Running. It feels like it's the only thing you've ever done. Run. Ran. Fled. But who could blame you? It started with the flu, or some sort of strange cold. That shit doesn't matter now. What matters is the fact that zombies, and strange monsters, and god knows WHAT else are out there. Better yet, they're right behind you. Kill them? Fat chance. The only gun you've seen in a good amount of time ran out of ammo hours ago, and that rusty old pipe in your hands doesn't look like any zombie killer you've ever seen. Finally, you see something that looks safe. Its an old Inn, the kind you'd see on the side of the road while driving down an interstate. You seem to have traveled from the city a bit, and the door to the main building is open. As you draw closer, and closer, it shuts! Suddenly, the entire situation seems ten times worse. From all around, zombies are swarming over you...
At the time of Resident Evil: Cold Blood (RE:CB) release, the multiplayer games in the franchise were few and unsuccessful. In this sense, there is some novelty in the online multiplayer focus of this mod. However, the well-crafted survival horror environment doesn't compensate for its weak story and gameplay with numerous bugs, something I didn't expected from a development team that had created other successful Half-Life mods such as Afraid of Monsters.
Undeniably, RE:CB excels in ambience. The models, although not perfectly designed, remain faithful to the Resident Evil aesthetic, setting them apart from the originals in Half-Life. The lighting and the ambiental music is perfect, precisely tuned to create the tension characteristic of the Resident Evil series. The HUD is simple enough while resembles a lot the inventory of the first Resident Evil games. Zombie voices, while not expertly acted, are scary in its own right. Lastly, the maps, while not necessarily based on specific locations from the original games, draw thematic influences from them, providing both a sense of familiarity and a touch of originality. The menu theme also deserves special mention, since it's quite atmospheric even while not musically striking.
Unusually for multiplayer games, there is an attempt at incorporating a narrative in RE:CB. However, it doesn't stand out and deviates somewhat from the narrative style of the original game franchise. It would have been interesting to explore character development through specific dialogues, as seen in games like Left 4 Dead, which would have made the characters more memorable and attracted more players. Nevertheless, the brief narrative introduction to each map is a standout feature, as it provides essential information for navigating the map.
Gameplay is the weakest aspect of this mod by far. The objective and puzzle structure is a good move though, heavily influenced by the Resident Evil series while taking advantage of the first-person gameplay strengths of Half-Life. But there are many aspects where the game is not polished. Backtracking is over the top. Enemies take forever to turn, allowing bug abuse, making the game easier, and removing the horror element. The constant respawn of zombies doesn't achieve its goal of reducing map monotony and preventing cheating, instead making the maps particularly tedious considering that when a player dies, they always respawn at the beginning of the map, regardless of how far they progressed. In the worst cases, this makes it impossible to return to certain points after achieving map alterations such as closing specific doors, forcing the player to restart the entire map from the beginning (an exemplary case would be the mall). In some places, is posible to get stuck, especially when there is an elevator involved. Finally, as with all Half-Life multiplayer mods, there should be a fail-safe in case the servers are empty. RE:CB not only fails to anticipate this but also focuses almost exclusively on multiplayer gameplay. For this reason, playing maps solo is unnecessarily difficult, and the requirement to use specific characters with certain abilities for certain maps limits the range of playable solo maps and the degrees of freedom in multiplayer. However, in the rare case that the maximum number of players is gathered on a map, the cooperative experience would likely have a different feel and perhaps even bring out the mod's full potential.
In short, RE:CB successfully evokes many atmospheric elements of the Resident Evil series and is especially challenging on initial attempts. However, it becomes progressively easier through trial and error and by bug exploiting. Given its disproportionate focus on the multiplayer aspect, I recommend playing it with two or more players, thus avoiding the imbalanced difficulty and limitations of single-player mode.