Seemingly determined to move as far from the air of the original game as possible, the 5th (or technically 19th on all platforms I think...) game in the Resident Evil series takes a similar vein to it's numerical predecessor, while adding a few new components to spice it up.
To give you a brief overview of the plot, you play Chris Redfield (one of the protagonists from the original game) who has been sent to some unnamed random backwater part of Africa, and with the help of your new partner Sheva Alomar (or Shalamar [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVAm_obRPQ8&feature=PlayList&p=E85DB8D929AE4006&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=18] as I affectionately named her) try to close down on some terrorists who have apparently got their hands on some biological weapons developed by everybody's favourite pharmaceuticals company, the newly felled Umbrella Corporation. Safe to say you won't need me to tell you there's a bit more going on behind the scenes than that, involving one Mr. Albert Wesker, who apparently has recently jacked into the Matrix and realised he is the one.
Resi 5 can be most appropriately described as an action/third person shooter, having almost completely abandoned any and all survival horror aspects like a chav ditching a stolen Ford Focus. Rather than compare it to the rest of the series except from Resi 4, I felt it would be more appropriate to draw a parallel with a game it shares more in common with, Gears Of War. The introduction of your partner really does create a gameplay experience I found reminiscent of the chainsaw brandishing gore-fest.
I say this because I was encouraged to play the game with one of my friends on line, as I was Gears Of War, when I realised that the friendly AI in this game belonged in a mental asylum. I am aware friendly AI is probably one of the hardest things to code for in a game, trying to create the illusion of intelligence on par with that of the human player can't be easy by any stretch of the imagination, but it appears as if the guys at Capcom just decided to do inordinate amounts of drugs before attempting to programme Shalamar. Just as two examples of her idiocy off the top of my head to illustrate the point;
1. She regularly felt it necessary to stand directly behind me pumping machine gun bullets into the back of my skull, wasting valuable ammunition, not aiding in disposing of anything hazardous and hurting my feelings to boot.
and
2. On several occasions, when faced with the sometimes troublesome chainsaw Majinis, she would stand directly infront of me this time, blocking my bullets from hitting anything and preventing herself from being able to make an immediate retreat, perhaps attempting to be some kind of human shield for me. She accomplished this prolifically many times by getting her head cut off and forcing me to do the whole God damn part again.
When played with another human being that behaves like they haven't been lobotomised, Resident Evil 5 proves quite entertaining. There are many moments of satisfaction when you and your partner work together to overcome the hordes of advancing enemies or solve a little puzzle, that are very rewarding the first few plays through.
The control scheme is a subject of much controversy surrounding this game, and I have to say I sit on the side of the fence mostly in favour of it, despite its numerous limitations. The whole not being able to move and shoot at the same time thing is what seems to bug most people and I can appreciate why if they are new to the series or are fans of more fast paced combat. This system was used in the first game to try and create an air of suspense and entrapment, as when you were confronted by a foe you had the choice of moving and maybe getting grabbed, or standing and shooting thereby wasting scarcely located bullets. With the "new look" Resident Evil games, both of those things are not really an issue as there are very few narrow corridors and you can often walk straight past any assailants without much bother, and you trip over ammo more often than the political correctness patrol on gameplay videos on youtube. Because of this, some say the shooting system is now redundant, but I still find it a refreshing change of pace to the usual adrenaline fuelled slaughters you get on other shooters, as not being able to run away forces you to prioritise your targets and make your shots count that little bit more.
I enjoyed the relative simplicity of the inventory system compared to the other games where you had to pause the game and manually select whichever item you wanted every single time. I thought it allowed the gameplay to flow a little better by me not having to completely stop the game if I decided to change guns half way through a fight, and could simply press a direction on the D-pad instead to select it.
Probably not displaying as much depth as Resident Evil 4, Resi 5s story did just enough to keep me interested in what was going on to compel me to play more. That and the promise of wiping the smug smile off Wesker's ranting, self righteous face. The inclusion of another old hand was also an albeit foreseen, but nice feature, even if one of the boss fights is blatant fan service as you spend the whole stage groping her chest.
The character design and graphics are really top notch, probably one of the best features of this game. The detail on Chris' back alone is noticeable and shows some dedication on the part of the design team. Some of the enemies also look incredibly cool and unique. There are quite a few variants of African villager, African tribesmen and African soldier to keep even the aesthetic portion of the combat intriguing. Most of all I liked the bosses in this game though. The often larger than life end of level combatants were both challenging, interesting to look at (one can only be described as a scorpion-bat-vagina) and most of all fun to fight. Even the quick time events looked so impressive most of the time I didn't mind doing them or repeating them on the occasions when my partner or I messed up.
Another thing I'd like to give this game is that is has real replayability. Many games claim to provide incentive in the form of achievements, for playing through a game again but what good are a few little extra numbers? I'm not going to sacrifice a few more hours of my life to watch my x-peen get a little bigger. Resident Evil 5 gives you a reason to play through the game again and try to find out all of its little secrets by allowing you to unlock things that are actually functional and change the gameplay experience. You can acquire unlimited ammo for all of the guns, extra costumes, figures of each character, screen filters and probably some other stuff too.
I am yet to tire of Resident Evil 5, and because of that I would recommend buying it if you have somebody you can play with locally or online, and maybe renting it if you don't. Either way it is definitely worth a look.
To give you a brief overview of the plot, you play Chris Redfield (one of the protagonists from the original game) who has been sent to some unnamed random backwater part of Africa, and with the help of your new partner Sheva Alomar (or Shalamar [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVAm_obRPQ8&feature=PlayList&p=E85DB8D929AE4006&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=18] as I affectionately named her) try to close down on some terrorists who have apparently got their hands on some biological weapons developed by everybody's favourite pharmaceuticals company, the newly felled Umbrella Corporation. Safe to say you won't need me to tell you there's a bit more going on behind the scenes than that, involving one Mr. Albert Wesker, who apparently has recently jacked into the Matrix and realised he is the one.
Resi 5 can be most appropriately described as an action/third person shooter, having almost completely abandoned any and all survival horror aspects like a chav ditching a stolen Ford Focus. Rather than compare it to the rest of the series except from Resi 4, I felt it would be more appropriate to draw a parallel with a game it shares more in common with, Gears Of War. The introduction of your partner really does create a gameplay experience I found reminiscent of the chainsaw brandishing gore-fest.
I say this because I was encouraged to play the game with one of my friends on line, as I was Gears Of War, when I realised that the friendly AI in this game belonged in a mental asylum. I am aware friendly AI is probably one of the hardest things to code for in a game, trying to create the illusion of intelligence on par with that of the human player can't be easy by any stretch of the imagination, but it appears as if the guys at Capcom just decided to do inordinate amounts of drugs before attempting to programme Shalamar. Just as two examples of her idiocy off the top of my head to illustrate the point;
1. She regularly felt it necessary to stand directly behind me pumping machine gun bullets into the back of my skull, wasting valuable ammunition, not aiding in disposing of anything hazardous and hurting my feelings to boot.
and
2. On several occasions, when faced with the sometimes troublesome chainsaw Majinis, she would stand directly infront of me this time, blocking my bullets from hitting anything and preventing herself from being able to make an immediate retreat, perhaps attempting to be some kind of human shield for me. She accomplished this prolifically many times by getting her head cut off and forcing me to do the whole God damn part again.
"Come on Chris I expected more from you, when will you realise there is no spoon!"
When played with another human being that behaves like they haven't been lobotomised, Resident Evil 5 proves quite entertaining. There are many moments of satisfaction when you and your partner work together to overcome the hordes of advancing enemies or solve a little puzzle, that are very rewarding the first few plays through.
The control scheme is a subject of much controversy surrounding this game, and I have to say I sit on the side of the fence mostly in favour of it, despite its numerous limitations. The whole not being able to move and shoot at the same time thing is what seems to bug most people and I can appreciate why if they are new to the series or are fans of more fast paced combat. This system was used in the first game to try and create an air of suspense and entrapment, as when you were confronted by a foe you had the choice of moving and maybe getting grabbed, or standing and shooting thereby wasting scarcely located bullets. With the "new look" Resident Evil games, both of those things are not really an issue as there are very few narrow corridors and you can often walk straight past any assailants without much bother, and you trip over ammo more often than the political correctness patrol on gameplay videos on youtube. Because of this, some say the shooting system is now redundant, but I still find it a refreshing change of pace to the usual adrenaline fuelled slaughters you get on other shooters, as not being able to run away forces you to prioritise your targets and make your shots count that little bit more.
I enjoyed the relative simplicity of the inventory system compared to the other games where you had to pause the game and manually select whichever item you wanted every single time. I thought it allowed the gameplay to flow a little better by me not having to completely stop the game if I decided to change guns half way through a fight, and could simply press a direction on the D-pad instead to select it.
Probably not displaying as much depth as Resident Evil 4, Resi 5s story did just enough to keep me interested in what was going on to compel me to play more. That and the promise of wiping the smug smile off Wesker's ranting, self righteous face. The inclusion of another old hand was also an albeit foreseen, but nice feature, even if one of the boss fights is blatant fan service as you spend the whole stage groping her chest.
"No tongue on the first date!"
The character design and graphics are really top notch, probably one of the best features of this game. The detail on Chris' back alone is noticeable and shows some dedication on the part of the design team. Some of the enemies also look incredibly cool and unique. There are quite a few variants of African villager, African tribesmen and African soldier to keep even the aesthetic portion of the combat intriguing. Most of all I liked the bosses in this game though. The often larger than life end of level combatants were both challenging, interesting to look at (one can only be described as a scorpion-bat-vagina) and most of all fun to fight. Even the quick time events looked so impressive most of the time I didn't mind doing them or repeating them on the occasions when my partner or I messed up.
Another thing I'd like to give this game is that is has real replayability. Many games claim to provide incentive in the form of achievements, for playing through a game again but what good are a few little extra numbers? I'm not going to sacrifice a few more hours of my life to watch my x-peen get a little bigger. Resident Evil 5 gives you a reason to play through the game again and try to find out all of its little secrets by allowing you to unlock things that are actually functional and change the gameplay experience. You can acquire unlimited ammo for all of the guns, extra costumes, figures of each character, screen filters and probably some other stuff too.
I am yet to tire of Resident Evil 5, and because of that I would recommend buying it if you have somebody you can play with locally or online, and maybe renting it if you don't. Either way it is definitely worth a look.
