14 DAY TRIAL // The most recent Resident Evil spin-off, Operation Raccoon City, has achieved all the goals that publisher Capcom has laid out for the development team, despite the fact that reaction from both reviewers and fans has been more polarized than the one expected by the companies who created the game.
Speaking to Eurogamer Mike Kerr, who is the leading developer working on Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City at Slant Six, stated, “A lot of people put a lot of time and effort into the game and obviously we’d like to see the review scores be a little better than they are right now. In the end, I think our position on it is that we read every review and we try to pull out all the constructive feedback that we can so we can learn a little about what people liked and what they didn’t.’
He added, “Then we look to what our internal goals were and what Capcom asked us to do and I think we accomplished what they wanted to do – we took the Resident Evil franchise in a different direction.”
Kerr says that a lot of the fan base has been giving the team positive feedback and that the entire team knows how difficult it is for a developer to pick up an already established intellectual property, like Resident Evil, and give it a new twist.
Slant Six also praised the working relation that they have created with Capcom and says that the publisher has given them all the opportunities they need to express their own vision.
Recently Capcom has said outright that the survival horror space is too small for the Resident Evil series and that it will continue to explore new approaches for the game via spin-off titles.
Operation Raccoon City is out on the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 in the West and is also expected on Japan in April and on the PC during May.