'Outbreak' of PS2 'Resident Evil' letdown continues

Resident Evil Outbreak," Capcom's newest chapter of the ever-growing "Resident Evil" series, with its online premise, generated a bulge of hype and left many wondering just how Capcom planned to pull it off. The popular staple of the survival horror genre has always been about solving puzzles and slaughtering zombies in a scramble to uncover and thwart the source of the zombie infestation. But this online translation, rather than pitting players in one continuous world, divides into five scenarios, allowing players to collectively attempt to get the power-ups and beat the level. Much devoid of storyline, "Outbreak" has a feel interestingly similar to the recent film remake "Dawn of the Dead."\nPlayers can play single player, with tolerable AI teammates, or venture online. The game's servers do a decent job of automatically finding a suitable game to join, but players can manually join or create a game if desired. Communication is frustrating, with no voiced or typed means of speaking to teammates. Only a set of prerecorded commands can be issued to other players via the right analog stick. Luckily, "Outbreak" has left behind the traditional "tank" control scheme and pre-rendered backgrounds of past "Resident Evil" games, although a manual aiming feature would have helped immensely. Casual fans should wait out these poor controls and atrocious loading times for GameCube's upcoming "Resident Evil 4," but those searching for a new game to play with their dusty PlayStation2 network adapters might give "Outbreak" a try.