake. A third-person, competitive multi-player shooter set in the Resi-dent Evil universe, UmbrellaCorps is the hint of a good idearuined by a complete lack ofexecution and completion.
With environments, weap-ons, and monsters from theResident Evilgames, UmbrellaCorps has theplayer take on therole of a shady cor-porate agent fight-ing for survival.The paper-thinstory sees name-less, faceless oper-atives fighting forsurvival in two on-line modes and asingle player, timetrial campaign.
The main modeis a 3-on-3, one-lifedeath match set onsmall, claustropho-bic maps. Playerswill have one lifeper round to killthe enemy team,sans re-spawning.The round endswhen the entire enemy team isdown.
The closest comparison isCounter-Strike, but with zom-bies. Monsters from the fran-chise litter each map to act as ahindrance and as a potentialtrap. On the downside, thereare only so many zombie de-signs and I saw the same
woman in a busi-ness suit over andover.
As long as aplayer’s “zombiejammer” is intact,the creatures won’tcause much trou-ble. Take too manybullets and the jam-mer explodes, sig-naling the dinnerbell for the formerlydocile foes.
The one-shot,one-kill idea whencombined with theenvironmental haz-
ard of the zombies is originaland compelling. Scenarios oc-cur where one player might bea better shot, but might not doas well fending off a dozenzombies on a lunch rush.
These scenarios lead tosome genuinely, terrifying mo-ments — something that hasgone missing from Resident
Evil games as of late. A cover-based combat system is effec-tive at making matches feeltactical, at least until zombiesbecome active and blood be-gins shooting everywhere.
Ugly, secondhand art de-signs, loose controls, and abys-mal performance issues turn aneat idea into a Dumpster fireof frustration. Umbrella Corpslooks and plays like a PlaySta-tion 2 game. This might bewhy so many of the texturesand character models look as ifthey were directly lifted fromResident Evil 4, an 11 year-oldgame.
More than a few of the mapslook like exact size and scalecopies of locations from pastResident Evil games. If this isthe case, then there’s no rea-son for Umbrella Corps to runin such a sluggish way.
The frame rate skips at ran-dom between a full 60 framesand a glitchy, sluggish night-
mare. At times, it appeared asif the game could not handlemore than two enemies on thescreen at once.
I can only assume that theengine wasn’t properly testedand optimized, given how low-quality the game’s textures ap-pear. Too much of UmbrellaCorps feels like it went fromthe developer’s computer andstraight to store shelves. Con-trol glitches and wonky char-acter physics further bury whatshould be a great game con-cept.
My character walkedstraight through zombies andmoved at full speed whilecrouching. This all occurredwhile zombie dogs ran aroundin circles, oblivious to theworld. The capper on this uglyexperience was the unstableonline matchmaking. Morethan a few times I had to waitup 15 minutes for a match,only for the server to discon-
nect seconds later.While I had some fun with
the ranked modes, the game’sinability to behave like a pro-fessionally designed productruined the experience. Mysincere wish is that anyonewho worked on UmbrellaCorps doesn’t put it on theirresume.
Umbrella Corps is a publicservice announcement: Goodgames exist. Fun, beautifulgames with sharp controls,compelling art designs, andbalanced gameplay.
None of those things arehere. Buyers should bewareand look elsewhere.
To borrow from anotherzombie franchise, UmbrellaCorps is the sign of a con-demned hospital from TheWalking Dead that says “Don’topen, dead inside.” Trust thatsign and look elsewhere for acompetitive multiplayer expe-rience.
A copy of Umbrella Corps onPlayStation 4 was provided byCapcom for review purposes.
‘Street Fighter’ updateThe oft delayed story update
for Street Fighter 5, originallyset to re-lease atthe end ofJune, willrelease onJuly 1.
The cin-ematicstory ex-pansionwil l in-
clude two new characters forpurchase — Ibuki and Balrog— who were last seen in StreetFighter IV. A trailer announc-ing the release also teased Juriand Urien, the last two DLCfighters set for 2016.
The story update is free andwill be available on PlayStation4 and PC.
Contact Will Harrison at:[email protected]
or on Twitter @DoubleUHarrison.
