You had one job: Don't copy Gears of War. Here we're going to go for part six, but many fans cite five as the one that put them off the franchise thanks to a reliance on shotguns and punching zombies rather than white-knuckle thrill-rides. Resi 4 is still touted as the game that allowed titles like Gears of War to flourish - as previous stop n' pop cover-shooter Kill.Switch completely failed at exactly the same gameplay back in 2003. But in taking that idea of putting you in increasingly action-based scenarios, Resident Evil would move away from its roots and more into a weird hybrid of what the series used to be, and what the movies became. By the time part six rolled around Capcom had fully embraced this idea, putting quick-time events behind major cutscenes so you were hammering away like a gibbon trying to force animations to play out whilst having firefights break out every five minutes. Firefights between you...and the zombies. Yes, although many have said that infected creatures are not worthy of the 'zombie' title as they're not the living dead, regardless in RE6 we saw the hordes take up arms and cover, trading shots with the inflatable-arms of meathead Chris Redfield. All-in-all Resi couldn't even do these levels well as the gameplay systems put in place through part four were never meant to handle Gears of War-style firefights and flanking manoeuvres, leading to a franchise completely devoid of any identity that played like a bizarre RE4 mod from seven years prior.
