YMMV / Resident Evil: Outbreak

• Broken Base: Which game has better voice acting. Some fans prefer File #1's voice acting over File #2's, while others prefer the latter instead.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: When it comes to single-player (Lone Wolf) runs, Yoko is by far the most common choice of the base roster. She has an extra four item slots for anything unlike, say, Cindy; this is a massive boon for hoarding weapon supplies, first aid sprays, and key items without backtracking or compromising. Yoko's distinct dodge crawl also has unmatched I-Frames that lets her easily duck or slip by every enemy and boss in the series. Some bosses can even be cheesed solely with this ability. The fact her health is the lowest means very little when these challenge runs are typically on Very Hard, where roughly everything would One-Hit Kill the player regardless of who they're playing.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Among the player choices, Cindy Lennox, David King, Yoko Suzuki and Jim Chapman stand out as having decent amounts of fan art and online discussion.
  • Raccoon City cops Raymond Douglas and Rita Phillips are probably the best liked of the NPCs for some impressive competence and moments of caring as well.
• Event-Obscuring Camera: In Outbreak, there is one camera angle that gives almost every player fits. The first floor of the apartment building next to J's Bar is a low angle shot that ruins your perspective. Naturally, there are three zombies and a hard time limit to get through it. Many players can navigate it by rote, but that only works if you're the first one through.
• Fanon:
  • Five of the survivors have a level where they are guaranteed to appear, and if not controlled by a player, they will die during the mission. Two of the remaining three (Kevin and Jim) share a Downer Ending in the first game, leading players to conclude that Mark is the only true survivor of the games. However, Alyssa is so far the only confirmed survivor, since she writes a newspaper article regarding several disappearances in Louisiana in 2016.
  • A couple of David's SP Items in the first Outbreak led to the belief that he's an American Indian.
  • For some reason, many fans seem to have concluded that Linda's last name is Washington. She's never officially given one in-game, although apparently you can read her ID card in unreleased content, which reveals her last name is Baldwin.
• Fridge Horror: If a player gets turned into a zombie, they can wander around, stay out of their teammate's paths or attack them, and their ad-libs imply they're still fully conscious and aware, but with the next major cutscene they'll inevitably be Killed Off for Real. One of the key problems of the failure (or major successes in the right eyes) of the T-Virus is that it enhances its victim and then drives them into delirium and an unending hunger, as their cells continuously burn from the excess of energy they need to live, until they become a flesh-eating undead as their brain functions cease besides the cannibalism urges. Even despite 100% infection, your teammates are stuck in the delirious state that can even drive them to aggression while still being able to partly control themselves — and then abruptly collapse into a heap of a corpse because their body and mind couldn't take it anymore.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The unlockable "bonus characters" Mr. and Mrs. [color] all come with a passive damage multiplier that makes them far more effective than anyone else in the game. When Outbreak was being played competitively online with players working to achieve the highest scores and quickest speed runs, using the Mr. and Mrs. skins was considered unsporting.
  • For whatever reason, David has twice as many unique abilities as anyone else. He's got a special knife combo that knocks down zombies on the last hit, comes with a folding knife that doesn't take up an inventory slot and which can't be broken or given away, can throw wrenches to inflict a startling amount of damage and stumble normal enemies, can create new weapons like stun rods or improvised flamethrowers, and can repair broken handguns or shotguns. Having a good David player on your team was borderline required for many scenarios.
  • George and Cindy can team up in File #2 to tear through a lot of opponents. Cindy collects herbs and trades them to George; George turns the herbs into anti-viral pills and loads them into his ampoule shooter. A shot from an anti-virus pill inflicts 1,000 damage, which is roughly comparable to the grenade launcher, and the shooter has a much higher rate of fire.
  • If you manage to get five "Heads" in a row with Jim's coin, you become the most powerful character in the game. This, combined with his fast firing rate, his extra coin on File #2, his dodge move and his melee weapon swing move, makes you an unstoppable force that is able to stun every enemy on the game using even something as weak as a folding knife.
  • Kevin and Alyssa share the ability to perform a "Potshot", which is a well-aimed shot that does critical damage. However, if you hold down the button to aim and spam the fire button, you can keep firing off powerful shots, which can absolutely decimate bosses. This is a common speedrunning tactic.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One of David's unique abilities is being able to combine two items using duct tape to make a more effective weapon. Perhaps he went on to teach Chuck Greene some pointers.
• Memetic Mutation: "Mass production? Ridiculous!!!"^Explanation At the beginning of the Decisions, Decisions scenario in Outbreak, Greg says in this when he finds out Umbrella wants to mass produce the Tyrant.
• Narm: Listed here.
• Signature Scene:
  • The memorable and beautifully disturbing opening sequence that shows the events that led to the downfall of Raccoon City.
  • The U.S. missile bombardment that wipes out Raccoon City.
• The Scrappy: The sniper in "End of the Road", a mercenary who spent his time sniping zombies. We first see him shooting an already limping Linda in the leg. He does take a moment to figure out if she is human, but decided that he'll shoot anything that moves for fun. His only redeeming quality is getting toe to toe with his benefactor for withholding information about the nuclear bombing of Raccoon city, before disappearing altogether. You don't even see him get slaughtered by Nyx in the end.
• That One Boss: In "Wild Things," it is possible to imprison the zombie elephant inside his pen. He'll break out eventually, but if you manage to escape the zoo before he does, you'll fight a zombie lion instead. On higher difficulties, that lion is one of the hardest bosses in the entire series; he's fast, can pounce on players, often jumps to the roof of the nearby train station where he can't be touched, is a complete bullet sponge, is very difficult to engage in melee, and is accompanied by up to two female zombie lions which are at least as dangerous as he is. There are a couple of tricks in the final area that you can use to knock a lot of health off the elephant, but they're completely useless against the lion.
• The Un-Twist: Was anyone anywhere confused about who the Axeman was before his big reveal?
• Vindicated by History:
  • Many fans initally considered the games to be mediocre or just downright bad. This was due to the fact most of fun relied on the online mode and they were released in an era in which not everyone had the ability or access to play online. As such, many fans had to deal with the lackluster single-player mode and the severely annoying AI partners. However, as access to online gaming became more mainstream, now it's not hard to meet someone in the fandom wishing the games could be given a second chance for modern consoles, specially now that the Japanese versions of the games have been reverse-engineered and have fan-run servers up and running to continue playing online in an non-Capcom-sanctioned way, only increasing the fan approval and demand for an HD remaster.
  • This applies to Capcom's feelings towards the games. For a long time, Capcom showed a distinct distaste for the series, to the point where they refused to even acknowledge the games existed. This created the conundrum of whether or not the games were canon. However, with a reference to Alyssa in Resident Evil 7 and another to Rita in the 2019 Resident Evil 2 (Remake), it seems Capcom is finally giving in.
  • Capcom started uploading high-res art assets for their mainline games to their Resident Evil/Biohazard Portal website in 2022. The Outbreak duo were the only side entries granted the same privilege, even beating out the Gun Survivor and Chronicles series, Operation Raccoon City and Umbrella Corps.

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