Games

Long gone are the days when Resident Evil games were all about sneaking around dark mansions and avoiding shambling zombies. This latest instalment seems to have more in common with Paul W.S. Anderson's action-packed movie adaptations, with the first 10 minutes of play finding you dodging cars thrown into the air by a massive explosion, and then battling the undead onboard a helicopter that is about to crash into a speeding train.

In actual fact, after this rather hyperbolic opening sequence, Resident Evil 6 then sets about trying to be all things to all people by offering three inter-linked scenarios to play through (with a bonus fourth story opened on completion of the others). It's clearly an attempt to answer the critics of the previous instalment, who thought that the tone had shifted away from survival horror towards bullet-blasting action.

So here we have one scenario that offers a more traditional Resident Evil experience, while another goes for the shooting gallery approach. Sadly, the latter still remains a pretty weak experience, not helped by rather cumbersome controls that aren't best suited for fast-paced, precision shooting. Yet this small flaw is easy to overlook given the thrills provided by the other scenarios, the game's brilliantly cinematic hi-def graphics and its explosive 5.1 soundtrack.

Capcom, Xbox 360/PS3/PC, £50 Approx, On sale now
HCC VERIDCT: 4/5