Product Description

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is a brand new game in the Resident Evil franchise, with familiar locales from the entire series. This action/shooter hybrid reveals the back story behind the fall of the Umbrella Corporation by exploring locations from Resident Evil 0, 1, 2 and 3 as well as new never-before-seen locations, such as Umbrella's stronghold.Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles combines first-person, light-gun style combat with interactive pathways, multiple weapons and new enemies to create an entirely new Resident Evil experience that could only be delivered on the Wii. Using the Wii Remote as a gun, players can experience breathtaking combat against a horde of zombies and various creatures in dynamic first-person perspective.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #516 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Nintendo
• Released on: 2007-11-30
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Platform: Nintendo Wii

Manufacturer's Description
Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is a brand new game in the Resident Evil franchise, with familiar locales from the entire series. This action/shooter hybrid reveals the back story behind the fall of the Umbrella Corporation by exploring locations from Resident Evil 0, 1, 2 and 3 as well as new never-before-seen locations, such as Umbrella's stronghold. Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles combines first-person, light-gun style combat with interactive pathways, multiple weapons and new enemies to create an entirely new Resident Evil experience that could only be delivered on the Wii. Using the Wii Remote as a gun, players can experience breathtaking combat against a horde of zombies and various creatures in dynamic first-person perspective.

Customer Reviews

better 2-player
As a fan of the resident evil games and having completed most of them, i have to say that this game is very much faster and at times a bit more exciting. As you progress through the game the enemies get faster and more numerous which i always craved from the previous games! After all, the puzzles were challenging in previous games but the enemies were generally a no-brainer when it came to combat. Chronicles goes in the opposite direction and the puzzles consist of little more then pressing certain buttons or shaking the controllers at certain times, if you can call them puzzles, but the enemies start of easy but get alot harder!
I have to admit i found it alittle tedious on single player, but its alot more fun on 2-player!
i also find the lack of movement frustrating, the characters walk through the levels on their own, stopping when enemies appear then you shoot them. Sometimes you get a choice of 2 or more paths but other then that you can't control the characters at all bar looking slightly to left or right. I found that due to the lack of freedom to movement it was easy to put the control down and not get involved in the story.
As for the story, some levels are re-works of other games, and some levels are susposed to tie up various aspects between games and link the entire story arc together, but i found it a bit like the ada mini game on R.E.4, i.e. it doesn;t tie up very well and feels very rushed, just a quick game to squeeze a few more pennies from the whole franchise.
So its not so bad that i'll send it back in digust, but i only reach for it when a friend is round and we have time to kill, and it'll be one of the first games i'll trade in i imagine.

Venom gun DOES work Roy!
A review below said this game is not compatible with the venom gun. WEll, I guess Roy didn't look at the bottom of the gun - He'd see the place to plug in the nunchuk.

Surprisingly meaty for an arcade-style shooter
Resident Evil lightgun games have a reputation for being pretty awful, so I was intrigued when this one was said to be 'not awful'. It never sounded like a very good mix - the creepy tensions of Resident Evil combined with the hyperactive 'blast-everything-on-the-screen-for-brightly-coloured-baubles' nature of the lightgun game. The House of the Dead games knew they didn't stand a chance of scaring the player, so they went out of their way to be as hammy as possible. Resident Evil - though admittedly pretty hammy at times - should at least give you the willies now and then.

So we get to Umbrella Chronicles, a solid lightgun shooter that follows that ticks all the boxes: on-rails movement, occasional level branching letting you decide which routes to take, shootable bonuses hidden in barrels and the like, scores tallied up at the end of a level (though thankfully the game doesn't judge your accuracy - I always HATED that in other lightgun games). But it also manages to throw in a few neat tricks of its own - namely some surprisingly effective pacing (the game generally moves at a speed more reminiscent of the other RE games - in some instances slowing things to a crawl, which is both quite good for the tension and a good opportunity to blast some goodies), some Wii-remote waggling to throw zombies off you when they get too close, the ability to cycle through weapons (retaining the need to conserve your best ammo for when you really need it, though the standard pistol does have infinite ammo), and a nicely balanced scoring system that encourages replaying missions.

I found it strangely compulsive trying to get S ranks on all the missions - getting certain grades unlocks extra missions that expands the RE story and some useless nik-naks. The criteria against which you're graded is easy to follow - complete time, amount of headshots, enemies killed and files found - and it's oddly compelling to go back into the levels (all of which take about 15 minutes tops to complete) and get that elusive S rank. Add to that the usual Easy/Medium/Hard difficulty modes to get through and you have a lightgun with surprising staying power.

The game is billed as some sort of Resident Evil omnibus that supposedly ties up the loose ends of the course of the series - personally I've always found the general plot behind RE pretty easy to follow, and this game doesn't really fill in plot holes as add to them, throwing yet more evil villains into the mix. Sure, it gives Capcom an excuse to throw some never-before-seen levels at us (the bulk of the game takes place in locations from previous RE games - most interesting of these is the Raccoon City of the third chapter, which hasn't been given the benefit of post-32-bit graphics until now) but as far as fleshing out the plot... it's all pretty irrelevant really.

That shouldn't hinder your enjoyment in any way, mind. Umbrella Chronicles is a solid, enjoyable shooter (also quite fun in 2-player) that seems to strike as good a balance between 'eepy-creepy horror game' and 'pow pow lightgun game' as you're likely to see, and with plenty of replay value to boot. And to get back to my original point, there are moments in it that are actually quite tense and creepy! Definitely recommended.