Capcom, what were you thinking!? After releasing the fully-modernized Resident Evil 4, one of the best games so far in 2005, you give us the throwback gameplay of Resident Evil Outbreak File #2. File #2 is by no means the bottom of the gaming barrel, but it does suffer horribly when compared to what RE4 made us think future Resident Evil games would be.

It has only been a little over a year since Capcom brought us the original Resident Evil Outbreak. At the time I praised them for daring to take one of their flagship franchises in a new direction. The new direction emphasized action over plodding play and a more detailed story and added the online multiplayer element that allowed the player to break out of the standard single-player modes that had been a mainstay of the series. At the same time I noted some shortcomings of the game.

Like the original Resident Evil Outbreak, File #2 has the player taking on the personae of a citizen of Raccoon City as an outbreak of Umbrella Corporations T-Virus is turning the local inhabitants into flesh-munching legions of zombies. In the single-player game the player will choose his own character, which he directly controls, and two other characters to help him along the way. Each of the characters have their own strengths, abilities and personal items peculiar to that character, so choose wisely. The player won’t be able to control these extra characters but, the way the game is structured, these people become very important in surviving to see the next sunrise. A set of simple commands mapped to the right thumb stick, and some more available in the inventory screen, allow the player to have rudimentary communications with his companions.

Inventory is the big challenge. As anyone who has played a Resident Evil game knows, your character only has a set, and rather small, number of inventory slots. By the time you get a couple of weapons, ammo and perhaps a healing spray or two for immediate use, you’ve shot your bolt and can’t carry anything else. By having a larger party, the player can have access to a greater inventory of items. He has to only carry the stuff he requires in the short term on his person and then request items from his companions as he needs them. Just the thing when you want the heaviest firepower available for yourself during a zombie attack. I recommend always having the student character, Yoko Suzuki, in your party. Her knapsack personal item allows this young lady to be packed out like a Columbian mule.

The characters will also help you should you become injured and need a hand up or some quick healing. The only problem is that they also can act a bit flaky and wander off on their own should it pop into their little AI brains to do so.

Compared to the first RE Outbreak game, there have been a few play refinements. The most welcome of which is the ability to both shoot and move at the same time. (You non-RE players are probably saying at this point, “WTF!? You couldn’t move and shoot at the same time before?”) This simple innovation, which lets the player back away and engage an enemy at the same time, is terrific. Where before you just had to stand stock still as you fired at a hoard of advancing zombies, perhaps killing a couple but all too often taking damage from the others accompanying them, now you can both fire on advancing zombies and at the same time put distance between yourself and the threat, giving you more time to cap off even a greater number of shots. Or you can fight your way through a group as you advance on a door that will offer safe harbor. It adds several improved tactical options to the game.

Where Capcom failed the game, among other places, is in the online department. I earlier mentioned that the player communicated with his companions in single player mode through a series of set commands mapped to the right thumb stick and within the inventory screen. The problem is, you guessed it, this communication scheme is the same when you’re playing with human players online. I mentioned this when I reviewed the first Outbreak. If you are going to have a game that relies so much on cooperation, why is there no voice chat so you can actually plan and properly cooperate?

Graphically Outbreak #2 looks good – until the characters start moving. Then there is an awful lot of graphics clipping going on. One of the more entertaining examples was when my character started down a ladder with a NPC close behind. To put it bluntly, the results looked like my character had his head up the butt of the following NPC and they became a hybrid creature with four arms, one head and two legs. I do have to give credit to Capcom for one fantastic character: the zombie elephant. This marvelous-looking, malevolent pachyderm gave my group a hard time in the Raccoon City Zoo. Audio was okay, but nothing you are going to be talking about to your friends the day after you play it.

From a technical standpoint, the game controls okay, but it loads way too frequently. The loads are also fairly long. If you still have the first-model PS2 and were one of the six people who bought the hard drive, you can download the game to the drive and cut down on the loads. But how many gamers have that option? The game camera also continues to afflict Outbreak File #2 with bizarre and frustrating angles, just as it has afflicted every RE game (with the exception of RE4) since the series began.

Ultimately Resident Evil Outbreak File #2 really fails because of what is supposed to set it apart from the vastly superior Resident Evil 4: the cooperative element. Still hamstrung by the lack of voice communication among human players online and workman-like AI for non-human-controlled allied characters in the single-player mode, the game just fails to differentiate itself enough to avoid a comparison with the new Resident Evil 4 kid on the block. Compared to that game, Resident Evil Outbreak File #2 comes off at best as solidly mediocre.