Straight from the heart of an Resident Evil 4 fan...
Resident Evil 5 is the latest installment into the ultra-popular Resident Evil franchise. It may have the number five in the title, but it's probably the 15th game, but I don't know for sure. ANYWAYS, there are a lot of things that set this game apart from other Resident Evil games, but all in all, it's essentially Resident Evil 4 with a different setting.
In the game you play as Chris Redfield, a character from Resident Evil 2. His job is to team up with Sheva Alomar to investigate a bioweapons deal in Africa. But (whoda thunk it?) everyone you encounter is a brainless puppet Majini(that's what they're called...not just 'zombies'). It turns out, the bioweapons deal is actually part of a much more dangerous plot that could lead to the destruction of the world.
You play the entire game with Sheva by your side. She's fairly able and can fight off Majini fairly well, and tries to not get in the way. But, it felt that almost every time I tried to use a scoped weapon, she was directly in the way and refused to move. This was sometimes frustrating, because it should be common sense NOT TO STAND IN FRONT OF A LOADED GUN.
The aiming of guns is used by a laser sight that makes a red dot on all enemy targets you aim at. There were a few occasions where I had to aim up or down and couldn't judge where I was aiming because Chris' body got in the way. And there were some occasions when the outdoor environments were too bright and made the laser too invisible. But all of these aim-screwing situations were few and didn't cause any anger. There is also a brand new cover mechanic added in there. Although it doesn't become useful until the end of the game, and it only works in select places, it works fairly well and adds a bit of depth to the combat. By shooting different parts on enemies other than their torso, they stumble in different ways which set Chris and Sheva up for certain melee attacks. By combining Chris and Sheva's attacks, you can deal some pretty serious damage on your foes while conserving precious ammo.
The graphics in the game are superb. The character models are all excellent, and all of their animations are wonderful (You can feel the awesome brutality of Chris' every punch!). The lighting effects are also excellent. The one thing I didn't like was some bad mouth movements that didn't really match the dialogue in cutscenes. But the cutscenes are so well-directed and exciting that I often was hardly even paying attention to the mouth movements when the story got interesting.
All the voice actors that portray all of the characters (with a huge variety of accents!) do top-notch jobs. The dialogue was also all well-written and believable. The thing that bothered me with RE4 was that some dialogue felt like it was a bit lost in it's Japanese translation.
What I really like about the game is the wicked boss battles. They are plenty of fun and offer some good challenge. Some of the boss battles in the game are of epic scale.
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Alright, the whole time I was playing the game I couldn't shake the feeling that this game was RE4. It almost felt like it was made with the same engine(apart from the much better visuals). The items on the list may seem like a wide stretch, but they're there.
-The story goes from one regular setting to different settings that are more ridiculous than the last.
-Each boss is a character that works under the power of the following boss.
-You can skip certain parts simply by running past everybody and their slow melee attacks.
-A lot of contextual actions. A LOT.
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Overall, this game is great. Although it's not as good as RE4 or Dead Space, it's still an awesome thrill-ride. So, as long as you liked Dead Space or RE4, it's pretty much impossible that you won't get a kick out of this game, too.