Resident Evil Chronicles HD Collection hands-on - Shoot more zombies

With the Wii hitting its last legs, many publishers have taken one of the genres that benefitted most from the new hardware the on-rails shooterand translated those Nintendo-driven hits to Sonys Move hardware. Capcom has taken a queue from Segas ports of House of the Dead and brought its Resident Evil light-gun games to Move. We got hands-on with the first levels of both games at Captivate.

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles dropped in late 2007. It reenacted the Arklay Mansion events surrounding both Resident Evil and Resident Evil 0. While not always entirely accurate, it was mildly received by critics and fans.

Our session with The Umbrella Chronicles went smoothly. Capcom provided us with Sonys Move Shooter peripheral to play the game. It felt intuitive to use, and in co-op, it works well, as we used the Move button to slash our knife and stave off enemies. Shooting works quite simply and easily.

We played through a train section of Resident Evil 0, in which Rebecca and Billy fight through leech creatures. All of the trappings of light-gun shooters (shake the peripheral to reload, shoot items to add them to your inventory) are intact.

The Darkside Chronicles, released in 2009, refined the formula a bit more. It took the story of Resident Evil 2, as well as some side stories pertaining to protagonist Leon Kennedy, and wed them with the familiar mechanics. It was arguably better received by critics than the first game.

The build of Darkside Chronicles indicated that the HD Chronicles are still a work in progress. While its visually in great shape, its still being tested out, and we encountered some bugs involving the Move hardware. Do we expect that to be a problem at its June launch? Not really. We just hope that we can try out another update thats a little more stable.

Otherwise, there arent too many other details regarding RE Chronicles HD. We know its coming in June. Its in full-HD, its a digital release, and it supports trophies. It will need some calibration prior to launch, but were confident that will happen. If youve never experienced either game (especially Darkside Chronicles), this is a good time to dig in and learn more about the backstory driving the series serpentine plot threads prior to RE6s October bow.