Resident Evil 5 review

[Anayo]

Resident Evil 5 review

Resident Evil 5 is a game made by Capcom in 2009. It's necessary to know the significance of Resident Evil 4 before we look at RE5.

Resident Evil 4 came out in 2005 on the Gamecube. At that time certain people regarded the Playstation 2 and XBOX as macho consoles, dismissing the Gamecube as a kids' toy. Furthermore, Resident Evil itself didn't have the best reputation, since while it was awesome in 1995, the game hadn't really evolved since – the camera is still 'stuck' in one place while your 3D character moves stiffly from one scene to the next, cumbersomely managing items and solving time-consuming puzzles.

Resident Evil 4 brought the RE series to modern standards with full 3D movement and proved that the Gamecube wasn't for kids, with terrifying and violent gameplay. My impressions of RE4 are like this:

Graphics: I played Gears of War 2 (2008) then I played RE4 (2005). RE4 still looked awesome.

Gameplay: You know how some games have “good parts” in them? RE4 was basically an 18 hour long “good part” for me.

So, RE5 had high expectations to love up to. I played the PC version. The graphics are delicious. The main character in particular screams with detail – I can see the stitching on his shirt for crying out loud! The game is full of bloody mutants and guns to mow them down with. I appreciate the change of scenery, since RE4 took place in rural backwoods Spain, but RE5 is in Africa. The levels range from District 9-esque shantytowns, to a marsh village, and later ruins and a secret lab. The music is worthy of a movie soundtrack, and the cut scenes look gorgeous. They're really action packed – the camera swerves and rolls like a handheld camera on a set, and there's lots of hand to hand combat and gunfighting in these parts. They motion-captured live actor's faces for the facial animation, almost reminding me of the recent Avatar movie.

Nonetheless, RE5 falls short of RE4, despite the superior technology that went into it. Here's a short list of objective reasons why:

1 Pacing

Resident Evil 4 was psychologically scary because the game began at a slow, mundane pace then gradually grew more twisted and insane. For me it suspended my disbelief more effectively than if it had plunged me headfirst all at once. Resident Evil 5 goes from 0 to 150 miles per hour with very little time for me to buy into all the freakiness that's going on. It fatigued me. By the time the game reached the last boss, I just wanted it to end, and that's not a good sign.

2 Consequences

Part of what made RE4 so scary was how easy it was to get overwhelmed and die. In RE5, your lady-partner Sheva will always revive you when your health meter runs out by punching you in the chest and chastising you for “being so reckless”. I felt the uncanny valley when this photorealistic computer animated man keeps getting resucitated to life over and over from axe wounds and worse. I don't want a game that's too hard, but it removes any feeling of danger when I can revive so easily.

3 Partner

Sheva is an African lady with a gun who follows you around at all times, shooting bad guys and reviving you when you're down. She also says cheesy stuff like, “What manner of beast is this?” (Really, Capcom?) Sometimes you have to hoist her up to higher ground where she flips a switch or unlocks a gate from the other side. I don't like her. She gets in the way a lot, demonstrating the inadequacy of computer controlled character who Capcom intended for another human to manipulate. I don't like mandatory multiplayer games. Plus, RE4 was scarier when you were isolated, or had to escort someone weaker than yourself. Sorry to sound so black and white about it, I just believe Sheva was more of a detriment than anything else.

On its own merits RE5 is not bad. The graphics are gorgeous. Technically I'm impressed with the fact that it runs smoothly on maxed out settings and looks better than Crysis. If you've never played RE4, you'll like RE5. Otherwise you might have a hard time forgiving it for falling short of its predecessor, like I did.

[SwooshBear]

I actually beat re5 today and I agree with your review. I love re4 for the same reasons you stated. Heck, I feel like you wrote this based on my opinion

[Anayo]

A good review ought to "catch" what a game's like even if the reader hasn't necessarily played it, so I must have done OK.

[SwooshBear]

Yeah awesome review. I liked it

[Gamerforlife]

Good points, RE 4 rubbed some people the wrong way, but I still saw it as a genuine attempt to breathe new life into the franchise. RE 5 just felt like a soulless cash-in, not just because it lazily copied RE 4 in a lot of ways, but the whole multi-player aspect just struck me as RE selling out and trying to go along with current fads. Course, integrity is certainly not something I have come to expect from Capcom, but I do expect great games from them and RE 5 fell a bit short

And as this review pointed out, RE 5 despite copying RE 4 still lost a lot of what made RE 4 great

[Satoshi_Matrix]

I like the review, but it needs pics. Google image search is your friend.

[Dakinggamer87]

Good review!!

[ExtraCrispy]

Forget what anyone tells you, if you've got a buddy playing split screen co-op with you, this game is an absolute blast. I'll agree that if playing by yourself you're not gonna have as much fun as you would in RE4... but toss a friend in the mix to control Sheva and you have a game that I actually enjoyed MORE then RE4. Working together with a human partner against legions of zombies was all kinds of fun, for me at least.

If you're the type of gamer that games by themselves mostly, I would probably skip this one. But if you've got at least one buddy who's into these kind of games to play with, you will no doubt have some seriously good times.

[Anayo]

Forget what anyone tells you, if you've got a buddy playing split screen co-op with you, this game is an absolute blast. I'll agree that if playing by yourself you're not gonna have as much fun as you would in RE4... but toss a friend in the mix to control Sheva and you have a game that I actually enjoyed MORE then RE4. Working together with a human partner against legions of zombies was all kinds of fun, for me at least.

If you're the type of gamer that games by themselves mostly, I would probably skip this one. But if you've got at least one buddy who's into these kind of games to play with, you will no doubt have some seriously good times.

That's what we have Left 4 Dead for.

[ExtraCrispy]

I'm not gonna sit here and tell you Left 4 Dead ain't a great game, but there are actually people who would like to have more then a single good Co-Op zombie game. I know, hard to believe.