OMG THE GAMDOL IS WRITING A REVIEW FOR A VIDEO GAME ALERT THE PRESSES TO PRESS THINGS.
Resident Evil 5
So for those of you who were unawares, a week before this past Friday, Capcom released the 5th installment of the Resident Evil series. For those of you who don’t know, Resident Evil is a survival-horror type game where you live based on how many bullets you have left, how well you can kill zombies (or whatever they are now), and how fast you can smash a button when it pops up on your screen to “PRESS X TO NOT DIE.” The series is starting to divert from the original games where puzzles and sneaking were the name of the game, as in RE4 once you picked up a shotgun you could basically fight zombie hordes with little worry (besides possibly running out of shotgun shells), to RE5 where once you know how to aim using their system you can basically kill the world (again, assuming you have the ammo). The newest feature in the current game is the addition of co-op gameplay, where you and a friend (or an AI) have to work together to slaughter bla…I mean zombies until the world is declared safe once more. So without further ado, let’s break the game down and assign some numbers.
Story: 7/10
The story in Resident Evil has always seemed rather convoluted to me. Every game you play as someone from a somewhat large pool of characters, sometimes in the same place, sometimes in a new place with the same enemies, sometimes against one company, sometimes against another company doing the exact same thing while working with the original company. To give a background of RE5 would take more space than I’m willing to devote to this review, so let’s leave it at this. 1) Chris and his partner Jill set out to stop the leader guy. 2) Jill apparently dies. 3) Chris joins a team to stop some drug dealers or something. 4) WHOOPS ZOMBIES AGAIN. 5) New (not really) bad guy must be stopped. If you just take it at face value that there are zombie-ish guys being created and you just need to kill them all and the leader, the story they give you isn’t too bad. If you haven’t played the other games you pretty much have to do this. Sometimes things seem a little –too- convenient, “Uggg, you beat me, the next place you need to be is that cave over there….urggggg.” Good thing that fight put us right where the next part of the story is.
Combat (and controls in general): 8/10 for Chris, 6/10 for Sheva
So the combat in Resident Evil. Probably one of the major disappointments to me in the game. In 5, it’s still not great, but it feels somewhat smooth, although with the way it’s designed getting any better isn’t really possible. If you didn’t know, the basic camera is an over the shoulder view where you can basically run, look around, and interact with things. If you so desire to shoot, you have to pull the “I want to shoot” button, which locks your character in place, zooms in slightly, and now your camera control is an aim control. Once you have aimed, you must pull the other trigger for “I really want to shoot” time. So yeah, on Xbox this equates to “Hold left trigger, aim with right stick, pull right trigger to fire.” While it doesn’t seem that hard (and it’s not once you get used to it), locking yourself in place to shoot is not something that seems like a good idea when FUCKING ZOMBIES ARE CHASING YO ASS. Especially these lovely guys.
Resident Evil 5
Those friendly creatures are not very friendly when they get close to you. So you better damn well kill them before they reach your standing and shooting self. Now at this point you may be wondering why Sheva received 2 less points in combat than Chris. This isn’t sexism. The entire game you play over Chris’ right shoulder. If you ever play co-op and get to be Sheva…you’re over her left shoulder. WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS. IT FEELS LIKE I CAN’T EVEN SEE THE ENEMIES BECAUSE SHE’S IN THE WAY. ARGGGGGGGG.
Co-Op: 15/17
Yeah, co-op is pretty cool. This rating is for dual-player co-op by the way, because solo with an AI partner is stupid and sometimes annoying. Example: My objective was simple, run down corridor, dodge into alcove every time uber-sun-laser gets focused down said corridor. I did this fine. As I was proceeding to the final door (where you and partner HAVE to be), I noticed AI Sheva wasn’t with me. She was in an alcove. Every time the laser stopped, she would start to leave, until the laser noise started charging again. Then she would hide again. In the same alcove. Every time. Without fail. It took me a little bit to fix this issue with her, but I feel everything worked out in the end. HOWEVER, 2-person co-op is pretty awesome. I always carried a rifle with me, and my buddy from work always carried a shotgun (we also had pistols and rockets but whatever). We would come to a room with lots of guys (worked especially well when said guys had guns too), and split up. I would stay on the high ground while he circled down to the floor where army of bad guys was. He would then proceed to shoot the faces off people while they started to aim at him. From my lovely little perch I would start surgically removing the heads from the bodies of the bad guys who were either not in his path (but still shooting) or were very far away with rockets/other snipers. We had a blast playing the game, trying to figure out what the hell to do to beat certain areas better and faster. Complete the entire game in under 5 hours and you get a rocket launcher with infinite ammo!
Overall: Pretty Damn Good/Fucking Excellent
So that’s basically everything in the game without telling you the story and/or revealing some pretty awesome and epic boss fights. The controls are a little stiff, I may have died in the teens of times from not pressing X fast enough to not die (a fact my partner was keen on reminding me of), but overall it was a good time. If you enjoyed any of the prior Resident Evil games, I would say definitely pick this one up. If you haven’t tried one yet, I would at least recommend a rent with a friend. It’s a good time.
