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Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is a Resident Evil spinoff developed by Slant Six Games (best known for the SOCOM series) that was released for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC in 2012. Operation Raccoon City is a third-person shooting game set in an alternate timeline retelling of the Raccoon City Incident that transpired during the events of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. In the main campaign, the player controls a member of the Umbrella Security Service's elite "Wolfpack" unit, assigned to assist HUNK retrieving the G-Virus from William Birkin. As in the main timeline, this goes badly. Blamed for the resulting outbreak, the Wolfpack must face not only the hordes of mutated creatures that have infested the city, but also remove any evidence of Umbrella's involvement, be it by destroying records or eliminating witnesses. Alternatively, the DLC campaign lets you join Echo Six, a US Special Forces team sent to Raccoon City to locate survivors and investigate what caused the outbreak.

Here is a trailer for the game.

This game provides examples of:

  • Actionized Sequel: This spinoff game features the squad mowing down dozens of zombies with fully automatic weapons. It's stated that zombies are more of an environmental hazard than the real enemy, but can be used to the player's advantage (or harm), such as allowing zombies to finish off or distract wounded U.S. Army specialists.
  • Alternate Continuity: What if Umbrella had yet another elite squad sent to Raccoon City? And what if they encountered the various heroes and villains of the RE universe in Raccoon City at the time? Unfortunately, it's very limited in how much you can affect the continuity yourself as was advertised; you only have the option of killing or defending Leon S. Kennedy and your encounters with Jill Valentine and Carlos Oliveira are relegated to DLC already on disc.
  • Alternate Reality Game: Apparently one right here. It leads to this site.
    • The "Save Raccoon City" campaign falls a little flat when you consider that the game ran in 2012, and Raccoon City has canonically been a radioactive crater since 1998.
  • Artificial Limbs: Beltway's legs. He apparently owes something to Umbrella because of that.
  • Artificial Stupidity: Your AI teammates generally won't heal you, help you if you're incapacitated, and seem more concerned about the architecture and driving bullets into walls than, say, helping you fend off the enemy. In fact, the only thing they're useful for is gunning down your character should you turn into a zombie. They also don't seem to understand even the basic fact that standing inside a burning fire is bad.
    • The game is sort of hit and miss in this regard. Notably, the healers Bertha and Harley will be really smart with keeping you alive as well conserving supplies, often by hitting 2-3 people with a single first aid spray even in the middle of intense firefights. They will also haul ass if the player character is getting ready to drop.
    • Your teammates will also do pretty well in close to mid-range firefights even without your help, they're just so much slower than you. Snipers will throw the AI for a loop, however.
    • AI Vector is quite effective in CQC.
    • The friendly A.I. is particularly vexing when you compare it to what's probably its direct competitor, Left 4 Dead.
  • Another Side, Another Story: The Spec-Ops campaign is DLC and roughly the same size as the main campaign, and considered by many to be even better in quality if not characterization. Spec-Ops covers parts of Resident Evil 2 and 3 trying to defend against and later lock down the viral outbreak. The biggest difference lay in character designs, where all of Spec-Ops are generally heroic.
  • Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: Of a sort. The game is set in 1998, but the U.S. military personnel in Raccoon City are seen to be wearing the same sort of PALS-based tactical webbing and body armor as the BSAA operatives from Resident Evil 5, over 11 years later in-universe, when the Pouch Attachment Ladder System itself wasn't even introduced until 2001 (they still seem to be wearing US Woodland camouflage though).
    • Except Willow, who appears to be wearing an Army Combat Uniform bearing the pixelated Universal Camouflage Pattern, neither of which were developed until 2004.
  • Badass Crew: The Wolfpack holds out for ten hours against literally hundreds of Hunters and Tyrants after being left for dead by USS Command. They take no casualties. Umbrella eventually reestablishes communications and agrees to extract them from the city in order to get them to stop killing all of the valuable experiments.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: Should the "execute" ending be chosen, the game ends with Leon S. Kennedy dead at your feet, Sherry Birkin captured by Umbrella, and Claire Redfield gunned down.
  • Bad Boss: USS Command, who is Wolfpack's field handler, treats the team with disregard, almost never satisfied even when accomplishing the impossible and quick to blame them for failures for which they had no hand in. When the traitors want to renegotiate their contract to triple their reward after capturing Leon, Claire and Sherry, USS Command goes insane with anger at the audacity, in spite of having already left the Wolfpack to die very recently.
  • The Brute:
    • Beltway is the largest member of Wolfpack, and specializes in demolition (mines, grenades, et cetera). In the trailer, he can be glimpsed kicking a zombie then curb-stomping it.
    • Echo Six attempts to subvert expectations. Looking at the characters, you would think that Harley would be their Brute, but he's actually the team Combat Medic. The one who best fits this physically is Tweed, handling the explosives and using a light machine gun.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Some enemies have a knockdown attack which they can chain on you, such as hunters and dogs. Gets rather annoying when your character gets hit repeatedly with no chance for the player to retaliate and/or get back up for a while, if ever.
  • Cutscene Incompetence: In the Triple Impact trailer, it takes the elite Umbrella assassination squad 5 minutes to kill two police officers, with a ridiculous amount of marksmanship that would make Lord Vader proud.
  • Cleanup Crew: The team's job is to cover up Umbrella's actions in Raccoon by destroying evidence and killing witnesses.
  • Combat Medic: Bertha, Harley.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • The dialogue between HUNK and Birkin is identical to that in Resident Evil 2.
    • In the SpecOps DLC, the team ends up fighting five Tyrants, some of which mutate into their enhanced form, in the Dead Factory and eventually get to use an air-dropped railgun. This is a nod to a scene in Resident Evil 3 where Jill comes across the remains of a U.S Army special forces team, five dead Tyrants (one of which has mutated) and a still-functioning rail cannon she uses in a fight with the Nemesis.
      • The name of the level (The Places We're Meant to Die), the location of the fight, and the name of the deployed railgun being the same implies that Echo Six was, or is at least taking the place of the team whose remains Jill comes across.
    • Characters will speak if left idle long enough. Vector's line is "This is just like Rockfort Island." Rockfort is where HUNK trained, and Vector's back-story has him personally trained by HUNK.
  • Crazy-Prepared: Nicolai apparently took the time to strap explosives onto several dozen zombies, as well as to rig a few city blocks with explosives, just for the chance occurance that he'd stumble upon an Umbrella special forces team that he'd like to troll.
  • Damage-Sponge Boss: The parasite-infected Super Tyrant, which requires a Coup de Grâce Cutscene after it's already been downed for the third and seemingly final time.
    • A lesser example is Nemesis.
  • Dark Action Girl: Lupo, Four-Eyes, and Bertha.
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: As long as your allies are alive, your character can be brought back from the dead. This even works if said character was zombified, dismembered and had their head completely blown apart. Anyone who has died will also be brought back to life when at least one player reaches a checkpoint.
  • Didn't Think This Through: For all of USS Commands Bad Boss tendency, stabbing Wolfpack right in the back and leaving them for dead isn't really a good idea and it certainly won't buy him any loyalty; especially when they're hired guns and if all four players decided to protect Leon fighting waves after waves of USS Commandos, then it becomes very much apparent that Wolfpack really had enough of the USS Commands screwing them over numerous of times and has gone privy to his double-crossing antics.
  • Distaff Counterpart/Spear Counterpart: The new character trailer all but states that each corresponding character between USS and Spec-Ops are opposite genders. The rundown is Vector = Willow, Beltway = Tweed, Harley = Bertha, Party Girl = Spectre, DeeAy = Lupo, Shona = Four Eyes
  • Domestic Abuse: Lupo was in a abusive relationship for a long while. Her military discipline allowed her to tolerate it for the sake of the kids. Until her abusive husband put his hand on their kids, and she ended the abuse...with her bare hands.
  • Elite Zombie: The B.O.W.s. For further disambigulation:
    • Zombie cops sometimes spawn wearing bulletproof vests. Armored zombie.
    • Crimson Heads, which randomly spawn alongside regular zombies, and are a faster, tougher type of zombie which is the result of the T-Virus mutating its host in response to massive trauma. Lickers are the result of the same process that creates a Crimson Head happening to a Crimson Head. Both are Hunter types, although Lickers can use their prehensile tongues as whips and strangling nooses.
      • Regular Zombies and Crimson Heads can act as Trap (possum) and Vomit zombies.
    • Bomb zombies, which have a bundle of TNT tacked to their heads by a dagger. Related in spirit to the Boomer type, but it's an actual bomb rather than being a water balloon full of puke.
    • Tyrants, Test Subject zombies. The result of T-Virus infectees undergoing further reagent injections for Super-Soldier research. Also; Parasite Zombies, which have a Giant Spider stuck to their backs.
  • Evil Counterpart: The USS is this to the Special Forces.
  • Europeans Are Kinky: Bertha is a German combat medic. She is also a sadomasochist wearing a leather jacket and a gas mask who delights in causing and describing pain in those she heals and gets...excited whenever anything remotely medical is discussed.
  • Faceless Goons: Except for Four-Eyes and Lupo, the USS forces conceal their faces. Subverted in the Triple Impact Trailer; the Special Forces soldiers seen fighting the Wolfpack have their faces visible.
  • Finishing Move: They never fail to amuse.
  • Flanderization: In Resident Evil 3, Nicholai was an evil bastard, but he was calm, cool as a cucumber and his evil was financially motivated and a means to an end. In this game, he's become an Ax-Crazy Psycho for Hire who seems to be betraying his team-mates and screwing with Wolfpack for no other reason than his own amusement.
  • For Science!: Four-Eyes' background.
  • For Want Of A Nail: Before release, the game was advertised as allowing you to radically alter the RE canon by killing key characters. In-game, however, you can only select to kill Leon and Claire for Umbrella at the very end of the game, with no other chances to change canon and no look at the long-term effects.
  • Gaiden Game: As the game features the player encountering characters that never met the Wolfpack in Raccoon City, areas from the games set in Raccoon City that look nothing like their original counterparts and the option of killing or defending Leon S. Kennedy at the climax of the game.
    • Aside from Nicholai being visibly crazier than he was in ''RE3'' (seriously, ORC Nicholai comes off like he ought to be fighting Frank West), the first few missions in the Wolfpack's campaign fit relatively cleanly into the established RE storyline, although there are some of the usual issues with set design and clean-up. This completely flies off the rails in the last two missions and takes the campaign the rest of the way into gaiden territory.
    • As for the Echo Six campaign, they blunder into the middle of ''RE3'' in the first free DLC level and it just gets less canon from there.
  • Gang Up on the Human: When playing solo, the enemies seem to favor attacking you the most rather than your NPC allies.
  • Gas Mask Mooks: As they take inspiration from HUNK, all the Umbrella mercenaries wear them.
  • Gender-Blender Name: Yes, "Lupo" is the Italian for Wolf. Male wolf, that is. The female form would have been "Lupa".
  • Godzilla Threshold: The Paracelsus Rail Gun. Though Spec Ops command wasn't really holding out, they didn't drop it until Spec Ops faced a horde of Tyrants and Super Tyrants. In all fairness, it would be utterly over-kill otherwise.
    • When Umbrella begins thinking that Delta Team is not performing up to their expectations, they resort to choppering in Hunters and Mr.X Tyrants by the six-pack, air-dropping them over the city to try and kill Delta and any other witnesses. This ends up backfiring on them.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: The Umbrella management that USS Command reports to.
  • Heel–Face Turn: You can do this at the end of the main campaign if you decide to protect Leon instead of kill him.
  • Hero Antagonist: Throughout the later parts of the game, you chase Leon S. Kennedy and Ada Wong down for the sole purpose of killing them; while Ada appears to die, possibly from fighting the Tyrant or from damage sustained from fighting Wolfpack (it's left unclear), you have the choice of either killing or defending Leon at the climax of the game; should they choose to execute him, they also kill Claire Redfield.
  • Herr Doktor: Or rather, Frau Doktor, as "Bertha" / Michaela Schneider is a German field medic with a predilection for causing pain.
  • Human Shield: One would think using a zombie for this might be a bad idea, but apparently the Wolfpack are just that good.
  • In the Hood: Vector, the team's stealth expert.
  • Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: None of the U.S. Army special forces members are wearing helmets or anything face-concealing, compared to the USS.
    • Downplayed with the generic U.S Special Forces Wolfpack encounters, as some wear combat helmets,though most of them wear either patrol caps or balaclavas. The U.S.S mooks the Spec Ops encounter on the other hand almost exclusively wear helmets.
  • Invisibility Cloak:
    • HUNK gains one in the Heroes Mode multiplayer.
    • Vector has one of these, too.
  • Karma Houdini:
    • Last we see Nicholai, he made his escape while you were setting up those EMP explosives and fighting the U.S. Army. You aren't given the option to kill him and there is no scene of him falling prey to the team.
    • Also USS Command though it's slightly subverted as they're still screwed over when Umbrella was exposed for their insidious experiments.
    • If you choose to kill Leon, and Claire Redfield in the process; considering you are the bad guy then you get away with it.
  • King Mook: The Echo Six campaign has about 3 or 4 red-uniformed Umbrella soldiers, who are equipped with riot guns and wear special body armor that lets them soak significantly more bullets before dying (requiring almost Juggernaut-like levels of bullets to the torso to kill). Headshots or melee executions still bring them down reasonably quickly, though. There are also red Hunters, which can take noticeably more damage than the regular kind.
  • Lack of Empathy: Four-Eyes' profile states she doesn't give a damn about anyone else - especially when it comes to scientific matters.
    • While the whole team probably qualifies in some way, Bertha and Beltway also stand out. The former delights in the misery of those who she is healing, describing in exacting detail how much pain they will experience and refuses to use painkillers. The later has a penchant for cruel pranks for his own amusement and its hinted that one using explosives ended in him having his leg amputated and very nearly getting court-martialed by the army.
  • Large Ham:
    • Nicholai really enjoys chewing the scenery during your fights with him. His thrill from being completely psychotic and evil and the sheer lengths he goes to try and kill you (he straps motion sensor bombs to zombies) makes him steal every scene he's in.
    • Bertha and especially Spectre, who chews the scenery like it's made of ham every chance he gets and just can't get enough of his ellipses and extending his lines as far as they can go no.
      Spectre: I can see....eeeevveeerrrryything!
      Spectre: I...find evidence...now...I watch it...buuuuuuurrnn!
  • Machete Mayhem: In the E3 trailer, Bertha attempts to kill an RPD officer with a machete. In-game, it's her CQB weapon of choice.
  • Made of Iron: During their "boss fights", Nicholai and later Leon require pouring a truly impressive number of bullets into them to bring them down. Neither of them is nearly as tough as a Mr. X, but for a regular human the number of bullets it takes to take them down is remarkably high.
  • Mad Scientist: Four-Eyes and Bertha.
  • Mama Bear: Lupo is fiercely protective of her children, and works for Umbrella to support them. She also tolerated her husband's abuse when it was directed at her, but killed him when he went for the kids.
  • Mêlée à Trois: The game often features three-way battles between the Umbrella Security Service, U.S. Special Forces, and the various B.O.W.s in Raccoon. There's also a part where it briefly turns into a four-way fight, with the aformentioned sides fighting each other as well as Nemesis.
  • Mirroring Factions: In the Triple Impact trailer a group of Special Forces troops runs into the USS. They have comparable combat abilities, shoot first and ask questions later and stop to collect BOW samples like the USS. The only difference is that the Special Forces are trying to rescue survivors, while the USS is trying to kill witnesses.
  • Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Two Wolfpack members betray Umbrella because they have been constantly insulting them and stabbing them in the back for the past few days.
  • Multinational Team:
    • Beltway is a Puerto Rican who served in the U.S. Army, Spectre was a former Soviet spy, Lupo was a special forces soldier in France, and Bertha was an ex-German soldier, Four Eyes is Japanese-American, and Vector is from Japan.
    • The U.S. Army Spec Ops qualify to a lesser degree. Their explosives expert is on loan from MI6, and their scientist was born in South Africa and studied at Harvard.
  • Mysterious Past: While the bios for the rest of the team reveal a bit of info about their pre-Umbrella backgrounds, all that has been revealed about Vector is that he was trained by HUNK.
  • Mythology Gag: Most Resident Evil final bosses have a third party drop a super-strong BFG to actually dent the Nigh-Invulnerable boss. At the end of the Spec Ops mission "The Places We're Meant To Die", you face up to four Tyrants, potentially mutated into a super-Tyrants, on your own. Eventually, Spec Ops command will lend you some aid in the classic "toss 'em a big gun" manner. However, instead of throwing you a bazooka like you'd expect, Spec Ops decides to airdrop a twenty foot laser turret right into the combat zone, roof be damned.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: Zigzagged. In the early trailers, it made the game look like half the point was tracking down Leon and shooting him. In the E3 demo, which is apparently the first few minutes of the game, the mercenaries are pursuing Leon simply because he's wearing a police uniform, and not because of anything he specifically did. In actuality, both trailers are true. Initially, they try to hunt down Leon because of orders to eliminate the police, however, after learning about his possible ties to Ada Wong, who had infiltrated Birkin's labs, Umbrella fears that Leon has access to highly incriminating information as well as the only sample of the G-Virus, making him a priority target for Delta Squad. But the trailers are also a lie, in that this is only the last two missions. The 'first few minutes of the game' is actually the assault on William Birkin.
  • Night-Vision Goggles: Spectre, the team's sniper, has a pair. They're apparently thermal as well and can do some nifty things.
  • No Campaign for the Wicked: Averted in the main campaign, as you're playing Umbrella operatives who do whatever possible to make sure your bosses don't look responsible for the outbreak in Raccoon City. However, you can do a Heel–Face Turn at the end if you decide to save Leon.
  • Nostalgia Level:
    • Essentially the entire game plays off of nostalgia for Resident Evil 2 and 3, with Mr. X, Nemesis, Birkin, HUNK, Nicholai, Leon, and Claire all having a role in the game.
    • A recent trailer revealed Heroes Mode, a team gameplay mode where the protagonists of 2 and 3 fight against HUNK, Nicholai, Ada, and Lone Wolf (the guy who choppered HUNK out in the 4th Survivor).
  • Psycho for Hire: The Wolfpack.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: While the rest of the team has had their real names revealed, Vector's identity is confidential.
  • Pushed at the Monster: A cutscene shows Nikolai and an ally running from some zombies. Nikolai escapes by shooting his partner in the knee and leaving him to be Devoured by the Horde.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: While HUNK doesn't actually have red eyes, his gas mask does.
  • Selective Historical Armoury: While the M4 carbine that many of the Spec Ops are armed with was actually introduced in 1997, a year prior to the game's setting, the exact model used in-game, with its RIS barrel shroud, Aimpoint red dot sight and TAPCO shoulder stock, is somewhat anachronistic, to say the least.
    • The presence of the SCAR rifle (the development of which began in 2006) really sends the weapon selection into the pits of anachronism.
  • Sequel Escalation: Every enemy type is ramped up in some way compared to their old-school appearances: Crimson Heads and Lickers are faster and appear in swarms, Hunters are difficult to stagger and much more aggressive, Tyrants attempt to cover their weak points and are highly damage resistant everywhere else, etc.
  • Sequel Hook: The Echo Six campaign ends with the squad staying behind in Raccoon City to fight an unspecified new, even more dangerous threat.
  • Shout-Out:
    • A badass black ops chick working for a high-tech company named Lupo.
    • One of the levels in the Special Ops DLC is titled "I Now Know Why You Cry" and involves dispatching the Nemesis using a vat of molten metal.
  • The Sociopath: Everybody on Umbrella's side.
  • Special Attack: The six characters, Vector, Beltway, Bertha, Spectre, Four-Eyes, and Lupo will all have their own special abilities. For example, Beltway can lay mines, Four-Eyes turns BOWs temporarily friendly, while Vector can one-hit kill enemies while cloaked.
    • Each character can also perform a unique "brutal melee kill". Beltway will jam a grenade into a zombie's mouth, Vector will slip behind an enemy and slit their throat, etc.
  • Spy Catsuit: Averted with Lupo; while her catsuit is skintight and shows some skin near the breastline, it is not shiny, and no cleavage to speak of is visible. On the government side, Willow wears a tight top and loose pants.
  • Stone Wall: Enemies will often become these if you're playing solo.
  • Take Cover!: Your character will plaster themselves against anything they come across, even if you don't want them to. Quite possibly the game's most irritating mechanic.
  • Team Mom: Lupo is identified in her bio on the character selection menu as the team's leader. Her fiercely protective streak has led some of the other operatives to nickname her "Wolf Mother".
  • Trick Bomb: Pheromone Bombs, which attract zombies and B.O.W.S. to it.
  • Version-Exclusive Content: Only the 360 version got Nemesis Mode.
  • Villain Protagonist:
    • You play as a USS soldier, and you all know what Umbrella has done and is capable of. Hell, you actively wreck the U.S. Army's operations in the process and get the chance to gun down some protagonists, heavily altering the timeline.
    • Averted in the Spec Ops DLC; you and mission command are all pretty cool people. It's frankly jarring, after the main campaign.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: If one of your teammates is infected by the T-Virus, you not only have the option to kill them to prevent them from turning, you actually get an achievement should you do this with a shot to the head.
  • Waif-Fu: Willow pulls this in the Triple Impact trailer, taking down a Licker with a knife.
  • We Cannot Go On Without You: When playing solo, your NPC allies are essentially invulnerable, and you can bring them back even if they became zombified. However, the instant you die or turn into a zombie, the game ends and forces you to the last checkpoint.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Umbrella is on the verge of sending a helicopter to retrieve the Wolf Pack for a successful mission when Leon and Claire show up unexpectedly. However, Failure Is the Only Option and Leon manages to elude you party. Umbrella decides that your failure to capture or kill him means you're of no more use to them. At least until they give you a second chance due to the fact that your group is a Bad Ass Crew who kills quite a few of their bio-weapons in their fight to survive.
  • Zombie Infectee: Player characters can be infected with the T-Virus, though unlike Outbreak, it requires being bitten, it causes zombies to ignore you and makes you impervious to everything but headshots. However, unless you have a medic on the team or an anti-viral spray to reverse the infection, you will turn into a full-blown zombie and attack your teammates.

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