It’s time for more of the story.
Last week Slant Six released the first mission in the Spec Ops DLC Campaign for free, and now this week, they have released missions 2 through 4 in the first Echo Six Expansion DLC pack. Even though these ones aren’t free, they are still fun and worth the price.
Single Player
We’ve already gone over the specifics of the Spec Ops DLC, such as the characters, weapons and skills, which you can read in our review of mission 1 here. This next set of missions pick up where you left off after helping Jill, with your next objective to head to City Hall in your search of Umbrella’s Secret Laboratory. Much like how you met Jill in the first mission, the next three also have some familiar faces pop-up that you’ll fight side by side with, which is always a nice treat if you have played the orignal Resident Evil games.
Over the course of the three missions, you’ll travel through mostly familiar areas from the main game, but also new ones such as the sewers that you found closed off in the Park in the main game. Even though most of the areas are reused from the original campaign, I found that Slant Six did a good job of mixing it up, as a lot of the time you don’t enter the area the same way, so at least your route to that area was different enough to make it not just feel like more of the same.
Why won't you just die already?
This DLC pack is called “Echo Six Expansion Pack 1″, and even though they haven’t confirmed when they’ll be released, there are a few more coming as the last mission ends very abruptly after a fight with G-Birkin. There was also an update to the game with this DLC release but there’s been no mention of what fixes, if any, were included and I didn’t notice anything substantial changed in the game. So any issues you saw with the main campaign, you’ll continue to see in this DLC. Most of them don’t really bother me, but I would like to have the damage enemies can take dialed back a bit, as some of them, Hunters specifically can take way too much damage, and your AI teammates are still just as terrible as they were before. Hopefully we’ll see some updates to the game sooner than later, and I still think it’s a fun game, but it would be nice to have some of them fixed.
Multiplayer
Campaign missions 2-4, just like the main game and mission 1 of the DLC, are playable alone, or with up to three other gamers cooperatively online.
There were supposed to be new multiplayer maps coming as well, but this DLC did not add any new ones, so we’ll have to wait a longer for those it seems.
Closing Comments
If you enjoyed the first free Spec Ops mission, then you’ll want to continue the adventure with Echo Six, even if it will cost you. On the other hand, if you weren’t a big fan of it or the main game, then there isn’t any reason that you’ll want to pay the 800 MS Point ($9.99) price tag to finish it.
Score: 8/10
