So I genuinely believe that resident evil 6 is a fantastic title and one of the best of survival action. The game is like a parody of a parody the absurdity that's constantly going on top of each other one at a time never fucking the crazy train that creates from the very start it's just amazing. It's like watching a train wreck except the train wreck is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen and it just keeps going and going and never getting boring.

Now I'll admit at this comes with the perspective of someone who doesn't really care that much about the scary part of a horror game but rather be aesthetic and ideas behind them or what is appealing to me. The grotesque body horror and fantastical monstrosities a part of what I enjoy the most. And this is what I view 6 as, it's an amazing game with a fantastic horror aesthetic, it's just not a scary one.

First I'm going to talk about one of my favorite things the monster designs. There's a shit ton of unique monsters in this and the way they mutate and evolve in respond to your attacks is so cool. In a series known for some of the coolest most bullshit monster designs, I believe some of the best are in 6. I tried to find a collection of the monsters from resident evil 6 and even the one I found agrees with me that they're so great because it's just that fucking good. http://blackjackrants.blogspot.com/2020/10/reviewing-monsters-resident-evil-6.html?m=1

And all the co-op elements in horror games, they really do take a lot away from the title being scary. But like I said I don't think doing six as a horror title does it right. Six is the Pinnacle of resident evils shift into action horror, and the way they incorporate co-op fits very well into this. In some sense it almost feels like playing a game such as A Way Out with the interesting co-op based puzzles and designs the game comes up with. When you're providing cover for a friend trying to solve a puzzle as they get hoarded by zombies, or opening up paths for each other while using the unique angles you get for support, you can tell the game was built from the ground up to incorporate co-op. This isn't some shitty game like dead space 3 where co-op feels so forced into what otherwise is a single player game.

So once we let our perspective shift on what 6 is supposed to be, I think it's rather nonarguble that it does its pretty well. It's loud rough action setpieces that make you feel cool as fuck shooting down hordes of dangerous mutations with your friend as the stakes grow ever more absurd. You literally throw lightning rods at the final boss after it became a fucking centaur T-Rex monstrosity chasing you down for like half the route, right after the same route starts with you killing the president.

There's also the Ustanak, who takes homage from Mr X and Nemesis by being an unstoppable unkillable foe who's always chasing you. Except in this case this is an action game not a horror game, so instead of spending most of your encounters the way you did with Mr X running in circles, you're plowing into the Ustanak with giant drills and throwing him into lava. Just like with the rest of the game, this is resident evil taking it up to the extreme.

Even the various setting of the game shows this. This is multiple outbreaks taking place practically all over the world with civil wars going on, instead of just an isolated place like Spencer's mansion or a police department. In one of the routes endings you blow up a gigantic underwater research lab that would have been big enough to explore in any of the other games if they bothered to flush it out. It's over the top to the point where calling it absurd doesn't even do it justice.

It also has really tight gameplay, the shooting is pretty damn good for a game in that time period and the constant switching of settings and enemy variety leaves nothing feeling stale for too long. You go from one bullshit action scene to the next, with only the first campaign really being all that much of a traditional resident evil game (and even then straying away from this as it gets into the later parts).

It also had some really cool and ambitious ideas, for example some parts of the campaigns crossover with each other and if people were playing them at the same time, they would actually connect online just for that segment.

All in all, I'm not a skilled game reviewer and I'm not going to be able to explain this too well but I do genuinely believe that if you take resident evil 6 as an action title first and not as a resident evil game, you do get one of the most underrated games ever. It's over the top absurdity matched with tons of interesting ideas and design choices, put together by pretty great gameplay that makes a title unlike many others.