Resident Evil 5 Review (360)

Do your bit to save Africa

Modern day classics seem to be a rarity nowadays, and even rarer when the said classic completely reinvents the way we play a much loved franchise. When Resident Evil 4 crawled its way onto our shelves, it decided to throw away the awkward camera angles, quirky gunplay and awful voice acting (to be replaced with bad voice acting…certainly an improvement). When fans heard about this, they went through quite a state of shock. Shock that was soon cleansed off by the splattered remains of zombified craniums and replaced with sheer joy. Even those who weren’t fans of the series lapped it up and soon wishes for a sequel were raised.

So after 4 years, 4 remakes of the past instalment, tons of teaser trailers and an ongoing row about how racist it is for a game set in Africa to have black people in it, Resident Evil 5 has hit the shelves. Symptoms of which have caused mass hysteria in some, uncontrollable giddiness in others and a huge line outside my local ‘Game’.

Resident Evil 5 follows zombie masher veteran Chris Redfield and new companion Sheva Alomar into the depths of Africa to uncover yet another horrible virus and to encounter yet more hostile civilians and to discover yet another horrible plan to rule/destroy the world. The story is nothing majorly new to the series, or even genre itself, and anyone who has seen one of the 50 billion trailers released in anticipation of the games release would have probably guessed the whole storyline by now. Yet fans of past games will most likely find RE5 to have the most rewarding plotline to date with it being very closely linked to all events and characters in previous RE instalments. So much so that the game feels the need to offer you a timeline of events giving you the complete back-story on the series to date, along with endless amounts of files detailing each and every character you come into contact with during your journey.

Enough on the dynamics of reading files, down to the game. In terms of combat, nothing has changed. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, seeing as it was what made 4 a classic. The camera constantly stays over Chris’s shoulder, zooming in whenever he wishes to blow off fragile heads. The button layout allows players to swiftly make snap decisions which can save their hides many a time during the heat of battle. The controls are a difficult obstacle to overcome for beginners due to the slow movement of Chris and the thin laser sight used to aim, yet after a good few hours you’ll find yourself making stylish kills and getting much more trigger happy. Attention to detail with combat is also as impressive as ever. Shooting arms makes enemies drop weapons. Shooting grenades detonates them in the hands of assailants. Shooting legs trips rapid attackers over so you can stomp on them. Everything that made RE4 fantastic has been carried over to RE5, yet with tons more gore thanks to an impressive graphics engine.

Visually, this is incredible. Environments range from the hugely realistic Shanty Town to boggy marshes infested with crocodiles and each one houses superb attention to detail, masking each and every location in a unique layer of grittiness and realism. Characters physics are incredibly lifelike and so detailed that at one point I was certain that I could see sweat on Chris’ face. Yet taking the centre stage for good looks are the disgustingly vile bosses. Many of which are huge in stature and writhing with disgusting detail. Add this level of detail with several enemies on screen with a very smooth frame rate makes for a game with incredible presentation that never slows down, pushing the hardware to ridiculously high levels.

Despite a surprisingly short story mode that lasts around 9 hours, Resident Evil 5’s lifespan is significantly lengthened with replay value and bonus features. A grading system has been introduced to the game which gives you points to spend on extras. Extras which vary greatly in terms of usefulness and entertainment. The infamous survival mini-game ‘Mercenaries’ makes a welcome return with more characters and locations to choose from, plus the chance to purchase Resident Evil figurines with the points you obtain (perhaps to remind you of happier times when you didn’t need to resort to images of electronic violence to entertain yourself). Other extras include costumes, new weapons…and the opportunity to change the camera filter…

Resident Evil 5 falls short of its older brother’s perfection

After all of this ranting about how great the new Resi is you may be wondering why I’ve given this an 8. The main reason; your ally Sheva. To begin with, things with Sheva are alright. She can hold her own, protect you well and is trustworthy enough for you to share items with. Yet once the enemies get tougher and the amount of equipment needed for survival increases, she panics so much that she sprays bullets at anything remotely solid, constantly asking for more ammunition. She never learns from her mistakes, either. She can get smacked twenty times with a rusty scythe and she’ll still run up to it like its offering free waffles. When thinking about purchasing a survival horror, you don’t expect babysitting to be a major selling point. With the new menu system, nursing your diddums of a partner is an extreme burden. If you wish to sort out your equipment mid battle, the menu screen will appear in real time, forcing you to arrange (as well as your partner’s) equipment whilst hoards of enemies chop away at you, raising more frustration than tension. It’s forgivable to think that in this circumstance it would be better to play co-op with another human player, yet doing so either makes the game incredibly easy or incredibly difficult and destroys the whole ‘Isolated and outnumbered’ feel that the Resi series has recently been trying to capture so much.

The fact that this is incredibly similar to Resi 4 acts as a double edged sword. Sure, it has the recipe for success that we all know and love, but at the same time, it no longer surprises us. The previous Resi featured an army filled with different varieties of enemies that were introduced slowly and would always keep the player on their toes, scared to death about what the game would throw at them next. Resi 5 simply recycles A LOT of these enemies, taking away any adrenaline fuelled fear from the proceedings and making it feel like you’re playing a watered down 3rd Person Shooter. Even bosses pose an extremely cliché, glaringly obvious orange ‘weak spot’ which you could spot from the moon.

When all this déjà vu kicks it, you become painfully aware that this is just Resident Evil 4 with a new lick of paint, a bow tie to make it look nice and a painfully stupid partner. Every part of me wished (and expected) this to get a perfect score after the previous instalment. However, due to the lack of change in enemies tearing the series away from its survival horror roots and more negative game play features introduced than positive,
Resident Evil 5 falls short of its older brother’s perfection.

Oh, and there’s no Merchant…