I never played Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, but I tried out its sequel, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles at E3 2009. I played alongside Zachary Miller as he controlled Claire Redfield and I controlled Steve Burnside as the second player.

The level I played was from the Resident Evil: Code Veronica section and was really poorly paced. The flow was basically this: wait around as your character walked around, then kill a batch of zombies, and repeat. The game looked really pretty, but I felt that it was pretty boring. It was just a slow, plodding walk through the island from Code Veronica.

The thing that annoyed me the most though was the fact that the second player would occasionally find his way on the screen and since I was the second player, I would do nothing as my partner shot away at the zombies that were attacking my character. It works for the story I suppose, but it seems like a pretty terrible game design choice to me, especially with how dull this demo was.

One change that I was told about was the fact that now you can change weapons in a more conducive manner. Instead of scrolling through them using left and right on the Wii Remote’s D-pad, each one is mapped to direction on it. So I could easily switch between the pistol, sub-machine gun, and the shotgun without scrolling through weapons.

I hope that the full game will be more action-packed when it hits stores by the end of the year.