Resident Evil spin-off Project Resistance will be an asymmetrical multiplayer game pitting a team of four survivors against one devious Mastermind, a recent gameplay trailer revealed. An earlier teaser suggested some of the game’s mechanics, but only in a pre-rendered CGI trailer.
Resident Evil has had a fair number of spin-offs, but none of them has ever been as successful as the main series. Many of them have toned down Resident Evil’s traditional survival horror elements or tossed them out completely, some turning into first-person shooters and even light gun games. While even the most successful of them have generally only been mediocre, some have introduced elements that later got incorporated into other games in the series. Resident Evil 4’s active aiming system, for instance, can be seen as an evolution of the combat in Resident Evil Dead Aim. Resident Evil Outbreak even attempted to add online multiplayer back in 2003, and the poorly received Umbrella Corps tried it again in 2016, though both had a much different take on multiplayer than what’s been shown of Project Resistance.
Capcom first confirmed that Project Resistance would be the next Resident Evil game in late August, with assurances that more would be revealed during the Tokyo Game Show. That reveal came in the form of trailer on the Resident Evil Twitter account showing off gameplay and a website full of more detailed information about the game. As seen in the trailer, Project Resistance will challenge four survivor players to escape from a secret lab while another player controlling a character called the Mastermind tries to stop them. The survivors play in third person, controlling characters that seem to move much like the characters in the recent Resident Evil 2 remake as they fight off zombies and other threats. Each character has their own specialties, like melee or support, with abilities that help the team in different ways. The Mastermind monitors their progress through security cameras scattered throughout the lab and can place traps and enemies in their way, somewhat reminiscent of how games like Dungeon Keeper or Orcs Must Die work. The trailer also shows the Mastermind taking direct control of notorious Resident Evil villain Mr. X to engage the other players.
Asymmetric multiplayer has been steadily growing in popularity at least since Left 4 Dead’s Versus mode, with more recent games like Dead by Daylight and Friday the 13th: The Game putting their own spin on it. Project Resistance looks like it’s taking some interesting steps with the genre, giving the antagonist a substantially different role in the game rather than just giving them different kinds of abilities. While the Mastermind can control enemies directly, they primarily use a card-based system, which hasn’t been substantially detailed yet, to modify the environment the survivors are moving through.
While Resident Evil’s many spin-offs haven’t left much of a mark before, Project Resistance could be the one to break through. If it can use Resident Evil’s tried and true ability to create tense moments and victories on the thinnest of the margins while making its unique take on asymmetric multiplayer fun for both sides, it could please an audience of players looking for their multiplayer fix that gives them more to do than running and gunning.
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Source: Resident Evil/Twitter
