Resident Evil 5

"Resident Evil 5 is a perfectly suited sequel to RE4, and though the game will not seem like a giant leap forward in the genre, the result is awesome."

Resident Evil 5 was my most anticipated game of 2009 for a lot of reasons. While the reasons for it being so looked forward to are obvious (its the sequel to Resident Evil 4; it's more Resident Evil;..... It's Resident Evil), Resident Evil 5 is the first Resident Evil game to come to the next generation of consoles, and result is really awesome. Like the previous game in the series, Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5 goes along with the new direction they took with Resident Evil 4, with the game being more of an action shooter, then a survival horror seen in the past games. While Capcom was at it, they decided to also throw in a bunch of stuff that we didn't even think we needed like co-op (online or off), tons of extras, and a story while being quite lame, wraps a nice segment of the entire series up with a bow.

Probably the worst part of the entire game is its lame story, and though it seems like it would be passable at the beginning of the game, near the end it literally gets laughable ridiculous, almost to a point where I want to just turn the game off. You play as Chris Redfield, one of the main protagonists of the original Resident Evil, as well as a character seen in Resident Evil Code: Veronica as a playable character half-way through the game. Chris Redfield is done with his S.T.A.R.S. duty in Raccoon City (since the city is literally gone), and is now a part of the BSAA, a group of anti-terrorism, and is sent to a city Africa called Kijuju to find and arrest an arms dealer named Richard Irving. Chris is joined by an all new character named Sheva Alomar, a fellow BSAA member of the African division, and she literally accompanies Chris throughout the entire campaign, like partners.

The thing that ruins the story for me is the ridiculousness near the end of the game. I would hate the spoil the story for you, but one of the main characters' reputation of the Resident Evil series is absolutely ruined. Some may not mind the direction Capcom went with the story, and what happens at the very end is predictable, but it's sad when you consider how great the first 6 Resident Evil stories were, and how bad RE5's is.

But the story of Resident Evil 5 is really one of my very few gripes about the entire thing, and while I'll explain some of the other downfalls of the game later, just know that if you're expecting a similar experience as the brilliant Resident Evil 4, you will definitely get it with Resident Evil 5. Resident Evil 5 takes the gameplay elements from RE4 like the running, shooting, and aiming, and changes the control scheme to make it more modern. While you still run by holding down the A button and turn with the left stick, you can now strafe when walking with the right stick, which may not seem like that big of a deal, but I thought it made a big different in the end. The left trigger is also the aim button now, and shooting is done with the right trigger when you are aiming. You can still switch to the classic RE4 controls, LT being your knife, RT being your equipped weapon, and the X button to use whichever weapon is held.

Resident Evil 4 really shaped the Third-Person Shooter genre in 2005, but games came along after Resident Evil 4 like Gears of War, and improved on the mechanics of RE4, adding cover, and the ability to shoot while jogging. Resident Evil 5 is going to feel stuck in the past for a lot of gamers that like their Gears of War and other games of the third person genre. Resident Evil 5's mechanics are good enough, and the enemies are suited for the “stop-to-shoot” mechanics of the game, but many will feel like it should have been improved.

Resident Evil 5 progresses throughout the main campaign pretty much exactly like Resident Evil 4 did. You'll go through a chapter, usually going to 3 or 4 main areas, defeating all of the enemies, then heading to the next area until the chapter ends. This may seem like a boring way to play through the game, but like in Resident Evil 4, it plays extremely well. You'll go to a giant open area, you'll trigger a cut-scene, then 5 waves of enemies will flood you from both sides, and the only way out of the situation is to kill them all. Resident Evil 5 tries to stick true to the Resident Evil formula throwing very simple puzzles at you for variety, but you'll get a lot more action out of RE5 than simple puzzle solving and item collecting seen in the past RE games.

One thing that you'll notice throughout the campaign is just the sheer variety of guns you will end up having at your disposal. You'll have your normal pistol, shotgun, and rifle, but you can also find better versions of each class of weapons later and later into the game, each having their strengths and weaknesses. For example, you eventually have 3 pistols to choose from near the end of the game, one is best for its capacity, one is best for its firepower, and the other is best for firing rate. You'll have to choose wisely on which version of the guns you want to use, since you may want to keep the original one you found first since its more upgraded than the latest one you found.

Upgrading your weapons is done similarly to that of Resident Evil 4. Between each chapter, after you die, or after you come back from a save, you're given the option to mess with your inventory. You can select a gun, and from money you earn from finding money or killing enemies, you can buy upgrades for your weapons. Some are better to upgrade fully than others, but I usually like upgrading the weapons with the most firepower. It starts off with a low amount of money, but once you get far into the upgrading, it can cost you a lot of money. Luckily, defeating more powerful enemies gets you jewels and other nice shiny items to sell. But one thing that is really disappointing is the exclusion of a merchant, like seen in Resident Evil 4. You could find the merchant just standing around the areas in Resident Evil 4 and you could buy and sell from him whenever you felt like it, but in Resident Evil 5, there's no one besides a menu between chapters.

Item management is another downfall of Resident Evil 5 which will plaque your amazing time with the campaign, which is really frustrating. You and Sheva can both hold 9 items at all times, and that's it throughout the entire thing. You can't upgrade your inventory at any time, and the only way to get rid of an item you don't want during the middle of a chapter is to discard it. The inventory always becomes a problem, especially in co-op where you both need tons of items to stay alive. During single player its not bad since Sheva can hold stuff for you, but in co-op you are always stuck trying to manage your items. Using certain items and combining items in the menu can also be pretty tricky in tight situations since the game doesn't pause due to playing the game on co-op (so the other player doesn't have to stop every time you pause the game). Selecting through you items quickly will always cause you to screw up, since there's so many options to choose from when selecting an item. You can either give it to your partner, use it, discard it, or combine it. You will most likely choose the wrong option, and end up doing something you didn't want to do, which can be really frustrating, especially when you are about to die. Quick weapon selection is one part of Resident Evil 5 that's a welcomed addition, with the ability to set a weapon to either up, left, right, and down on the D-Pad, and pressing them will switch your weapons on the fly.

Health is handled a lot like Resident Evil 4 where you have a bar circling around your HUD, but it starts out full at the beginning of the game instead of finding Yellow Herbs to increase it, like in Resident Evil 4. This isn't a complaint at all, but I don't see why they didn't include it. You will find tons of different healing items like your normal green and red herbs, but you will never have to find herbs like the blue herb which usually cured poison in earlier Resident Evil games. Like before, combining Red and Green herbs together will heal you all the way, and First Aid Sprays are still the number one way of healing yourself at every situations that's thrown at you. You can heal both yourself and Sheva with healing items if you're close enough, but it doesn't cut the healing in half to split between you, it gives you both the full effect. This may seem really odd, but it works really well, and I would've died a lot of times if this never worked.

Like Resident Evil 4, the enemy variety varies a lot during the course of the entire game. You'll start out fighting small and easy villagers, in RE5's case African villagers, but you will come across the odd powerful enemy that will take a lot of firepower to take down. Resident Evil 4 had their chainsaw maniacs, as well as the Wolverine-type monsters that will impale you with their claws, but Resident Evil 5 seems to add to the already-powerful arsenal of enemies with Executioner-type enemies that are giants that hold axes, and will swipe at you whenever you get close to them, usually killing you in one hit. It's not like there's only one kind of them, because Resident Evil 5 has 2 kinds, one Executioner with a giant axe, and a giant native-type enemy that will jump in the air and crush you with their huge hammer. Resident Evil 5 also features its fair share of chainsaw-wielding maniacs, and kill you just as easily as they did in Resident Evil 4, adding to the almost never-ending tension Resident Evil 5 possesses.

Resident Evil 5 also features some pretty insane boss battles. The bosses aren't going to blow you away; come on, we've seen this kind of stuff in a Resident Evil game before, but it doesn't change the fact that their freaking epic. Even the first couple of chapters have their cool boss fights, even if some of them aren't even considered to be bosses like the first Executioner, and the first Chainsaw maniac. Still, you'll fight through a giant sea creature, Ndesu which is a giant El Gigante seen in RE4, and other crazy disgusting creatures that only Capcom could come up with. You'll even fight some human bosses at one point in the game which really switches up your normal way of defeating them. I don't to spoil any major plot point of the story, but second-to-last boss fight is... Well... Ridiculous, and shouldn't be in the game.

You will also take part in a lot of different gameplay elements of Resident Evil 5 like controlling a turret on a hummer, and shooting enemies on a moving motorboat. Resident Evil 4 had these moments as well, and in Resident Evil 5 there seems to be a lot more of them. There's even a whole entire chapter, including a boss fight where you can to control a turret on a vehicle while it moves through the sun setting Africa. There's also the interactive cutscenes that made every cutscene worth watching in Resident Evil 4, but unfortunately, there's far less of them in Resident Evil 5. The button presses are also toned down to be much easier. In Resident Evil 4, you either pressing L+R, or A+B, but in Resident Evil 5, you either press A, B, X, or LT+RT. It's not a bad thing, but I never died in an interactive cutscene in RE5, like I did tones of times in RE4.

One of the biggest appeals of Resident Evil 5 is its online and offline co-op of the campaign and Mercenaries mode (unlocked after you beat the game). The co-op plays pretty well, the second player will always play as Sheva, and they can collect weapons, and unlock achievements just the like the first player playing as Chris. Offline, the screen is split to top and bottom, with the ratio being 16:9, so you'll get some black cut-offs around the edges, but it still look fine. At some situations, it can be a bit hard to see, even in 720p, but that's just a downfall of playing split-screen in the first place. The online co-op works well, but not great. Jumping in and out of games can be frustrating at times, and the game can also lag in big moments of the game.

If I were to suggest if you should play the game in co-op or not, I'd say to play on co-op since it makes the boss fights a lot less frustrating with a human partner, not a stupid AI partner. Sheva can be really stupid at some situations, literally stupid. At one point I took the handgun away from her because she had more than enough ammo for her submachine gun, but she kept collecting handgun ammo anyways, which would clog up her inventory with useless stuff. You can tell Sheva to either shoot if shot at, or to just shoot every enemy she sees. I would suggest putting it on cover fire since you wont want to alert enemies that you don't want to be alerted at later parts of the game, and even at the earlier stages as well.

While the gameplay may not be perfect, and the story may get ridiculous, one thing is for sure: Resident Evil 5 is easily one of the best looking games of the generation, no doubt about it. The character models look entirely real, the in-engine cutscenes look absolutely phenomenal, the lighting and the textures are amazing, and the whole game looks beautiful in high definition. If you thought that BioShock, Gears of War, and MGS4 looked amazing, wait until you see what Resident Evil 5 does, the game looks absolutely fantastic. The blood, guts, and gore all comes to life realistically as possible with gruesome animations that will usually make you shiver. All of the geometry, special effects, and pretty much every other part of Resident Evil 5's visuals are flawless. The co-op can see some slowdown every once in a while.

While the visuals are nice, the audio is a pretty tight package as well. The voice acting, while not Oscar material, is good. Chris and other characters are voiced well, and while voice actress for Sheva tried to make a good African accent, Sheva's voice acting comes off pretty bad. The moody and atmospheric soundtrack sounds just how exactly it's supposed to sound, and ends up being just a Resident Evil-ish as past game. All of the quality is brought together in one nice, tight package, and the production values of Resident Evil 5 ends up being some of the best of the generation, by far.

Some Resident Evil fans are going to be disappointed with the length of Resident Evil 5, since the main game can take a normal gamer around 10 hours to beat from start to finish. And while this seems, like, really short compared to Resident Evil 4's 20-30 hour campaign, Resident Evil 5 has an amazing set of extra modes and features to make you come back and play the campaign over, and over, and over again without ever getting boring. Back from Resident Evil 4 is the Mercenaries Mode where you play as one of 4 characters as you try to kill as much enemies as possible until the time runs out. Like RE4, the Mercenaries Mode is really damn fun, and can now even be played co-operatively, which is a nice change of pace. You can also play through the campaign again as Sheva as she does a couple of different things that Chris doesn't do in the campaign, but it's not game changing. There's tons of unlockables, like powerful weapons to use during the campaign, unlimited ammo for all guns, extras to collect like Figurines, and different costumes for Chris and Sheva. You'll easily spend up to 50 to 60 hours on Resident Evil 5 is you like the campaign, and with the promise of online competitive multiplayer in the future, you will play RE5 for a long time.

Resident Evil 5 does everything right that the sequel to Resident Evil 4 should. Resident Evil 5 is not going to blow you away in terms of evolutions in the third person shooter genre, but it's just as fun as Resident Evil 4, if not, more fun. Resident Evil 5 is going to feel stuck in the past at some situations, like the old controls where you must stop to shoot, but if you can look past the minor downfalls the game has, you'll see that Resident Evil 5 is just simply an amazing game. You may say to yourself, “this guy is just saying this because he's a Resident Evil fan”, and though I am a huge fan of the series, there's absolutely no doubt in my mind you should try out Resident Evil 5 for better or for worse. It's easily one of the best looking games of all time, and the campaign is a beast that you'll want to conquer again and again. Resident Evil 5 is a perfect sequel to Resident Evil 4.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/20/09

Game Release: Resident Evil 5 (US, 03/13/09)