While you can melee enemies with your gun, you might as well equip the Brainer if you prefer close quarters combat. Whether you're standing, crouching, or prone-where you slither around like an awkward greased seal-you can cover a lot of ground with minimal effort, which results in a lot of twitchy and chaotic face offs where opponents frantically attack anything that moves. This is a great option in theory, but in practice, it's very difficult to execute. When it's disabled-triggered by a well-placed shot to a player's back-zombies rush towards their newfound target. Every player has a jamming device on their back, which allows players to move around the map without rousing suspicion from the undead. You can kill opponents in three ways in Umbrella Corps: you can shoot them, kill them instantly with a melee attack, or disable their Zombie Jammer and rely on zombies that litter every map to get the job done. Despite being fired upon by two armed combatants, the melee attacker will probably come out on top thanks to Umbrella Corps' technical bugs. Ultimately, characters move so fast, and kill each other so quickly, that you become accustomed to looking for enemies rather than hunting for cover opportunities.
Because of this, you quickly learn that relying on cover is a fool's errand. Sure, you can hide behind any wall in the face of incoming fire, but only some walls-ordained without discernible rhyme or reason-allow you to enter a proper cover state and fire from safety. Most games with a cover system allow you to snap to any structure of a certain size, such as a wall or a crate, but not here-only some objects are eligible, highlighted with a neon outline. Umbrella Corps is at its best when it allows you to utilize your surroundings, but this isn't always possible.
In a game where most people constantly sprint and fire, it feels good to be able to disappear into the environment and wait for prey to cross your path it's also an easy way to bide your time during single-death matches. While in Umbrella's labs, you can snake through ducts to get the jump on an unsuspecting enemy, or, in the game's outdoor locations, you can scurry up walls to gain a height advantage. Despite their familiar appearance, the maps' inner-workings have some fresh appeal.
The small selection of maps in the game is directly inspired by the last few numbered Resident Evil games, and apart from the presence of zombies and unlockable character skins, are the strongest ties to the series at large. Shooting them is an option, but why expend round after round when you can instantly kill targets with a melee attack? It's baffling that a single whack from the butt of your gun will kill zombies faster than a stream of bullets, but it does. Single player levels tend to be similarly basic-kill zombies and collect their DNA. Call them what you will, Umbrella Corps' modes are standard concepts that have been around for decades, and players are so fragile that rounds tend to devolve into deathmatch battles regardless of the overarching objective. This is a competitive shooter, first and foremost, where teams of three face off in single death elimination matches, or in a series of varying match types, including domination, bounties, and item collection races. And it does offer a few promising concepts, but they sit under a flickering spotlight-Umbrella Corps is a forgettable game dominated by bland action and half-baked mechanics. With so much background noise, Umbrella Corps has to do something special to stand out. Fans of Resident Evil are most likely thinking about the upcoming, horror-focused Resident Evil 7, and competitive shooter fans have a wealth of proven games with thriving communities to choose from. As a competitive shooter set in the Resident Evil universe, Umbrella Corps faces an uphill battle.