A great survival Resident Evil 5 has it all. Waves of enemies, weapons galore, gargantuan bosses, explosions, hot chicks, Matrix style fights, and more!
But is that a good thing? More specifically, is that Resident Evil?
While RE5 is the most action packed Resident Evil game to date, it’s also the least frightening entry into the franchise’s main canon. What you end up is a major departure from the series’ origins, but a solid title nonetheless.
Enough preview banter, let’s review this mofo!
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RE5 puts players in control of long time Resident Evil protagonist Chris Redfield and the all new Sheva Alomar. Fans of the franchise will recognize Chris from his prior playability in the original Resident Evil, Code Veronica, and Umbrella Chronicles. Chris’s zombie slaying experience has taken him from the STARS unit in Raccoon City, to the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA) in Africa. It’s here in the cradle of civilization that Chris teams up with local BSAA correspondent Sheva Alomar.
Story-wise, Resident Evil 5 is fairly straightforward. Following the fall of Umbrella Corp., all of the company’s monstrosity inducing viruses have hit the black market and are being sold to the highest bidder. Chris and Sheva team up on behalf of the BSAA to stop a potential outbreak in the heart of Africa. Series antagonist Albert Wesker, is a constant power player as usual.
This “A to B” approach has the fundamentals of an interesting plot, but is riddled with ridiculous dialog and annoyingly over the top characters. I know what you’re thinking though, “Aren’t all Resident Evil games fill with b-movie cheese?” While the answer is a resounding yes, RE 5 has moments that make me long for the “master of unlocking” days of old.
Specifically, RE5’s early story antagonist Ricardo Irving is the most ridiculous character I’ve seen in modern gaming. His accent and dialog are so shockingly unbelievable that I’m on the verge of forgetting RE4’s Ramon Salazar ever existed. For reasons that I won’t spoil, the player’s interaction time with Irving is brief, but believe me when I see that you will never forget it. Seriously, the man has forgotten more about cheese than Chester Cheetah will ever know.
Irving’s abysmal theatrics aside, Chris’s use of the word “partner” is also comically awful. Events in the story lead to Chris to believe that his former STARS teammate, Jill Valentine, may also be caught up African terrorist activity. Throughout the game, you’ll hear Chris reminiscing to Sheva about Jill saying, “We were partners.” This phrase is repeated to near drinking game levels.
A quick glance at thesaurus.com listed the following synonyms for partner: accomplice, ally, assistant, associate, buddy, chum, cohort, collaborator, colleague, companion, comrade, coworker, friend, and about a dozen more. Yet for reasons unknown, the writers opted to have Chris use the word partner more than a Pentecostal marriage counselor.
Dialogue worthy of a Paul W.S. Anderson script aside, RE5 has a lot of things going for it. One facet that stands tall is the game’s graphics. Capcom has done a fantastic job of bringing the Resident Evil franchise into the world of HD next-gen gaming. Characters, environments, cut-scenes, you name it and it looks gorgeous. Even bosses that take up the screen and beyond are detailed to the nines and riddled with complimenting environmental effects that justify the purchase of your HDTV and overpriced HDMI cables (looking at you BestBuy).
Navigating said stunning environments is a well executed feat in itself. Characters control almost identically to Leon from RE4, with a few improvements on Mr. Kennedy’s franchise changing outing. A major complaint of Resident Evil 4 was that you had to access a menu every time you changed weapons. RE5 has graciously remedied this problem by allowing you to designate weapons and items to the d-pad buttons.
If you need an item that’s not designated to the d-pad, just pop up the full menu and select the needed item or brain splodin’ weapon. Play it safe though. While the menu is mostly transparent and overlays the center of the main game screen, accessing it does not pause the action. So if you have to dig around for a grenade, make sure you’re either in an enemy free area or your partn… I mean the other character has you covered. There’s nothing worse than getting caught off guard by an enemy while mixing healing herbs together. Except maybe Eagle Eye starring Shia LaBeouf… that was pretty awful.
Item and inventory dynamics are also jazzed up with the addition of a second playable character. Reminiscent of the buddy system used in Resident Evil 0, RE5’s item swapping is a lot more effective than I had anticipated. Exchanging goods on the fly in co-op mode really adds to the tension and the AI in single player did a great job of getting bullets and health to me in a pinch. To exchange items, Chris and Sheva simply need to stand near one another, and a quick flick through the menu will having you passing ammo back and forth in no time.
RE5’s item system is further improved by an out of level inventory system. In RE4, you could not own all weapons at one time because Leon could only carry what would fit in his attaché case. Meaning you could not own all the game weapons and swap them out at your leisure. This had you constantly selling items that you put a lot of time and effort into upgrading. The in-level inventory allows each character nine slots to work with, while the out of level inventory (accessible at the start of every level or whenever another player joins your game) allows you to store all of your weapons and items.
More inventory strategy comes into play during co-op mode. Each player has access to their total inventory as determined by their respective game saves. So if I’m playing as Chris, I can choose his equipment from all of the weapons and items on my save file. Whatever the other player decides to equip Sheva with is completely dependent on the items available form their game save. That being said, players can give one another items and ammo, but not weapons.
The lock on exchanging weapons prevents any form of power leveling from taking place, and keeps people from joining games just to beg for equipment. Also, when players pick up treasures or money, both players receive the item or amount of money found. So there is literally no downside to having a another player running around picking up all the money. Whatever treasure you find is given to both players, making for a fantastic co-op experience. Stellar call Capcom!
As we creep closer and closer to a segue into the overall co-op mode, let me quickly address RE5’s teammate AI. Playing single player as Chris, AI Sheva was terrific to work with. Honestly, I have to worry more about human players than I do the assisting AI. Sheva was almost always close by for a revive, and would not hesitate to toss me some ammo. Again, great job Capcom!
While it was refreshing to see the AI function so well, the real meat and potatoes of RE5 is the co-op play. Right out of the box you have access to split screen local play and online multiplayer. The split screen setup is akin to the one used in Call of Duty 4, where the top and bottom screens are off center. This approach doesn’t take up all of the screen space, but it does allow for better distinction between players. The split screen mode works fine, but any videophile worth their weight in cathode ray tubes knows that it’s all about the online co-op.
Online multiplayer is what Resident Evil 5 is all about. In a gaming world seemingly dominated by competitive online play, RE5 offers a refreshing take on cooperation for survival. Whether it’s mowing down enemies together in a bottlenecked hallway or sniping foes from a distance while your comrade turns a lever, RE5’s co-op works amazingly well.
Players can join another person’s game by opting in and waiting for the host to hit a check point or restart from the last checkpoint. Whether by next checkpoint or level restart, a player joining a session prompts the out of game inventory screen allowing both persons to strategize for optimal performance. It’s not exactly pop in, pop out, but it’s a great implementation nonetheless.
Speaking of strategizing, get ready to do a lot of that because Resident Evil 5’s enemies bring an array of deaths to the table. RE5 sees the return of several RE favorites including the Las Plagas, Lickers, chainsaw enthusiasts, dogstrosities, and more. And these are just a few of the standard enemies. RE5 also makes use of its location to include African citizens, soldiers, and tribesmen.
This brings up the media hyped issue of racism in Resident Evil 5. And media hype is about all it amounts to. As an adult white male who has been blasting Caucasian zombies to hell for over a decade, I never once felt the heartstrings of southern racism being plucked whilst shooting African zombies. The fact of the matter is that zombies are an equal employment opportunity. Skin color, gender, age or religious beliefs do not matter. The desire to rampantly kill anything around you automatically qualifies you for a career in bullet absorption.
On that note, RE5 does a top notch job of offering a variety of bullets and weapons with which to propel them at enemies. You’ll use handguns, machine guns, rifles, grenade launchers, rocket launchers, and then some. All of which (except the launchers) are upgradable to catastrophically death inducing status.
The weapon variety is very similar to RE4, but the upgrade system is somewhat different. And not exactly in a good way. The out of level inventory screen, while greatly useful overall, is pretty wonky to navigate. Moving items between the character slots, selling, and upgrading is never as straightforward in Resident Evil 4. It seems like Capcom’s intentions were good as there are multiple ways to access the option to sell an item, but the numerous means to this end will often leave you confused.
Despite the nuances of selling bling for cash and upgrading your weapons, upgrade you shall. The bosses of Resident Evil 5 range from pesky mini-boss to screen filling leviathans, all of which are gorgeous to behold and a challenge to kill. I feel like too many bosses rely on having tentacles spurt out of a human body and grow to gigantic proportions, but at least they look good. Some bosses harken back to the franchise’s beginnings with uber lethal giant mutated animals including spider and bat abominations.
Boss battles aren’t RE5’s only source of over the top action though. Chris and Sheva have several quick time events to deal with that keep cut scenes fresh as you’ll never know when you might have to quickly tap a button to run from on of several forms of life ending deaths. The amount of QTEs is less than that in RE4, but RE5 chooses quality over quantity. You’re not just running from a random boulder, QTEs are generally mid-epic boss fight and will have you say running from the creatures enormous appendages while the stage around you is being torn apart. The QTEs are definitely more entertaining than just watching a cut scene and up the action immensely.
All of this enemy and epic boss blasting will set you and any co-op friends back about twelve hours. Give or take an hour or two depending on your familiarity with RE4. The campaign mode is broke into six chapters, consisting of two to three acts each which acts as a very friendly interface for players who just want to sit down for a half hour or so and feel like they’ve made some progress.
That being said, Resident Evil 5 is a very fun game to play. I thoroughly fall into the OLG target audience with a full time job, family, and activities that I dedicate a lot of time to. Yet I found myself night after night staying up until four in the morning while my loved ones slept, because I couldn’t tear myself away from the game. Capcom has done a great job of making RE5 accessible for quick sessions, but be forewarned that the addictive gameplay and nonstop action will have you wanting a controller in your hands as much as possible.
If time is really of the essence and you want to blast enemies to kingdom come without worrying about inventory management, the Mercenaries mode is the mode for you. Just like the Mercenaries mode from RE4, the RE5 version has you racing the clock to kill as many enemies as possible. You start off by selecting a character (each one having a different pre-arranged inventory) and killing til the clock stops.
Items and characters are unlocked by reaching a certain number of points, so it’s all about being efficient. Kills in quick succession create combos which are worth more points and items that grant your more time can be found throughout the stages. In a nutshell, Mercenaries is all about keeping time on the clock and stringing kills together. Keeping a combo going is fairly simple thanks to the never ending hordes of enemies that are trying to tear you apart. While the campaign mode offers some down time to think and strategize, Mercenaries is as intense as it gets.
Before entering the official breakdown I’d like to address RE5’s achievement/trophy system. And honestly, for all the gamer score whores out there, you’ve got your work cut out for you. Challenges range from interesting feats like knocking an arrow out of the air with your combat knife, to fully upgrading all weapons. The variety of things to do will keep players busy for a while, challenging them the entire time. This is what the gamer score system was made for and Capcom has succeeded in giving you the most for your money.
The Game:
Resident Evil 5 is a balls to the wall action fest. Co-op gameplay really adds to the experience and will have players chasing down Wesker for a long time. That being said, it’s the series’ furthest departure from its horror roots yet. Granted it’s filled with tentacle covered monsters for your killing pleasure, which is great, it’s just never really frightening. RE5 is a superbly well done action game, held back only by its minimal changes from the formula established by its predecessor. The execution is great, just not as fresh as one would hope for.
(8.5/10)
The Time:
From the ground up, RE5 is designed for hopping in and out of games quickly and smoothly. The only drawback is that the co-op is so ridiculously fun that your work and social lives will suffer.
(8.0/10)
The Verdict:
Resident Evil 5 solidifies the franchise’s departure from horror to all out action. While it’s a fantastic game, it’s just a little discouraging to see a franchise that established a genre steer so far away from its roots. While my desire to be truly scared was stymied, I can honestly say that I had a phenomenal time playing the RE5 and all of its action packed, gun blazing glory. And I plan to repeat the experience as often as possible.
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