Enter a world of fear ... Although RE:UC may be very fun and intense, prepare for those annoyances and "bugs."
Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles starts off on the Epileptic Express (Resident Evil 0) where you play as Rebecca or Billy. You will soon notice that the storyline of the previous games may have been twisted or redone (you only will notice this if you had played the pervious games.) Not big changes, only changes so that two characters are working together during the missions, thus the co-op mode.
Co-op mode is where the fun and excitement of this rails shooter can be recognized. Two players are playing through the game as a single player would be, but both are sharing one life bar, which can set the feeling of emergence while walking through a pitch black subway with only the help of a flash light, a gun, and oh yea -- your buddy sitting next to you. The anxiety will definitely be lowered while playing with a friend throughout the outrageously prolonged and intense boss battle, but if you're playing on your own, Good Luck!
Once you're alone, Boss battles may take up to 10 to 15 minutes depending on difficulty and the boss being fought, unless you have the right artillery to take the foe down. The boss battles may be so prolonged that you will be running in the same path over and over again, actually running out of the reach of shooting the weak spot of the boss. All boss and enemies have a distinct weak spot on they're body, in which you have to shoot in order to take that boss or enemy down with out taking major damage. You can gain knowledge of such weak spots through reading documents.
Documents will become a crucial part of the game in order to fill in gaps from previous plot holes, to find out enemy's weak spots, and to study the anatomy of the creatures. These documents are obtained by destroying breakable objects, such as lights, lamps, desks, chairs, and basically anything hanging from a wall. Also most of your ammo, health, and many other items will be found in breakable objects. You are also graded on your performance of your destruction, so break everything you see! Be quick, because your moving so fast, picking up items maybe be tricky. The documents found during missions add a sense of replay value to the game; because certain documents can only be found in certain paths you can choose from during the game. Yes, you have to choose between two different path during some missions making you come back to play the mission again -- choices, choices!
Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles features side mission like I mentioned before. This is where you can play as Wesker, Rebecca, and many other unlockable character's missions along the way. The side missions not only add to the replay value of the game, but they will show how you meet up with the characters during the game and what they had to go through to get where they were. Two little nuisances in the side missions are that they're only solo missions, and they're not the easiest missions either, also many of the side missions can only be unlocked by scoring an A or S ranking at the end of the mission. The difficulty setting for the game doesn't really vary at all in Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles either. Basically, easy equals hard, normal equals very hard, hard equals impossible, and you know where I'm going with this. The difficulty will be a huge set back in this game, you most likely will be running through a mission about five times before you get it right because you can't save ingame -- there are only one or two checkpoints in the whole mission.
Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles controls are standard. To aim, point your WiiMote at the screen, to reload, shake the WiiMote up and down, and to switch weapons, just a tap of the C button. So much more could have been done to improve the game's feel, after Resident Evil 4's impressive feel, although, Capcom could did more with the controls. Once again, like Resident Evil 4, you have to be cautious during cutscenes by pushing A or B repeatedly or by the waving of the controller. The reloading may not be responsive at times, creating a whole lot of frustration and a low health bar!
At times, the game may sound great and very fun, but it has its fair share of annoyances and bugs. Some annoyances can consist of the continuous oncoming enemies (enough is enough,) and most of the time you have to start the mission over and over again due to the absent checkpoints. Some enemies such as leeches, baby spiders, and bees have to be terminated in order to move on, so expect to kill every one of those little bugs, when you could easily just step on them and split. The leeches and spiders also just on presumably what is supposed to be your face, which limits the real feel of the game. Some of the zombies spit goo out of they're mouths and you can shoot it out of the air, which really doesn't make much sense. Also, don't try to beat those bosses on your own unless you're really good, they can be very annoying and too long to handle. Aside from the minor and major annoyances and "bugs," this game is on top of the arcade shooters list. If you like an action packed shooter, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles is for you, but it really doesn't leave much closure for hardcore Resident Evil fans.