Resident Evil 5

Back in February I wrote about the Resident Evil 5 demo, claiming its awkward controls were confusing considering how much we all loved the identical scheme in RE4. Well now that I’ve spent significant time with the complete game and should be finishing it up tonight I think I can safely say the controls are fine. After having reread my article, it seems like most of my complaints were resolved. Either by the controls being tightened up, or because by the time I got to the chainsaw guy in the actual game I was armed to the teeth. Unlike in the demo where I shot him four times before running out of ammo and getting my head chopped off.

I still think the game isn’t anywhere near as good as RE4. Or should I say 4RE? Anyway, RE4 had way more going for it than just the control scheme. I couldn’t go more than an hour in that game without being impressed by some encounter or environment. The game was all over the place, fighting on trams, barricaded in houses, cloaked man-size bugs, regenerators, and some of the grossest, clever, and intense boss fights I’ve seen. Despite it being everywhere, it was all done incredibly well. It had that polish that made me think all those delays had been well worth it. It wasn’t terribly scary, but it definitely had those “oh shit” moments every now and then that reminded you it was still an RE game.

RE5 on the other hand has the huge gross bosses and what not, but none of it has the same impact a second time around. The base mechanics are still solid and fun, especially when you have a co-op partner to play with, but everything about it feels stale. As some before me have mentioned, it feels like they just picked a different established character out of their RE hat, spun a globe, stabbed at a continent and then remade the same game with the results. I’m roughly halfway through the game and have already gone through at least four parts that feel like they were lifted straight from RE4.

To make up for this I think they focused all their efforts on the co-op in an attempt to cover up the lack of anything new. This may have just made it worse, because I hear the AI partner is an abomination, but if not for the co-op with a real person I can’t imagine I would have even bothered with it. They do some clever stuff requiring teamwork, and there are multiple occasions where it’s nice to have someone looking the opposite direction as you. That and trash talking Slevin because my accuracy was higher than his, or because he got us killed never really got old.

RE5 is definitely worth checking out if you got a real person willing to play through it with you. Just don’t expect to be scared, this isn’t the RE of yesteryear, and don’t expect a whole lot of fresh ideas. It’s RE4 with a friend, but I suppose there isn’t really anything wrong with that.