Resident Evil Re: Verse, the review of competitive multiplayer for Village owners

How long have we been waiting for the release of Resident Evil Re: Verse? The competitive multiplayer experience that Capcom promised Village owners it would have to coincide with the last chapter of the series, but for one reason or another the launch was postponed: not a good sign for such a project, which could have taken advantage of the excellent debut of the game to build a solid user base.

It took practically a year and a half for this competitive spin-off to finally be ready, made available on digital stores taking advantage of the release of the Gold Edition and the Winters’ Expansion. Well, was it worth the wait? The short answer is a firm no, but we are ready to explain everything to you in the Resident Evil Re: Verse review.

Structure: is that all?

Typically when a game is postponed it’s because the developers believe it isn’t ready for launch yet, both in technical terms and in terms of content. You therefore gain some time in order to introduce something else in the package, enriching it to get to the appointment with the public in the best possible form. Just what didn’t happen with Resident Evil Re: Verse, which he comes up with one mode and two maps.

Accessible via matchmaking or in private rooms with passwords, the classic deathmatch of the Capcom spin-off is open to the participation of six players, who find themselves battling within two possible scenarios: the Raccoon City Police Department and Villa Baker. Unfortunately, in both cases they are extremely simplified locations in design compared to the originals, without vertical development and frankly a little sketchy.

You are i characters available: Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Leon S. Kennedy, Claire Redfield, Ada Wong and Hunk. Each of them is equipped with different equipment and special abilities that distinguish them on the battlefield, with some fighters immediately more effective than others (see for example Chris), highlighting some balance problem.

Then there are the Creaturesin which we will transform when we are landed and which change according to the number of viral capsules collected up to that moment: from the pathetic obese Micromorph to the Hunter yea Jack Baker, finally arriving at Nemesis and the Super Tyrant: real unstoppable monsters, with which we can inflict a lot of damage before the next respawn.

Gameplay: a few high notes, a lot of approximation

The only mode available in Resident Evil Re: Verse, as mentioned, is a free-for-all for six players in which the player who scores the most points from eliminations wins. We will be able to choose our human character and eventually equip him with unlockable upgrades through the currency that is obtained at the end of each game, then throw ourselves into the action and try to take out the other users according to rather traditional mechanics, even if the fire is inhibited as long as aim is not activated.

The variation on the theme, interesting indeed, concerns the transformation of Humans into Creatures when you are landed: after taking the form of a mutant, we can continue to turn around the map and attack the other players in an attempt to collect a few more points before the final knockdown that leads to respawn. Adding a bit of depth to these mechanics will find extra ammo, plants for restoring health and special disposable weapons.

Unfortunately in terms of gunplay we found Re: Verse really lame and sloppy, unable to make the impacts well and therefore inevitably slippery both in firefights (also due to not exactly perfect hitboxes) and in hand-to-hand attacks. The control system, however, has by default an excessive sensitivity of the sticks which makes it difficult to aim well and which must be adjusted.

Around this simplistic system we find an unexpected frame of microtransactions and an equally unexpected Premium Pass for obtaining extra rewards, mostly of a cosmetic nature even if, as mentioned, there are some upgrades for the characters that can make a difference during the game.

Technical realization: dated and not very inspired

Resident Evil Re: Verse uses the polygonal models of the various characters of the Capcom saga, albeit in a version that is in many ways simplified and without effects capable of adding thickness to the visual sector. Thanks to frankly ugly animations, the final result appears dated and uninspiredbeyond the fact that the game is actually only available in the old-gen versions and must be run in backward compatibility on PS5 and Xbox Series X | S.

The scenarios do not in any way improve the general feeling of being faced with a modest and very unambitious production, and the sound is limited to being functional, accompanying the action with discreet effects and some shouts when you manage to put a finisher hit. During our tests we finally ran into a host collapse more than once with a lot of early closure of the match due to the online type peer to peer.