Resident Evil 5 Review
“Alright guys, so Resident Evil 4 did REALLY well, and I think since it was so well received, we should make pretty much the same damn game, only this time, you have someone else with you the entire time. It’s survival horror redefined, guys!”
I’m pretty sure this is the creative process that went into designing Resident Evil 5, and if it wasn’t, I have to be pretty close. Resident Evil 4 definitely strayed from what the series used to be, especially in the horror department, but it was still fresh and exciting and pretty much introduced quick-time events. But what sort of advancements did Resident Evil 5 make to the series?
Well, for starters, you now have a partner throughout the entire game. Your ‘escort’ to ‘put the locals at ease’. You can re-read that if you want to, I’ll wait. So, just to recap; Resident Evil, a series that used to be about survival horror, a lone player would try to overcome bloodthirsty monstrosities, key finding, and various puzzles, and would only rarely come into contact with other individuals that would offer brief, if any help. But now, with Resident Evil 5, you have someone with you at all times, consistently covering your back and stating the obvious with you. I’m sorry, but what? Did I miss something here? Isn’t everything supposed to be scarier when you’re alone? That feeling of ‘there’s no one to help me, no one to save me’ is what helped make the series tense and somewhat spooky.
It doesn’t end there, though. Remember the attache case from Resident Evil 4? How you could keep getting bigger and bigger cases and you could organize your inventory to your liking? Well, I hope you didn’t enjoy that whatsoever, because it’s completely gone in Resident Evil 5. The ‘classic’ inventory system is back now, with nine slots for each character. The game no longer pauses when you’re in your inventory, you have to request an item from your partner if they have something you need, and if your inventory is full, and their inventory is full, and you want to swap items with them, you cannot. Does this sound like a good idea? I can tell you from experience, it’s an absolute joy. By joy, I mean frustrating and ridiculous. You might argue that this helps promote teamwork, but I can tell you first hand that all it promotes is cursing.
The controls are also pretty clunky and confusing. After playing for a while, you start to get a better handle on the controls in general, but they could of still been set up a bit more intelligently. On the bright side, in the nine slot inventory system, there’s effectively a ‘d-pad’ inside of it, in the middle square up top, down below, to the left, and to the right. So, depending on what you put in those squares, you can hit the corresponding direction on the d-pad to pull it out quickly (that’s what she said). But as a whole, the controls aren’t as tight as they were on the Gamecube with Resident Evil 4. Aiming, context sensitive actions, and movement all feel like they still need some work.
Graphically, the game looks fine. I wasn’t completely blown away, but it looks like a next-gen game should, I suppose. I’m still trying to figure out just why in the hell Chris Redfield is so fucking ripped though. In the time Code Veronica took place until now, was that what he was doing all this time? Taking steroids and pumping ridiculous amounts of iron? His biceps are literally bigger than his head! Also disappointing is the fact that a lot of the animations in Resident Evil 4 were used in 5. If you’ve played 4, you’ll notice the similarities right away. Even some of the sounds were reused, which I suppose is alright if there was nothing wrong with them originally, but it just comes off as laziness a lot of the time.
The Resident Evil series hasn’t exactly been known for it’s compelling story-telling, but Resident Evil 5 takes it to a new level of shit and utter ridiculousness. The level structure is confusing enough to where I had to pause for a moment look over at my co-op partner, Alex, and ask him what the hell just happened, and why are we on a boat? Wait, we’re on a different boat then the boat we were just on? There’s enough boats in this game to make Andy Samberg happy. Overall, it’s more or less a rehash of the fourth game, so if you’ve played through Resident Evil 4, you should know what to expect. I was able to pretty much call the ending before we were halfway through the game.
The dialogue is especially atrocious, even by Resident Evil standards. Chris Redfield repeatedly belts out the obvious, and Sheva sets him up perfectly every time to do just that. There’s also a fair share of bad jokes and puns throughout the game, most of which will probably make you cringe, and at least two bad accents that I can recall. It seems to continue to decline as you progress through the game, almost to the point where you will probably just stop listening and/or caring about what’s going on anymore.
Overall, Resident Evil 5 is nothing more than an over-the-top, 3rd person action shooter with a terrible inventory system. I could call it a complete rehash of Resident Evil 4, but I think that would be pretty insulting, as that game was actually pretty fun and had a good inventory system. I won’t ruin the story, or the ending for you, but let me just say that you will probably feel the same way I did once you get to the ‘climatic final battle’ of the game. What. The. Fuck. That’s really all I had to say.
I can’t recommend this one, even to fans of the series. Some of the things you loved about RE4 are there, but there’s enough that has been thoroughly fucked up that it just isn’t that enjoyable.
Also, apparently Chris Redfield isn’t content with moving gigantic boulders by pushing them. He has to punch combo them Street Fighter style. Seriously.
Images courtesy of IGN Entertainment.
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