Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles Updated Hands-On

Though much of Capcom's upcoming Resident Evil rail shooter, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, takes place in familiar territory (namely the locales found in old-school RE games like Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil: Code Veronica), it won't entirely be a retread of already familiar territory. We played a new mission in the game today, known as Operation Javiar, and though it features RE characters we know and love, the location is brand new.

Operation Javier features Leon S. Kennedy and Jack Krauser (the latter from Resident Evil 4) as the pair enter a South American town on the hunt for a mysterious bad guy known simply as Javier. There's also a setup conversation between Leon and Krauser that has them in the village ostensibly looking for lost children, but once the pair start getting attacked by T-virus zombies, those plans go out the window.

As in previous missions we've played in Darkside Chronicles, you alternate between moments of gun-blasting action as you try to take down whatever bad guys you've got in your sights, and scripted moments that look to set up the tension of the level (and move the plot forward), as Leon and Krauser try to escape death at every turn by darting in and out of alleys, climbing over walls, and diving into open windows. While it's clear the developers have tried to make the shooting sections and the scripted sections transition smoothly, things aren't perfect, and you'll sometimes find yourself waiting for the darn camera to stop twisting around so you can aim properly and start dropping some infected fools.

Of course, zombies aren't the only enemies you face in Darkside Chronicles--the level we played today featured several new enemy types, including giant frogs, huge spiders, and flesh-eating piranha that leaped out of the water and did their best to eat Leon's face off.

To take out those enemies, you'll need every weapon at your disposal. Your basic pistol never runs out of ammo, and along the way you'll pick up new weapons, such as submachine guns, shotguns, grenades, and even a .357 Magnum, which really packs a punch. You can switch between weapons by pressing in a direction on the D pad, and you can assign any weapon to any direction.

Javier turns out to be the leader of a group known as the Sacred Snakes, a nefarious organization allegedly dealing in organ trafficking, among other things. During the mission, you hear Krauser and Leon speculating about what connection Javier and his group might have had with the virus outbreak in the village. There's also mention of a girl that the pair is looking for, who might be able to help them find Javiar. Eventually they find the girl in a creepy-looking abandoned church. They also find this level's massive boss--a sort of hybrid aquatic lizard thing with long tentacles, a mouth full of big teeth, and a bad attitude..

This kicks off a huge firefight against the monster as it swims around the risen waters that now surround the church. Periodically the boss dashes out of the water and tries to attack you head-on, other times it will raise it's grisly tentatcles from the muck and hurl huge boulders at you (which you can blast away with a shot or two). On the normal difficulty setting, the boss fight was lengthy but not difficult, though it never felt like our AI-controlled partner was helping out. Of course, like the rest of the game, you'll be able to tackle this mission cooperatively with a friend, which is sure to be more rewarding.

With the big boss defeated, the demo ended and we were left with a bunch of questions regarding the game's plot. We're still unsure how all of the disparate plotlines from the various Resident Evil games tie together in Darkside Chronicles, nor do we know just how Javier and the Sacred Snakes fit into the story. Nonetheless, we'll have our answers when the game is released on the Wii on November 17.