Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles may not have been the best lightgun game ever made but it did at least sell well. Buoyed by association with Capcom’s hugely popular franchise, it took fan service to unprecedented levels by weaving previously unseen narratives among familiar plots and giving the player control over a host of Raccoon City’s favourite characters, and the results were just about good enough to keep the fans happy.

Now the spin-off series is back but with the intention of bringing the gameplay up to the same high standard as the previous game’s plotting and characterization. “A lot of fans complained that we didn’t retell the stories of Resident Evil 2 or Code Veronica in Umbrella Chronicles”, producer Masachika Kawata tells us, “so it made sense for us to start with that idea. But we also wanted to improve the gameplay as a gun shooting game”.

Those players still sore from struggling through the extremely tough Wesker and Hunk missions toward the end of the last game will be pleased to hear that Capcom’s first priority was to iron out the difficulty curve. That’s not to say that Darkside Chronicles will be a walk in the park, it still presents a decent challenge, but it shouldn’t end up testing your patience in the way Umbrella Chronicles’ Ivan boss fight/memory test did.

One of Umbrella Chronicles’ biggest problems was that the opening levels were easily the worst in the game. Slow and uneventful, they put off many people who didn’t bother to persevere toward the good parts. That’s all changed for Darkside Chronicles, which opens with the iconic entrance of Leon S. Kennedy from the start of Resident Evil 2. Arriving in a deserted and panic-torn Raccoon City, Leon hooks up with Clare Redfield and must make his way to relative safety against the overwhelming odds of zombie hordes coming from every direction.

The scene is one of the most memorable from the Resident Evil series and is milked for all it’s worth in Darkside Chronicles. Experiencing the scene from a first person perspective only heightens the sense of panic, the game adopting a handycam style of movement that makes accurate shots particularly tricky to pull off as Leon stumbles and falls during his rush the police station. The sequence never feels unfairly difficult but is testing enough that you never really feel totally safe from harm.

Overall, the pace of Darkside Chronicles seems much brisker and more action packed from our limited experience with the opening levels, but Kawata reminds us that this isn’t just an arcade shooter but a substantial narrative experience with appropriate highs and lows throughout. “The volume of content will be greater than in Umbrella Chronicles”, he says, but doesn’t confirm whether that means more levels or just bigger levels with more multiple routes. He does tell us what we already know, that the game will recap the stories of both Resident Evil 2 and Code Veronica, but on the subject of recounting Resident Evil 4 he says, “we’re not quite sure about that yet”. Which we’re choosing to read as a clear non-denial denial.

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