D:
Firstly, like any other review on the planet Earth, let's start with the story. Resident Evil has never really been known for its realistic nature or drama, but this game jumps the shark, big time. On top of out-matching the melodrama found in the Metal Gear Solid series, I feel like this is one of Jackie Chan's wet dreams. What I mean is, most of the stuff that is found in this game simply isn't possible, and I don't mean the zombie outbreak that started from just rats in a city. The choreography in this game is just way too silly for any normal person (like yours truly) to take seriously. The characters are walking stereo-types of action movies that are much shorter than the 5 hours required to beat this game. Chris is the muscle bound hero that has a "dark" back story and has a personal vendetta against Wesker, who is the villain stereo-type that has no moral value or motivation, other than the reason of him just being naturally bad. You also have Sheva, the independent woman who always makes a witty remark right before she kills something. Capcom obviously isn't that good a writing a story and this game is more than enough proof of that. If this doesn't convince you of that fact, Devil May Cry is right around the corner.
But is it a bad story, not counting its numerous clichés? Well, I like to think that somewhere in the Resident Evil universe there is actual logic that could make this an impressive zombie story. There are a bunch of documents laying around in this game that give further insight to this games story, implying that were supposed to take this seriously, but I never read any of them. Given the length of most of them, I just wanted to skip them and continue playing the game; they are just way too boring and long for me to get anything out of them. I also get this feeling that this story is supposed to be epic, and to some extent, this is a pretty dynamic story. It's horribly written and very stupid, but there are more than enough explosions to keep my attention through the mediocrity of the story. It's bad, but never so much that it can detract from the actual game. Like I said, you can skip over all of the documents in this game, and you can pass the cut-scenes if you want to. So I guess I can't really hold much against the story of this game, so I'll let it pass.
If there's one thing that I'll give credit to the story, it'd definitely be the scenarios of the game. While the story might be technically awful, I like it for the fact that it's a story that's very Commando-esque. Hell, Resident Evil 5 matches the quality of the live-action films that are based off the series, more so than any other game in the series. I say this because of all the explosive set-pieces that can be found in both. For example, the scene in Resident Evil: Extinction, where Alice is fighting off a hoard of zombies in broad daylight of the dessert is reminiscent to the part in the beginning of Resident Evil 5 where you fighting off a hoard of zombies while you wait for a chopper to come pick you up. Both are very intense scenes that left me satisfied. I find that this inspiration between the movies and this game actually adds up to a game that I feel has the best story out of all the stories in the Resident Evil series. Sure, Resident Evil 4 did this as well, but I feel that Resident Evil 5 further realized the potential of what could happen in the Resident Evil universe, thanks to the hardware that was unavailable when Resident Evil 4 rolled around. It really depends on what you're asking for with the story of this game. This is one of the reasons that older fans can't really stand the newer Resident Evil's; they've changed their direction in story-telling. The first games offered a more suspenseful and brooder story than the Resident Evils of today, that focus more on dynamics and keeping the players interest with action. I have no real preference when it comes to either story-telling technique, but they both work to some extents, like I mentioned earlier for Resident Evil 5 and 4. I'd tell you about how the story goes for the older games, but then, I'm not reviewing those.
The story in the game lends itself to many over-the-top set-pieces that are there in an attempt to heat things up. It's an action game, after all, and it might as well follow what's popular in the genre. You have fast moving vehicles, you have red tanks that explode when you shoot them, and, to top it all off, huge bosses. It's not only clichéd as far as the story goes; this game follows the typical action game follow through, and offers very little in the ways of new things in this regard, other than being the first Resident Evil game that is an action game. It's not a bad thing to follow these generic traits, but I do expect them to be at least a little thought out. To be honest, this game is little more than a straight line with a few knobs that need to be turned here and there (puzzles, if you will). The games design is very straight-forward, and often times it's repetitive and boring going through the same motions of shooting zombies and solving "puzzles" over and over again. Had this game not been 5 hours, it would have over-stayed its welcome, and I don't think I need to tell you that it's sad when a game starts to lose my patience only at the 5 hour mark. Essentially, it's a condensed version of Final Fantasy XIII if it were an action game with zombies.
The actual shooting in this game is probably my favorite part of this game, which surprises me, because that seems to be people's biggest problem with this game (aside from the game not being "scary"). I personally love the slow, somewhat strategic nature of this games shooting. In most shooters, it doesn't really matter where you shoot someone. In Resident Evil 5, it matters very much where you shoot someone. If you shoot someone in the leg, they usually stumble a bit, leaving them open for a melee attack. If you shoot them in the head, they usually let another deadly monster fly out of their body (one that also tries to eat your face). It's actually pretty deep, and it's something that people don't really give credit to this game (or Resident Evil 4 for that matter). Sure, the controls don't let you maneuver fast, or walk while shooting, but that isn't what was meant to happen in the first place. Unfortunately, there's a problem with this.
In Resident Evil 4, this system was used to a much greater effect. I say this because the game was touted more as a horror game, one that was meant to be much tenser. Having to stand still while shooting not only increased your accuracy, but it also left you open at pretty much all angles for a zombie to try and kill you. As I've said before, Resident Evil 5 isn't a horror game like this. It's an action game, plain and simple, and having to stand still while shooting does nothing in this games favor as an action game. People like being able to move and shoot in a dynamic game like this because it usually raises the frantic nature of all the action in this game. You want to be able to keep up with it at a fast pace, but not being able to move and shoot at the same time is where this game falls flat as an action game. I like this system, but it's miss-matched in this game. It's sort of like having Link's automatic jump mechanic in Ocarina of Time in a Mario game, it just doesn't work.
What elements that do match this game, unfortunately, are ones that had to be streamlined from Resident Evil 4 so this could work as a co-op game. For instance, the inventory screen: looking back at Resident Evil 4, your inventory was a Diablo style pack, where you could move items around and place them in different spots so you could put more items into your inventory, and different sized items/weapons took up different amounts of space. Resident Evil 5 removes this, and replaces it with a much simpler 9 item inventory screen, that only lets you have 9 items. This was made because of the co-op system in this game, which tries to save time when you're organizing your stuff so that you don't have to keep your partner waiting. It's thoughtful, but I'd probably re-gift it so I could get the money to buy the old inventory back. Resident Evil 4's inventory screen was so nice and complex, and it actually made you think hard about the way you'd play the game. Resident Evil 5 says screw that, and has a giant chest that you can place everything in so that you are never without a weapon that will make things too easy. This inventory system has to match an easy difficulty, because there's less flexibility in how you play the game. That's pretty sad when you think about it…
Aside from mixing and matching things that don't really work in this game and stream-lining components of Resident Evil 4 that made it brilliant, what is the biggest problem with this game? In the campaign, if you aren't playing cooperatively with another person locally or online, you're stuck with an AI partner, whom I'll refer to as Bickie Ditch. Bickie Ditch is one of the worst AI companions that I've ever seen in an action game, one that will constantly get in your way when you're trying to actually get stuff done. It's not that she's a bad shoot, in fact, she's actually more a-keen to wasting her ammo instead of following the clever body-part mechanics that I mentioned earlier. She has an option of shooting weak-points, but chances are she'll just shoot the person in the chest, under all circumstances. This wastes my ammo, as we share the same cache of stuff, and it's irritating that I constantly have to save Bickie Ditches life constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY. Bickie Ditch thinks it's funny to just run into the massive horde of zombies to see if she can out-live them when I'm trying to mow them down. It's pretty much impossible to play this game with friendly fire on (thank God you can turn it off though).
There are plenty of other reasons why Bickie Ditch is awful, but you get the jest of what I'm saying. Bickie Ditch is the only legitimately broken aspect of this game, and it brings the entire campaign down. Of course, when playing with a friend, this putrid stain is a lot cleaner, but that doesn't change the fact that this game is a fundamental mess. This is where one of the coolest parts of Resident Evil's 4 and 5 lies: "Mercenaries". "Mercenaries" is a sort of survival mode that pins you against an endless wave of zombies as you try to get the highest score that you can. With the removal of Bickie Ditch, the boring design, and the horrid story, this is easily the funnest part of the game, mainly because it takes some of the better design points of the campaign (the huge environments that usually have branching paths) and makes them twice as good. What I especially like about this mode is that you don't have to have an AI partner, but you are allowed to play it locally or online with one of your buddies, which leads to an absolute load of fun. If the game had been more based around this concept, then this would be one of the funnest action games to be released this generation.
"Mercenaries", unfortunately, only counts as an extra mode to this game, with the campaign taking center stage of where all the attention went. "Mercenaries" was a pretty scant mode when this game first came out in 2009, and has since then been upgrades tremendously with DLC. I purchased the Gold Edition of this game, and I really appreciate the fact that a lot of attention went into this mode after this game was released. If you're going to pick this game up for any reason, let it be this mode. Trust me when I say that this is the only portion of Resident Evil 5 that I really dug.
The visual end of this game is… pretty extraordinary. For a game that came out in 2009, this is one damn-fine looking game, especially for the PS3 version that I played. The lighting in the game is just amazing, with the shadows actually looking really good for the most part (it'd take me a long time to explain why I'm shocked that they look good, so I'll just stop there with the shadows). While this is generally a fantastic looking game, I do have two issues with it. The first is that some of the textures look kind of ugly. There's a lot to this game, so I did expect a few blemishes on this games surface, but there were more than enough muddy looking textures to catch my eye. The second problem I have is with the frame-rate. This game experiences slow down at rather inconsistent rates, varying from butter smooth to picture slide-show choppy. Other than those two flaws, this is a really great looking game, and it's one that actually has a good amount of visual variety in both the campaign and "Mercenaries", with rickety docks, abandoned towns, industrial areas, underground mines, etc. Granted, most of it is rehashed from ideas that came from Resident Evil 4, but then, I'm not going to expect a game from 2009 to have nothing but original areas.
The art design of the game is some-what standard, with the exception of some cool looking creatures that you fight. I do have a problem with the recurring enemy models and most of the bosses that consist of nothing but tentacles, but they aren't really enough to drag anything down (especially when the game can last you only 5 hours, leaving little room for repetition in visuals). The cool looking monsters that I mentioned really do shine in this game, like the *TEH SPOILERZ!* Lickers that you encounter about 3/4ths of the way through the game, or the Mantis looking things that you fight around the end of the game. There is a good amount of enemy variety in enemy structures, although I wish that there was more variety in how they look.
The sound in the game is decent, if somewhat monotonous. The explosions sound great, the sound of your bullets hitting the enemies is very identifiable, and the voice-acting is above average. When I say monotonous, I mean the constant repeat of sound-clips from the zombies that get old after about, eh, 30 minutes. The unimpressive score of this game gets kind of irritating also, mainly because it loops way too quickly, and it usually draws out during boss fights that take a substantial amount of time. Other than that, it's nothing really special, especially when compared to Resident Evil 4, which did everything that this game did in twice its measures. All around, the presentation is great.
You know, I actually had to rename the title of this review from "Guilty Pleasure #1". I realized after dissecting this game for what it is, this is definitely the least impressive Resident Evil game in the main series. It's not bad, minus Bickie Ditch, but it fails to be an impressive successor to Resident Evil 4, a game that is often considered to be one of the greatest games of all time (and for good reasons). The fundamental flaws and over-all lack of effort in designing this game really hold it back from being recommended by me. Had this game built upon the foundation of Resident Evil 4 as opposed to walking in the cooperative direction, this could have been a great sequel. But as it is, I'd only recommend this game if you have someone to play with. Otherwise, it isn't really that great of an investment of your time or money.
Review by Cal Burkhart