you gotta look at the scenarios with the consideration that none of the game's interesting mechanics are ever required by a player and they can bungle through the game in a very frustrating manner not really knowing how to play because of how much leeway the game gives them on the default difficulty.
I recall saying something to this effect soon after the game's launch. The difference between good and bad player can be appreciated best not by measuring how far they get, but how they got there. To be fair RE6, most games with modern design are like that these days, it is just RE6 communicated it particularly poorly (see: "wiggle the sticks" video). Although it doesn't really affect me (if anything, I appreciate what I'm able to do with a better understanding of the system), it certainly backfired on the game.
What I'm saying is not "sometimes", but most of the time. And plenty of boss fights utilize the mechanics (particularly the humanoid ones), though perhaps you could be more specific what you mean by that.
Chris is actually the best showcase of the game's combat mechanics (and co-op design), so I'm left confused by your statement. With some very small exceptions (e.g., getting out of the elevator shaft in the chapter 1 by throwing a grenade from cover), cover hardly came into the picture (and when it was necessary to avoid gun fire with cover, I wasn't using the cover system). I don't not know what instances you are referring to, but if an enemy cannot be reached, it generally means you shoot them with a gun. In the case of long-distance enemies with long distance attacks, that's where Piers come into play. Piers serves a specific role as a sniper, which reflects that campaign's co-op design (Chris on the other hand has the stronger short-mid range starter weapon, and a knife for what it matters, to reflect his strengths).
There is no boss that fully encourages you to utilize the mechanics besides maybe, maybe
Mutated Deborah
with the exception of the entire first half of that fight taking place on a mine cart, and maybe some of the Ustanak battles. The true perk of RE6's gameplay is not necessarily the co-op, but the vastly increased mobility and improved melee. For other bosses in the game
most notably, Haos, Carla, and all of Simmon's forms
, you are plugging away at glowing weak spots until they die or you run out of ammo. Yeah, it may not be too different from past RE game bosses, but that in of itself is a problem when you have this combat system based around sliding, rolls, faster mobility, faster melee, counters, and quick/counter shots focused around a stamina bar.
As for Chris, Seyavesh summed it up best. Unlike the other campaigns where there is a balance between melee and ranged, a lot of Chris's segments are either more ranged focused (notably Chapters 4 and 5), or you are in very cramped quarters (a lot of China's segments). Playing the game one chest-high-wall to another and giving all your rifles to Piers is hardly taking advantage of what RE6 really brought to the table. You had bootleg Gears segments in RE5, and even in RE4 when it came to enemies with guns. What you didn't have in either of those games is the stamina system and all of the mobility perks that come with it. I just felt that Leon, Jake, hell, even Ada's campaigns gave more of an incentive to experiment different options.
you gotta look at the scenarios with the consideration that none of the game's interesting mechanics are ever required by a player and they can bungle through the game in a very frustrating manner not really knowing how to play because of how much leeway the game gives them on the default difficulty.
Most games with deep gameplay (Vanquish, God Hand, Devil May Cry, Bayonetta etc.) require you to want to get better on your own instead of hand-holding you to play a certain way. RE6 is no different. If you want to play it in a boring fashion and call it a day then that is really your own fault.
There is no boss that fully encourages you to utilize the mechanics besides maybe, maybe
Mutated Deborah
with the exception of the entire first half of that fight taking place on a mine cart, and maybe some of the Ustanak battles. The true perk of RE6's gameplay is not necessarily the co-op, but the vastly increased mobility and improved melee. For other bosses in the game
most notably, Haos, Carla, and all of Simmon's forms
, you are plugging away at glowing weak spots until they die or you run out of ammo. Yeah, it may not be too different from past RE game bosses, but that in of itself is a problem when you have this combat system based around sliding, rolls, faster mobility, faster melee, counters, and quick/counter shots focused around a stamina bar.
As for Chris, Seyavesh summed it up best. Unlike the other campaigns where there is a balance between melee and ranged, a lot of Chris's segments are either more ranged focused (notably Chapters 4 and 5), or you are in very cramped quarters (a lot of China's segments). Playing the game one chest-high-wall to another and giving all your rifles to Piers is hardly taking advantage of what RE6 really brought to the table. You had bootleg Gears segments in RE5, and even in RE4 when it came to enemies with guns. What you didn't have in either of those games is the stamina system and all of the mobility perks that come with it. I just felt that Leon, Jake, hell, even Ada's campaigns gave more of an incentive to experiment different options.
Any boss that has attacks players can be avoided using the dodge system or counters is making use of that set of mechanics, and that's plenty. This includes easy to avoid ranged attacks, meaning at least one of
Simmons
(smaller) forms. Then there are the boss encounters which features normal enemies right alongside it, meaning you are literally using the same mechanics as you would if the boss wasn't there. It might be also to worth mentioning you have boss enemies who follow the same dynamic stun -> melee system (perhaps right along side the evasion mechanics as the most unique aspect of the game), but with a lot more stun resistance.
What Seyavesh said was mainly that Chris's campaign was easiest to misunderstand (I'd argue, evidently, they are all easy to misunderstand, the whole game is misunderstood). That's different than saying what the campaign's focus was, i.e., what the game is actually like. I remain confident in saying Chris's campaign is actually the best showcase of the game's mechanics, which doesn't necessarily exclude enemies being dealt with at range (especially in midst of both ranged and melee combat happening at once), and the player being able to circumvent the enemy's firearm attacks without cover exemplifies this. I can attest that I've played the hell out of Chris's campaign and I did as much punching and grappling as I did shooting. EDIT: The last fight before you reach the final boss of Chris's campaign is like the "most RE6" moment in the whole game, more so than even The Mercenaries. Very little in the way of effective cover against a bunch of strong enemies.
EDIT: Note that's there a lot of available cover and range attacking enemies (namely J'avo, but some blindfire zombies too) in The Mercenaries also. More often than not those maps are using the same geometry, if not the exact same designs as big moments from the campaign.
Most games with deep gameplay (Vanquish, God Hand, Devil May Cry, Bayonetta etc.) require you to want to get better on your own instead of hand-holding you to play a certain way. RE6 is no different. If you want to play it in a boring fashion and call it a day then that is really your own fault.
Can't say anything about God Hand or Vanquish but DMC and Bayonetta are 2 games you can't really cheese through while being ignorant of the mechanics on offer if you want to progress in the game, heck Devil May Cry t-... Devil May Cry tw-... That 2nd game in the franchise is seen as the biggest shit stain in part because of the game breaking guns particularly the Uzi's.
Can't say anything about God Hand or Vanquish but DMC and Bayonetta are 2 games you can't really cheese through while being ignorant of the mechanics on offer if you want to progress in the game, heck Devil May Cry t-... Devil May Cry tw-... That 2nd game in the franchise is seen as the biggest shit stain in part because of the game breaking guns particularly the Uzi's.
Yep, in fact I'm pretty sure most players who only completed the game on normal mode just played through it using Shuraba, trying to play it like DMC3 and dealing most of their damage during Witch Time exclusively. I know I was guilty of that as well, but learning Dodge Offset is what really opens up the mechanics of that game. Heck, I didn't even use a lot of the things that are explained to you like Umbran Spear and Tetsuzanko until I had completed several playthroughs. You can definitely play that game in a lame way without learning much of it.
Edit: It is worth noting though, that despite this Bayonetta still scored exceptionally high and received a lot of praise, even more surprising considering what a niche genre those sort of action games had become at the time. I think that has everything to do with the fact that it succeeds everywhere else RE6 fails. It's a fantastic experience throughouth with only a few rare exceptions, compared to RE6 which is great when it's great, but that greatness is often mixed in with segments that are uninteresting, or downright bad.
I love RE6 LTTP threads, since they usually involve someone who may have been on the fence getting sucked into RE6's incredible combat system. Mercenaries is quite possibly the game mode of the decade.
Here's hoping RE7 follows in the footsteps of RE6.
Most games with deep gameplay (Vanquish, God Hand, Devil May Cry, Bayonetta etc.) require you to want to get better on your own instead of hand-holding you to play a certain way. RE6 is no different. If you want to play it in a boring fashion and call it a day then that is really your own fault.
i really can't say that i agree with this statement because in those games you actually fail (via death) when you don't learn the game unless you specifically play it on the easiest mode. alongside that those games teach you the mechanics to some degree and specifically have smartly designed "tutorial" segments to a degree (depending on the game is why i keep adding 'to a degree'. i'd say vanquish and god hand are probably worse about this than bayo and dmc).
RE6 fails at that because of what i stated - there's too much leeway and not enough teaching of the player in a manner that isn't sink/swim. it is very much up to the game's designer to teach the player about how to play the game properly and that is a very critical and important part about designing single player campaigns no matter what the genre. i'm sure you and pretty much everybody on this board has seen the megaman x sequelitis thing by egoraptor. regardless of your opinions on him and his beliefs the basic examples shown about that aspect of design in the vid are a pretty good way of showing how important that kinda stuff is.
a basic example of this failure in RE6 would be enemy stun states. there is no differentiation in animation for different enemy stun states when it is effectively the most important thing that an enemy should be displaying because it determines whether they are vulnerable to the 'payoff' form of attack (stun melees). most enemies in the game just kinda pause in place and look vaguely stunned - you can tell that they're stunned if you're looking for it but to someone who has just started seeing an enemy not really react drastically to getting blasted in the head makes them think "okay why are the enemies bullet sponges why aren't they getting stunned like in the other games".
there is nothing to encourage the player that the enemy is in that state and thus the melee system is lost on the player immediately because it never happened. i'm sure you've seen the complaints to where folks really wish that the old RE melee system was back because 'the new melee is too powerful but also sucks cuz you can just press it all the time but it doesnt do much' because they are simply using the trigger melees nonstop.
this is the result of that failure of teach the basic mechanic of 'stun states' by the game and it is a massive failure on the designer's side.
in contrast to this, RE4 and RE5 have very specific canned and clear animations for stun states that say 'this enemy is vulnerable! it's time to attack!' when you put them in that stun state. this is good teaching/design because it is expressed very simply (via animation) and easily exposes the player to the core mechanic of stun melees, in which most of the combat system's nuance and excitement is built off of.
this is an advanced mechanic deeper into the game's system, akin to jump canceling in DMC. what i'm talking about/what he's probably talking about are specifically core mechanics such as "doing a combo" in dmc or dodging in bayonetta. there are seriously a significant amount of people who have played RE6 without knowing that you can dodge or that you can still stun enemies to do instakill attacks. these are core mechanics, with advanced techniques being more along the line of understanding how to manage the stun system to get coup de graces or quickshotting enemies with weapons for instakill stuns on them.
edit: to try and give a better example, imagine if they removed all the tutorials from DMC3 and then put you in the game where you took 1% damage from everything. the average person could feasibly beat the game by doing nothing but the rebellion combo 1 over and over with no variation with frustration coming from the gimmick stages because they're the only things that pose an actual danger to their ability to progress in the game.
of course they would come out thinking 'wow this game is fucking terrible' because they were never given an incentive to try and learn and the game did nothing to teach them about the real mechanics of the game- they simply 'button mashed' their way through.
this is basically what RE6's campaigns do for people who specifically don't go out of their way to explore the mechanics of the game. which is most people playing the game because RE as a franchise has a massive, massive audience.
obviously there are tons of other failures and re6 is most certainly not the masterpiece that DMC3 is but hopefully i got my point across
Any boss that has attacks players can be avoided using the dodge system or counters is making use of that set of mechanics, and that's plenty. This includes easy to avoid ranged attacks, meaning at least one of
Simmons
(smaller) forms. Then there are the boss encounters which features normal enemies right alongside it, meaning you are literally using the same mechanics as you would if the boss wasn't there. It might be also to worth mentioning you have boss enemies who follow the same dynamic stun -> melee system (perhaps right along side the evasion mechanics as the most unique aspect of the game), but with a lot more stun resistance.
What Seyavesh said was mainly that Chris's campaign was easiest to misunderstand (I'd argue, evidently, they are all easy to misunderstand, the whole game is misunderstood). That's different than saying what the campaign's focus was, i.e., what the game is actually like. I remain confident in saying Chris's campaign is actually the best showcase of the game's mechanics, which doesn't necessarily exclude enemies being dealt with at range (especially in midst of both ranged and melee combat happening at once), and the player being able to circumvent the enemy's firearm attacks without cover exemplifies this. I can attest that I've played the hell out of Chris's campaign and I did as much punching and grappling as I did shooting. EDIT: The last fight before you reach the final boss of Chris's campaign is like the "most RE6" moment in the whole game, more so than even The Mercenaries. Very little in the way of effective cover against a bunch of strong enemies.
EDIT: Note that's there a lot of available cover and range attacking enemies (namely J'avo, but some blindfire zombies too) in The Mercenaries also. More often than not those maps are using the same geometry, if not the exact same designs as big moments from the campaign.
But the boss thing gets to my point; a lot of the bosses, at least in my experience, do not really encourage using dodge or counter mechanics as much as they should have. I can list Ustanak as an example where more usage of the stamina system is encouraged... but on that same coin, you have posters in this very topic that did not even know you can counter suplex him. Despite being more of a mid-boss, Rasklapanje on Leon's side could have been a better example of how a boss encounter could have worked; relentless enemy necessitating the need for slides, rolls, etc, etc, if handled slightly differently. It could have basically been an encounter that tests how well you know the game. The first
Simmons
fight was a start; only to be squandered by the fights against the successive transformations.
As for Chris's scenario, did you use more of a balance of melee and shooting your first time or is this after having knowledge of his campaign? I mean, when you get down to it, a player could probably bumble his or her way through any of the campaigns fine enough. Alternatively, I also completely believe that one can fully utilize the mobility moves on Chris's scenario. But whether by virtue of the more J'avo-focused campaign or not, you still have a campaign that has lots and lots of cover, leading to an inference of cover based shooting, much more so than the other campaigns even in similar areas at times.
Possibly. But at the very least, you are going to have to use Witch Time. And as mentioned, this is more like Jump Canceling in DMC3/4, or Boost Canceling in Vanquish; all things that are tools, but not quite essential to being even competent at the game.
At the very least, I would be interested if more games took a Metal Gear Rising-esque approach to basic mechanics like it does the Parry System (ie, if you don't know how to parry or manually use blade mode by the end of the game, you're fucked even on lower difficulties).
RE6 is one of the best games in the franchise, and I'm glad to see more and more people retroactively experiencing the game and realizing this. And I totally agree that RE should continue in the direction it's taken now, but should take more inspiration from RE5 than 6. Skill system was a good idea, but came off as cumbersome and tedious and took away from the experience. I'd prefer that they bring back inventory micromanagement or something. Also needs more puzzles. 5 was lacking in this regard and 6 was even worse. 4 wasn't great either, but they were still kinda there.
The internet hates it for its "bloat" and lack of focus, but let's face it: the story has never been great in RE, and while they did go "too big" with the global outbreak and the narrative did suffer for it, watching everyone's campaigns come together was really satisfying.
