Resident Evil 5 Review
Played on Xbox One (base)
Developed by Capcom
Released 5th March 2009
Played Co-op
After 4 years of anticipation, Resident Evil 5 had massive shoes to fill after Resident Evil 4's successful footprint in the videogame industry. With such unprecedented hype, allegations of racism before the release and the original creators of Resident Evil working alongside over 100 members of staff, this game's fate was on thin ice.
Story
The narrative of Resident Evil 5 is crazy. It follows game classic Chris Redfield and newly introduced Sheva Alomar and their hunt for the remaining bioweapons that Umbrella left behind after Resident Evil 3's fallout. This hunt escalates to extreme levels as a tougher variant of Las Plagas is found in Kijuju's villages, and ideals of world domination pervade the mind of the series’ antagonist. Overall, it’s a pretty neat (if campy) story. The problem that I had, was just how ridiculous it got. Resident Evil 4 was able to level serious reality between action cliches. Its successor, however, has such unbalanced degrees of absurdity that I simply couldn't bear it and started to lose the enjoyment I had built up over the duration of the game. It didn't help when the story started to feel dragged out with no hard-hitting plot points to save it. However, I do give Resident Evil 5 the benefit of the doubt since, as anyone can agree, it's hard to replicate the same success that Resident Evil 4 had, and in that regard, RE5 manages to mostly uphold the same action-packed nature through its more ingrained use of narrative. Small bonus for me but, if you love collecting notes and other sources of exposition, this game has some fantastically intriguing notes lying around that describe the interesting development of the virus which I found quite cool.
Gameplay
The gameplay is a blast in co-op but suffers from multiple issues. This game as a whole leans heavily into the explosive, manic, shooter archetype that RE4 was inclined towards too. I initially thought that the 'pick your shots' gameplay would not be very effective as there is a greater emphasis on ‘guns blazing’ content. Fortunately, I was wrong. The steady, tense firefights relying on carefully aimed headshots are still present, this time ramped up by the onslaught of additional ammo and enemies, with any issues fixed by the smart level design integrating co-op. At one point my friend and I were in separate buildings and we had to cover each other as we progressed back to one another. This is the type of action cooperation you'd expect in Gears of War.
The wide arsenal of SMGs, snipers and explosives was gratifying as we'd never be tangled in each other's playstyles or in need of resources. The problem comes when the fun is limited by a lack of creativity since all the weapons were simply shooter-classic tropes and the ones available by the halfway point became only stronger reskins of the last. This is made worse by the fact that you’re forced to fight in every situation. Previously, players had the option to respond to their fight or flight instincts, but yet this game decided to scrap the concept. While it does work in some ways and gives a bonus to the action orientation the game has, it loses the versatility that was present in previous instalments, especially since the weapons aren't as intriguing.
Another dampener on combat is the extremely limited inventory. Having only 9 slots for everything: from weapons, ammo, healing items and tools, is a huge burden to carry and ruins the fun because I believe such a limit is better suited for strictly horror-survival games rather than action hybrids. The only redeemable aspect of this is that you can trade items with your partner (excluding weapons), but even then that's only 18 slots, and that's if you use your partner as a mule the whole playthrough.
Moving on, I despise the enemies as they all lack innovation or any scent of creativity. Not only do they all share a fleshy, unoriginal design, but they're mostly recycled assets from RE4. The only positive quality that they share is that some have interesting move sets, but that's not enough to improve their overall standard when enshrouded by so many other factors. Finally, while this didn't affect my experience, anyone willing to play this game solo should be warned of the brain-dead AI companion, which is ironic after how I praised the predecessor's greater design.
Bossfights
The boss fights are incredibly lacklustre cakewalks. Every single major opponent that my partner and I threw up against, we dealt with quite quickly. To embarrass this game even further, no boss encounter was memorable from its poor design efforts. If the fights didn't follow the obvious ‘weak point’ trope to death, then you weren't fighting a boss but instead a normal enemy. These monotonous battles were sometimes unbearable as the drab colour palette and the tone-deaf soundtracks pummelled my impression of this game; six feet under. But hey, at least the monstrous designs looked kinda cool.
Characters
The characters are so bad that they’re good. The stupidity and cliché nature of all these characters detracted from the severity of certain situations but did add much-needed humour to this dry game. Every character is either mega unlikeable, forgettable or as plain as white bread and that sole reason is why their dialogues are so brilliantly bad, which makes it a worthwhile experience.
Atmosphere
The final chapter of my pessimistic rant concludes with the mediocre atmosphere. While visually it starts off great, utilising unique environments such as marshlands, dense laboratories, rural towns and more, the constant overuse of a generalised colour palette and filter makes it a stale sight to behold. What I'm talking about is the same yellow/orange tint that many Western forms of media use to stereotype non-Western regions, and while it's forgivable for a short duration, spanning over 12 hours is something that made me lose faith. Additionally, the music and sound effects aren't anything special, evoking absolutely no reactions from me. On a technical spectrum, the connectivity to each other was great as we encountered no stutters or disconnects on either the host's or attendee's end.
Story - 7/10
Gameplay - 6.5/10
Bossfights - 3/10
Characters - 6/10
Atmosphere - 6/10
Mediocre
This follow-up to 2005's GOTY was too heavy of a weight to carry, yet it still yields a fun co-op experience.
