Most of these versus modes have two teams pitted against each other while zombies stumble-sprint around trying to catch whoever they can. If you get zombie-vomited enough you start to get infected, and then it's only like four seconds of scrambling your camera around for a nearby antiviral spray and screaming for Jim to spray you until your crazed corpse is chasing down your buddies. The last time this happened to me I guess Jim must have been watching, because he nonchalantly sauntered on-screen and chunked his shotgun into my face literally the millisecond that I turned evil. Luckily, whether you get shot by the enemy a few times or get zombie-vomited into infection and then shotgun-murdered by your best friend, you're only 1.5 seconds of 'press A to revive squadmate' away from animationlessly materializing above your corpse. Is this clumsy, clever or just temporary until the next patch? I don't know. (Yes I do.) If it doesn't bother you that Marcus Fenix yells 'revive me' instead of 'help me out, man' when he's crawling on the ground in 'Gears of War,' then I guess this won't bother you, either.

'RE:ROC' also offers a campaign mode which involves battles against characters from throughout the storied history of the Resident Evil franchise. I think at the end of the game my squadbros and I had to choose between saving and murdering 'Resident Evil 3's' Leon Kennedy (don't worry, it's not canon - Wikipedia says so). We got split into two teams depending on how we voted. That was pretty cool - in 'Streets of Rage.' Maybe it was kind of cool in 'VEL:CRO,' too. So, cool ideas: one, maybe.

You know what, never mind any of this. I can see what happened here. I can see one of those guys at Slant Six Games right after they got their hands on The Franchise; he's thoughtfully replaying 'Resident Evil 4' for inspiration. He turns his Gamecube off; he switches to HDMI 2 (that's where his cable box is plugged in); he sees a commercial for 'Gears of War 3;' he snaps his fingers. Here we are today; here is 'Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City.' Maybe if they had tried actually playing 'Gears' for a couple hours, this game wouldn't be so poorly designed or so psychotically boring.

one star out of four 

BONUS REVIEW:

'Mass Effect 3': zero stars out of four

Ben Hornsby wouldn't be in the canon if they asked him.