Resident Evil 5

Review from Jae - Thursday, 07 May 2009 @ 8:34am

Zombies make the world go round. Well they make the video game world go round. Ever since they were thought about in the early 19th century, zombies have been a popular horror caricature. The living dead or the un-dead as they are most commonly referred to, zombies have been in books, movies, television and video games. The very first zombie game made in 1984, Zombie Zombie for the ZX Spectrum, had a very good description on Wiki: action game with a B-movie inspired plot. The description which can be used for almost every zombie game created. When asked to name a zombie game most would identify the Resident Evil series first, for its popularity that now spans to comics and movies.

Resident Evil 5 is Chris Redfield’s third swing at the main series (yes I count Code Veronica) seems to get close to a home run. Maybe third base is where this sits safest. Encompassing all the elements of previous titles and adding one main upgrade of co-operation play with an insignificant other. In other words play the game all the way through with a random you met through the internet. Graphics and sound have also been upgraded to what you’d expect from a game on the 360 and PS3. Capcom have done something weird to Chris’s face. Its as if someone stuck a conical shaped vacuum head onto his face for a few days so its squashes up into one place. Perhaps not the most articulate description but it gets the point across.

Chris's face: the scariest thing in RE5

The one thing missing from this game is its basic element of fear. If you’re an RE vet from the Playstation 1 days you would remember the dogs bursting through the windows of the Racoon City Police Station or the Nemesis that would follow you around like a 8 foot tall sad puppy hell bent on killing you. This was the real fear that would make you quiver and scream like a little girl. Don’t worry we all got scared back then. With RE5 the fear factor has almost dissipated, you will experience small moments of surprise but nothing of the same magnitude of the series before. A game that manages to keep all its cheesy one liners and deliberately bad scripting also manages to lose its terror. This can be the fault of many things such as a free form camera and abundance of ammo, but like RE4 this should have been able to evolve over time. It is a shame as Resident Evil is becoming less of a survival horror and more of a pure action game.

An impressive story line has been built this time round. The game is based in Africa, in a fictitious town of Kijuju, with the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance getting wind of a virus being created locally. It links in well with Leon Kennedy’s plot of RE4 and also brings things back together with the origins of the initial T-virus. Chris investigates with the help of a fellow BSAA agent, Sheva, your token black character. Without spoiling anything you get to uncover some plots, learn of some new ones and find out with what happened with Jill Valentine’s mysterious death. Yes unfortunately Jill did die, that is one prequel I’d enjoy playing some day. During the load screens you have a moment to read a sentence or two that explains the history of Resident Evil. Sometimes I felt the information was disjointed and irrelevant to RE5’s plot, especially for anyone new to the series. The back story would provide you more questions than answers, a nice to have though for RE fans. Puzzles in RE5 are not the most challenging. Gone are they days where you would collect a key, wash it in acid to get rid of the rust and have a monkey fart on it to make it fit into a key hole. Puzzles are fairly linear, where you reach a locked door that requires 4 keys. You then go to the four corners of the room to get those keys. Oh and you shoot some infected Africans on the way. This didn’t make the game flawed it just allowed newcomers to easily adjust and give those with an IQ less than 50 a chance at finishing it.

Give daddy a big kiss

One of the hot topics about RE5 is its control scheme. If you’re someone that finds stationary shooting too restrictive than this game is not for you at all. Real Resident Evil fans will know that this has been part of the series all along and isn’t a foreign way to play games. Those of you that make love to your Gears of War, Halo or Mercenaries games can look elsewhere for a game this month. The fact that you stand still when shooting puts greater emphasis on aim, suspense and watching your shotgun blow a bunch of Manjini 15 feet away. So if you’re not an RE vet try the free downloadable demo first and decide if the controls are for you. I can understand that they’re not ideal to the mainstream gamer but they don’t obstruct my enjoyment in this game in anyway.

The other hot topic is racism in RE5. Who better to talk about the perils of minorities than your resident Asian. Honestly this is a moot argument. Resident Evil 5 is not racist. It is a game set in Africa where majority of the people found in the game are black. That includes the people you shoot and kill. Sometimes society takes these things too far into context. If RE6 happens to be set in Hong Kong shooting a bunch of Jackie Chan zombies no one would kick a stink about racism. Face it, the most powerful man in the world is black so if he thought this game was racist it wouldn’t have seen the light of day in America. End of story.

New pop sensation the Residents of USA

This game is meant to be played co-operatively, with another human being. When played co-operatively on the same console the split screen mode is bad. It’s as if the developers got lazy with filling up a 16:9 split screen and chose to only use 66% of the television. If you choose to play this on your own with the AI controlling Sheva you will reach new levels of frustration. With AI Sheva, she will hardly ever use grenades and will always exhaust all her hand gun ammunition first. Don’t ever give her the electric prod as she won’t ever use anything else. Even when you obtain a handgun with unlimited ammo Sheva will still pick up hand gun ammo and hand it to you saying “Here use this”. Programming behind this AI has been poorly designed. This can be seen as a good thing as it forces you into the realm of social gaming and making friends with a 38 year old obese man from Texas.

Pros

Controls have stuck to their Origins, which hardcore RE fans will appreciate. Co-op mode is done well online. Good B-grade story that helps close a few chapters of the Resident Series and opens up some new ones.

Cons

No control option for the ‘mainstream’ to move and shoot. Puzzles lacking any challenge and layout too linear. Sheva’s AI is useless without someone to guide her. Split screen cuts out a lot of TV space.