Resident Evil Survival Unit Hands-on: We throw open the mansion doors once more in this tactical take on classic horror
- Resident Evil Survival Unit puts a tactical twist on the classic survival-horror series
- Fight iconic RESI creatures with fan favourite characters
- Jump between RTS battles and base-building elements
Holing yourself up in a devastated police station while hordes of cannibalistic infected close in, exploring a sinister mansion where twisted experiments have taken place; RESI fans have been here a hundred times before, but the series latest mobile spinoff, Resident Evil Survival Unit, puts a tactical twist on these concepts to make them fresh and new.
Co-developers Aniplex and JOYCITY have put painstaking effort into reimagining Capcom’s flagship survival-horror series for mobile, and the result is everything that has made it a genre-defining classic over the years, in a pocketable, touchscreen-friendly package.
What fresh hell is this?
Resident Evil Survival Unit kicks off in typical world-ending fashion. The action begins in a darkened hospital where our protagonist, Anthony, has slept through doomsday’s beginnings, having been in a coma when the infection was unleashed.
This is an alternate universe to the mainline Resident Evil saga, but the viral infection has turned it into a biohazardous hell just the same, and the hospital Anthony awakens in is no longer a place of healing and the morgue seems to have a revolving-door policy.
What then unfolds is a third-person survival-horror sequence reminiscent of classic RESI. It has the feel of the original console games, polished up to take advantage of the graphical capabilities of current-gen mobile devices, with controls tailormade for touchscreen.
Using an on-screen thumbstick and a single action button, you’ll put bullets in the series’ omnipresent infected as they creep around darkened hospital corridors, nervously survey each room with a discarded flashlight you grabbed, and solve a few light puzzles.
It’s vintage RESI stuff and it works well on mobile, but it isn’t long before you realise that Survival Unit has much more to offer than mere nostalgia.
A tactical twist
One of Survival Unit’s most impressive technical feats is the touchscreen control.
Survival Unit showcases a refreshing tactile interface early on. After crossing paths with Resident Evil A-lister Claire Redfield - one of several series stalwarts to feature in the game to ensure it lays on the fan service thick - and getting to play as her, the game introduces you to its solution to a potential setpiece obstacle: real-time strategy-style battles.
However, as the action shifts to the streets and, later, a besieged police station (another nod to the classics), you’ll find yourself under attack from hordes of iconic RESI nasties, from police uniform-clad infected to mutant dogs, and the action switches to RTS mode.
Here, you can move your team members around like chess pieces, strategically placing them so they have enemies in their direct line of fire or can cover their comrades effectively. Each character also possesses special abilities that complement each other.
Claire Redfield, for instance, can wield a gatling gun to mow down waves of onrushing infected, while Marvin Branagh (of Resident Evil 2 fame) can erect a barricade to hold foes off while teammates with heavier firepower can unleash hell on them.
The inclusion of RTS battles complements the core survival-horror well, adds another layer of strategy, and feels like the right compromise to balance the experience on mobile.
It’s all about that base
It doesn’t take Resident Evil Survival Unit long to reveal its true nature. This is a hybrid beast that blends survival-horror with RTS, but base-building is central to the experience too.
Shortly after fleeing what’s left of the police station, your party arrives at an old mansion, blissfully unaware that terrible things go down at this type of property in the RESI universe. The grounds of this stately home act as a sandbox for missions that combine all of Survival Unit’s various different gameplay types, but it’s also where the base-building happens.
One minute you’ll find yourself upgrading the on-site farm to generate supplies for your party, the next you’ll be jumping into an RTS battle at the mansion’s gates to ward off an invasion of infected. It even throws you into classic survival-horror escapades at the various hubs that make up the mansion’s estate, to investigate power outages and other phenomena.
In other words, this is Resident Evil at its most diverse. Survival Unit merges several different gameplay types but balances them well, in a way that plays to the strengths of smart devices.
Resident Evil Survival Unit is shaping up to be a true fan-pleaser, and if you want to try it for yourself, it’s available as a free download from the App Store and Google Play.