Resident Evil Resistance review: This is how it runs on PC

Capcom is finally revisiting its Resident Evil online experience with Resident Evil Resistance, a 4 vs. 1 asymmetrical multiplayer game that comes with Resident Evil 3. 

In Resident Evil Resistance, four Survivors infected with the T-virus must complete objectives and shoot their way out of an experimental facility. Meanwhile, the Mastermind tries to prevent their escape by spawning all sorts of traps and creatures in order to run out the clock. While Capcom has provided a nice variety of heroes as well as fun Mastermind gameplay, Resident Evil Resistance is great in theory, but poor in execution.

From its repetitive objectives and maps to its janky gameplay and pay-to-win loot boxes, I can’t imagine Resident Evil Resistance surviving very long as a multiplayer experience unless it gets a major overhaul. We recommend checking out our list of the best PC games to play now instead.

Resident Evil Resistance heroes

Resident Evil Resistance is very much a hero-based game, whether or not everyone is an actual “hero.”

On the Survivors side, there’s Valerie (Support, Healing), January (Damage, Hacking), Tyrone (Tank, Brawler), Samuel (Damage, Brawler), Martin (Support, Traps) and Becca (Damage, Firearms). In a future title update, Jill Valentine will be added to the Survivor list, which is pretty cool. I hope we get to see some more iconic characters added to the list.

For the Masterminds, Resident Evil veterans will recognize a few familiar faces. The list includes Annette Birkin (Creatures, Buffs), Daniel Fabron (Creature Control, Buffs), Alex Wesker and Ozwell E. Spencer. Unlike the Survivors, you don’t get access to all of the Masterminds at the start, which is annoying. You start out with Annette, but you have to get to level 5 to unlock Daniel, and then get to level 5 with him to unlock Alex, and so on.

Resident Evil Resistance: Survivors

As a Survivor, every second counts. But, before you drop into a hellish experimental facility, you have to choose your character and select which of their four active skills you want (you’ll unlock more variants as you rank up). When you spawn in the first room, you’ll have a number of Umbrella credits that you can spend, but you can’t just sit at the store all day. The clock is ticking, so you have to know what you want and book it out of the room. (If you spawn with a melee weapon, you’ll typically want to buy a gun, and vice versa).

Killing zombies and completing objectives will add time to the clock, but if you get attacked or killed, you’ll lose time. Communication and teamwork is necessary, as you all have to manage your resources while maintaining enough inventory space to carry keys critical to unlocking the next stage of the level. Thankfully, there is only one bullet type for all weapons, so you don’t have to micromanage ammo for your shotguns, machine guns and pistols.

The core gameplay is similar to Resident Evil 3 -- just point and shoot, but you also have some additional skills you can use and a variety of melee weapons at your disposal. However, unlike Resident Evil 3, there’s no dodge mechanic, which kind of sucks since everything is fast paced and hectic.

Overall, the gameplay is arcady, from the damage numbers above zombies heads to the Survivor movement control being kind of floaty. Unfortunately, it’s tough to get certain skills to connect, which is especially apparent with brawlers like Tyrone and Samuel, who have melee attacks as abilities. Half the time I miss because the enemy has already moved slightly out of range -- this could be easily fixed if there was a tracking mechanic for these attacks.

Additionally, you cannot sell stuff to the store for credits, which makes getting rid of junk in your inventory incredibly frustrating. I would frequently drop items near the store and then accidently pick them up when I tried to access it again. Since every second counts, this wastes valuable in-game time. On top of that, all of the loot at the shop is completely random, so each time you go to one, there will be different items there, which can also get irritating if you’re trying to find that one gun you really like.

Resident Evil Resistance: Masterminds

As a Mastermind, your sole job is to ensure that the party does the one thing that parties should never do: split up -- and, you know, die.

There are a few cool things that you have control of as the Mastermind, such as selecting the map and where the keys and safe rooms are located via presets. This gives you a little more control over the scenario, and when you’re selecting your Mastermind, you can choose between variants of their three active skills as well as two of their main creatures. 

Once you reach Rank 5, you can customize your own deck of cards. You’ll have four random cards in your hand at a given time, and each one will do something that either spawns a creature or completes an action. You’ll get a new card to replace each one you use.

Masterminds have a ton of tools at their disposal to accomplish this (apart from placing zombies and Tyrants). Of course, you can’t just spawn whatever you want. There are a number of cameras on each map and they work as your eyes -- if a player shoots or deactivates a camera, you can’t see. The Mastermind also has an energy bar, and each time you do something, the bar depletes at varying degrees.

You can also deploy bear claw traps and once your opponent is stuck, turn a camera into a machine gun to obliterate them. If you save up your energy, you can spawn special creatures like a Tough Zombie, and then you can use the camera shoot Enhancer - Berserker gas that buffs your zombies. You can even lock doors around the map so that players will have to physically break them down to get through. Once your ultimate is ready, you can spawn your special creature like Mr. X or G-Birkin.

The biggest advantage that you have as a Mastermind is that you don’t need to co-operate with anyone. However, it would be nice if there was an in-game communication system that the Mastermind could utilize in order to taunt the players, which would create a much more surreal experience.

Resident Evil Resistance maps

Right now, there are four maps in Resident Evil Resistance, including Abandoned Park, Downtown, Research Facility and Casino.

These areas are creative, and some parts of them actually appear in Resident Evil 3, such as the latter portion of the Downtown map. In this section, there are a bunch of elevator lifts that you have to use to find your way around the area in order to destroy the objectives. Waiting for a lift to come down is incredibly tense, as the Mastermind is actively trying to mess your day up.

Unfortunately, the layout of the maps and objectives don’t change. Once you’ve played a level a couple of times, you’ll pretty much memorize the layout, and the objectives for each level of the map are identical. The first level requires you to find three keys to unlock the door, the second has you hunting down a security key card and then using it to activate three terminals, and the last level requires you to destroy some experiment pods.

What Capcom really needed to do to make this more diverse was to create modular rooms in each map so that you could have procedurally generated sessions. And for the objectives, Capcom should’ve added a handful and then let them randomize per level, so players are experiencing something different each time.

Resident Evil Resistance: equipment, cosmetics and loot boxes

Yes, there are loot boxes, and no, they’re not all cosmetic, so there is a pay-to-win factor to this game, which is not fun whatsoever.

What’s interesting about these loot boxes, for better or worse, is that you can’t just buy them with real money, but you can spend real money on RP Boosters, which increase your RP acquisition -- RP (Result Points) is the currency used to purchase the chests. You earn RP after completing a match, and you can also complete daily Missions to earn points or even chests as well. They’re simple tasks like Use 10 Repair Kits or Use your Ultimate Skill 3 times. You’ll get a chest for completing all daily missions, and you’ll get another chest for completing a weekly mission. The weekly mission I had was to “Receive a result grade of ‘B’ or above 5 times.”

Starting with all of the appropriate goodies -- from the Cosmetic Chest, you can get skins for the Survivors, Creatures and even weapons. You can also get Sprays, gestures for Survivors and Zombies, and additional voice lines for the Masterminds. I am all for cosmetics in loot boxes because it lets you personalize your playstyle without giving you an advantage.

However, the Equipment Chests offer game-changing loot for both Masterminds and Survivors -- there are even separate chests for each. Survivors can get a ton of game enhancing equipment that range from four categories: Combat, Survival, Resource and Mastery. There’s Equipment that can increase the power of firearms or melee and even let you start with more ammo at the beginning of a match. Meanwhile, a Mastermind’s Equipment categories are Creature, Trap, Camera and Utility. One Equipment could increase the health of your creatures and another could increase the Ultimate Skill duration.

Despite having to go through loot boxes to get Equipment -- it is limited. For example, there are only a certain number of Low-Tier Equipment Chests (specifically 24), so you can end up getting everything eventually without having to spend money, but it’s still frustrating that you don’t get to choose what you buy with your RP.

Resident Evil Resistance modes

The Resident Evil Resistance game modes all revolve around the same multiplayer mode, so there’s not much that changes.

However, when you’re going to play the game, you have a few options to get started. First, there’s Quick Match, where you can simply queue up as a Mastermind or Survivor (you can even select Random to get one or the other). There’s also a Survivor (Team Play) option, so you can get a little lobby of friends to search with you. Unfortunately, you can’t queue up with a Mastermind.

There’s also a Custom Game option, where you can set up a public or private room to play with all of your friends -- this is the only way to play the Mastermind against your friends. However, Achievements and Missions cannot be completed in this mode, but you still get RP albeit “greatly” reduced.

Apart from the normal multiplayer modes, there’s a Practice Mode for both the Survivor and the Mastermind. I played the Survivor version at first, and it was a little weird because the game didn’t populate AI teammates for me, but playing solo was fine, too, as the AI Mastermind was there to fight against. However, when I played the Mastermind version, I realized why I didn’t have any AI teammates: because there are no AI. The Survivors literally sat there motionless waiting for me to pummel them. At the very least, the Survivor version offers a full match minus teammates, so you can brush up on your skills, but the Mastermind version offers nothing remotely useful.

Resident Evil Resistance PC performance

For the most part, Resident Evil Resistance performed well, but there were moments where the frames crashed during an intense situation -- specifically when I fought a Licker. It happened two times in the same exact situation and the game stuttered consistently until I finally killed the Licker.

When searching for a match with my brother, the search time took a little longer than usual, so I guess the game decided to split us up and send us to completely different games, which was exactly the way I imagined a matchmaking system to work (sarcasm).

I was impressed by the amount of graphics settings that Resident Evil Resistance offers. There are settings for Graphics API, Display Mode, Resolution, Rendering Mode, Image Quality, Refresh Rate, Frame Rate, V-Sync, Anti-aliasing, Texture Quality, Texture Filter Quality, Mesh Quality, Shadow Quality, Shadow Cache, Screen Space Reflections, Subsurface Scattering, Volumetric Lighting Quality, Particle Lighting Quality, Ambient Occlusion, Bloom, Depth of Field and FidelityFX CAS + Upscaling.

Under the settings, there are also levels that tell you how much graphics memory you’re using and the levels of the Processing Load, Image Quality, Model Quality, Lighting Quality and Graphical Effects Quality.

If you're wondering whether or not to play Resident Evil Resistance on PC or console, we'd recommend PC, since Resident Evil Resistance has a detailed range of graphical settings that you can tinker with and you can go over 60 fps, which you can’t do on console.

Resident Evil Resistance PC requirements

I ran Resident Evil Resistance on my desktop-level Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 GPU with 8GB of VRAM and was hitting around 60 frames per second at 1440p on High settings. The fps isn’t capped, though, so don’t worry, as I was averaging around 94 fps at 1080p.

I tested the game on a laptop with an RTX 2060 GPU with 6GB of VRAM and it averaged 93 fps at 1080p on High settings. I couldn’t even max out the settings because I didn’t have enough VRAM in either of the GPUs.

You can either play Resident Evil Resistance on Steam, as it’ll come packed with Resident Evil 3, or you can play it on Xbox One and PS4 as well.

Since Resident Evil Resistance doesn’t have a Steam store page at the time of writing, we can only assume that the requirements are the same as Resident Evil 3. The minimum requirements for a system to run Resident Evil 3 include Windows 7, an Intel Core i5-4460 or AMD FX-6300 CPU, 8GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 or AMD Radeon R7 260x GPU and 45GB of available space.

Meanwhile, the recommended requirements are Windows 10, an Intel Core i7-3770 or AMD FX-9590 CPU, 8GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD Radeon RX 480 GPU and 45GB of available space.

Bottom line

More than anyone, I wanted a Resident Evil online multiplayer mode that was as good as the ones in Resident Evil 5 and even Resident Evil 6 (don’t @ me). Although Resident Evil Resistance has an interesting concept, it fails to deliver on the final product. 

And while you could argue that it’s a whole free game, you’re still paying for the experience by buying Resident Evil 3. Playing a Mastermind is superfun, and the number of Survivors you have to choose from will keep you busy, but the repetitive objectives and maps combined with janky gameplay makes it hard to enjoy.

Overall, I hope that Capcom doesn’t leave Resident Evil Resistance in the wind post-launch, because it needs a lot of work if the company wants players to stick with it.