Four years ago I played Resident Evil 4 and was blown away. Not only did the game breathe new life into the Resident Evil series, but it took a risk with a new camera style that previous 3rd person shooters had never thought to use. The risk turned out to be well worth it as Resident Evil 4 went on to win multiple Game of the Year awards and the over the shoulder camera style became the new standard in 3rd person shooters. Game developer CliffyB (Cliff Belinski) even cited Resident Evil 4’s over the shoulder style as one of the key inspirations in the making of the now infamous Gears of War franchise. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything in Resident Evil 5 that developers will want to use as inspiration, if anything they’ll be using this game as an example of what not to do.
The Good:
- The graphics are a huge update from the previous game
- There are many unique zombies and bosses
- Online Co-Op Mode
The Bad:
- The controls are sluggish and make playing the game very frustrating, four years ago they were acceptable, but now they are obsolete.
- There’s no ability to move and shoot at the same time. The player is forced to completely stop when taking aim to shoot. This feature is supposed to make the game more intense but succeeds only in making it more frustrating.
- The cover and dodge systems seem tacked on. Cliffy B took Resident Evil 4’s camera style and improved upon the gameplay to make Gears of War. It’s now Resident Evil’s turn to take a page out of Cliffy B’s cover system book, yet instead of improving upon it, it makes it worse. Both features are not available on the basic controls and can only be used in certain situations where the developer has chosen for the player to be able to dodge objects and user cover to his advantage.
- The player inventory is tiny and forces you to use your partners inventory as a second bag, but the A.I. partner usually waste healing items and doesn’t use half the items you give her.
- Partner A.I. is beyond awful. I would strongly suggest not playing this game in single player and taking advantage of the ability to play online with friends. I spent more time fighting with the controls and my partner than with the zombies. My A.I. partner would constantly unload rounds of bullets into my back without ever trying to readjust her line of sight. When she wasn’t shooting me in the back, she was either running in front of my line of sight or standing next to me and watching as I did all the work. My favorite part in the game was when we had to sneak by a hallway full of Lickers (blind mutated zombies) and she decided to randomly start shooting them, resulting in them killing her and forcing me to restart from the last checkpoint.
I’m glad I rented Resident Evil 5 and did not buy it. I’d suggest you do the same. It’s definitely worth playing, but not more than once. There is multiplayer DLC coming out within the next couple weeks, but it’s going to cost $4.99. While $4.99 isn’t much, paying for a feature that comes standard with most games today is just one more thing that is bad about this game. I haven’t played the multiplayer but I doubt that 2 vs. 2 with the stop and shoot controls can be fun. If you want to play an amazing single player 3rd person shooter with zombies, play Dead Space.
Your Score:
