Playing a hectic match in Biohazard: Umbrella Corps

Capcom's Biohazard: Umbrella Corps is a third-person shooter set in the Resident Evil universe, coming to the PlayStation 4 and PC next year.

The mode playable at Tokyo Game Show was One Life Match, a hectic three-vs-three skirmish, where each battle can last less than a minute.

Imagine a small, industrial-looking, two-level map with players armed with assault rifles and powerful melee axes called Brainers.

Next, throw in a bunch of crawling, stumbling zombies and you have One Life Match.

As its name suggests, players get only one life each round, and the objective is to wipe out the opposing squad.

To differentiate it from other bullet-fests, each player starts with a Zombie Jammer pack, which renders the zombies neutral.

But if your Jammer is damaged, the undead turn hostile and players will have to contend with a flesh-eating horde on top of gun-slinging enemy players.

The game is very fast-paced and I played nearly 10 rounds in 20 minutes, including character-select and loading times.

To make up for the frenetic blink-and-miss-it pace, it uses a best-of-three format.

The combat of the game feels solid but basic. It is definitely not as elegant as some of the other games on the show floor, such as Call Of Duty: Black Ops III.

What makes it fun is the tiny, claustrophobic map that forces players to engage each other head on and which cranks up the pace of the game.

There is no downtime in this game. Even when dead, players can help their team-mates by transmitting information from the spectator map, which reveals the location of every player, including enemies.

This article was first published on September 25, 2015.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.