It seems like an overwhelming amount of Capcom's Resident Evil 6 coverage has focused on Leon. He certainly holds the title of fan-favorite when it comes to the beloved series, but this flood of coverage has left other characters in the dark. Specifically, the newcomer Jake has hardly gotten his share of the spotlight. It was for this reason that we jumped at the opportunity to get our hands on a section of his storyline at this year's San Diego Comic Con.

As it turned out, this level also proved to be the most difficult of those on display at Comic Con. Jake's demo level had him escorting a female companion named Sherry through the ruined streets of what appeared to be Shanghai. Under the cover of darkness we emerged from a narrow alley, only to be confronted at once by a group of Resident Evil's newest brand of not-zombies. While the enemies in Resident Evils four and five would typically use primitive weapons such as sickles and projectiles, these enemies were anything but unadvanced. They wielded firearms with just as deadly a proficiency as a human would. 

Jake and his partner ran out into the street guns blazing. We popped zombie heads left and right, leading to a lot of grisly and satisfying kills. We ran out of ammo for our pistol all too soon and had to switch to a submachine gun as we continued to fight down the darkened street. As we pushed towards the other end of the road, we noticed a group of three enemies behind cover. We took shelter behind a high wall and peeked out to fire a few shots off, but in our hurry we missed the enemy's head and ended up taking off his arm. This triggered a grotesque mutation that caused a massive tentacle to tear out of the enemy's shoulder. He used this long tentacle to grab us and drag us in close for a brutal melee attack that sent us sprawling to the ground.

Still lying on the ground, we took the remaining enemies in our sights and pulled the trigger. When they were all gone, we got up and collected ammo from their corpses. Just as we thought the streets were safe, a bizarre lizard creature pounced on us from behind. Climbing slowly to our feet, we got a closer look at this new form of monster. The lizard stood just as tall as we did, and it had a bizarre, mouth-like mutation on its stomach that only revealed itself when it went to attack. We quickly wasted the last of our bullets in the creature, but it was to no avail. These lizard guys are tough. With no options left, we charged in and started furiously melee attacking the creature.

Melee attacks in Resident Evil 6 work a little differently than they have in the past. Instead of holding down a trigger before pressing the attack button, you can simply select "Unarmed" from the weapon select menu by cycling left and right on the D-Pad. It might be a little more streamlined than before, but it's still cumbersome to have to cycle through the menu options to get to unarmed instead of, say, clicking in the right stick.

Anyways, as it turns out, punching a giant man-eating lizard in the face isn't the greatest of ideas. With a roar, it expelled a paralyzing smoke from its body and retreated. Stunned, we were left vulnerable on the ground as the lizard made reptile chow out of us. Luckily, we recovered just in time to deliver a swift kick to the lizard's head. Once it hit the ground, we kept stomping it until it died. Not exactly the cleanest way to get through the battle, but ammo was proving incredibly scarce.

Jake's partner pointed out a door to the side of the road that would lead to the next area of the level. The only problem was that the door was locked from the other side. We regained control of Jake and led him back to the middle of the road, where a series of ladders led us up to a fire escape overlooking the blocked-off alley. Perfect. We jumped back down to the street and opened the door, only to be met by two more of the vicious lizard creatures. Jake, being the stand-up guy that he is, turned tail and fled, leaving his companion to be devoured by the lizards (okay, so that was really more our fault than his.) At the other end of the alley we were met with a prompt to hit the B button. Just like in Resident Evil 5, you will sometimes encounter doors that can only be breached by both characters at the same time. We called for our partner, but had to trade fisticuffs with the two lizards in the meantime. One ridiculous lizard boxing match later, we were through the door and had replenished some of our dwindling ammo.

This door led us into a building under construction when the zombie attacks hit. More enemies laid in wait here, so we bobbed and weaved through the unfinished columns and tables taking them out one by one. This action felt very much like a standard shooter and very little like Resident Evils of the past; in fact, one comparison that immediately came to mind was Capcom's upcoming Lost Planet 3 (hands-on preview coming soon.) The ability to move whlie shoot, while certainly helpful, also takes away a little of that Resident Evil feeling. Still, the gunplay was solid enough that we were able to carve through the enemies and feel pretty good about it. Along the way, we saw a few more grotesque mutations. By shooting off the top half of an enemy's body, we caused him to transform into a flying bat creature, which we then put down with our submachine gun.

After the battle, we left the building an emerged into another alley where more enemies awaited. The fight through these alleys was largely similar to the battle that began the level. We fought through this group of enemies and climbed a staircase to get into another building. Here we found a shotgun and a humorous homage to the odler games in the series, as a fixed camera angle limited our movement and vision. We tried to jump over to the other side of the street, but our handhold collapsed and sent us falling down to the ground. Seperated from our partner, we had to fend for ourselves in the streets. 

We smashed a few crates as more zombies and lizard enemies spewed out into the street. After grabbing the ammo and green herbs contained within, we turned our shotgun on the lizards. As powerful as the shotgun was, it just wasn't enough to get us through this tough battle. The lizards spewed out more of their poisonous gasses and attacked us while we were down. Normally, Sherry would be able to rush to Jake's aid and revive him at the last second, just like Chris and Sheva could in Resident Evil 5. Since we were on our own here, that wasn't exactly an option. We were afforded one last opportunity to aim and fire our sidearm at the enemies, but their attacks were so furious that we couldn't even get the reticule to come up on screen before dying.

While cut off a little prematurely, our demo of Resident Evil 6 provided us with ample opportunity to get a feel for the game's controls, setting, and characters. What we found during our hands-on time was, ultimately, a bit of a mixed bag. Jake seemed like a pretty typical Jarhead-type soldier, spouting profanities as zombies and lizards swarmed him (granted, that would probably be our reaction too if we saw a giant man-eating lizard coming for us.) His demo played out in suit, emphasizing action and gunplay more than story or atmosphere. At this point it has become perfectly clear that if you still have any delusions of Resident Evil 6 being a proper horror game, you will be sorely disappointed come October 2nd. That said, there just wasn't enough ammo scattered about the environment to make playing the game like an action game all that feasible. We ended up kicking and punching enemies way more than we probably should have.

That's not to say that we didn't enjoy ourselves at least a little, though. The shooting felt snappy enough, even though it lacked that trademarked Resident Evil feel, and the action looked positively gorgeous as it played out. Whether or not Resident Evil 6 will be able to keep all of the balls it juggles in the air remains to be seen, but for now consider us cautious of this blockbuster. It has definite potential, but whether or not it delivers will have to wait for our official review.