deadrats review of resident evil 5

12th Apr 2009 16:49 #1

Banned

oh no, not another review from this guy!!! yes, another review from "this guy", this time i will be reviewing the latest installment of resident evil, namely number 5, for the PS3.

a bit of history on my "love affair" with the resident evil franchise:

i bought the playstation 1 because of resident evil director's cut, a masterpiece of a game. REDC created the survivor horror game genre by effectively putting you in a game equivalent of a horror movie; it had excellent graphics for the time, creepy music, creepy sounds, like the moaning of the zombies or the creaking of the doors as they opened, a creepy atmosphere and it created a sense of dread and being alone as well as filling the player with the desire to explore and the thrill of discovery when you found something. the story was pretty good, and while i initially remember being a tad disappointed when i found out that the zombies where the result of bio-weapon experimentation, i quickly got over it and found that i wanted to learn more of the story. the game was hard, and took me a long time to finish, but thanks to the ability to choose either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine which had a slightly different approach to the game, the ability to unlock hidden weapons that could be used during the next play through and the fact that the game used different camera angles depending on the difficulty setting used, REDC had tremendous replay value and i found myself many a night sitting in a dark room until the wee hours of the morning playing through the game.

resident evil 2 continued with the tradition and not only sported better graphics, as was to be expected, but expanded on the above atmosphere by introducing fresh settings, fresh enemies, fresh weapons, along with some old favorites, slightly smarter enemies, and being a 2 disk game. RE2 allowed you to play as Leon Kennedy or Claire Redfield, but each character had an A and a B scenario, with the B scenario of one character only being unlocked after the A scenario of the other character was completed. the B scenarios basically told the same story as the A scenario but from the other characters point of view, things that you did in one characters A scenario affected the other characters B scenario, the events in the A scenarios allowed access to new areas in the B scenarios and the B scenarios where somewhat longer as they had an additional "level" that needed to be beaten in order to complete the game. when you add that to the mini-games that were unlocked after beating both scenarios, the special weapons that became available, such as the sub-machine gun with infinite ammo, and the unlockable playable characters within the mini-games, each with their own little story arch, it added up to tons of replay value, great bang for the buck and just a great game overall.

resident evil 3 brought back Jill Valentine, and introduced a few new game elements, such as the ability now move up and down stairs freely, by just walking up to them rather than having to press the action button, this allowed enemies to follow you up and down stairs. in addition there was a new randomization feature that placed some weapons and items in random locations that changed from one play through to the next. in addition the player now had a new dodge feature, there was now a new boss level enemy (Tyrant) that stalked you throughout the game and you could shoot oil drums or steam pipes to kill nearby enemies. there was also a "live selection mode" during which time you were prompted to choose between one of two possible actions which affected the direction the story took. there was also a mini-game that allowed you to choose 3 different characters that were not playable during the normal game but made an appearance and you could also use your winnings within the mini-game to buy new weapons with infinite ammo to use within the normal game. despite these changes and the better graphics, RS3, for me, had lost what had made the previous 2 incarnations so compelling: you could only choose a single character to play with during the normal game, but more importantly that sense of doom, the sense of foreboding, the feeling of dread that was present during the first 2 games was gone, basically the game had shifted focus and i for one wasn't too crazy with what had resulted.

somewhere along the line capcom released dino crisis, a sweet game, and while they took steps to make sure that it wasn't "dino evil", the results where a very entertaining game, with enough new stuff added to what made the first 2 resident evils so great that it definitely deserved a place in any diehard RE fans collection.

then came what in many ways was the best resident evil of them all: resident evil code veronica, the reason i bought a dreamcast.

code veronica was the first resident evil to use 3d backgrounds instead of pre-rendered ones, which resulted in better overall graphics, particularly during alpha-blending, particularly with rain and fire. the gameplay was pretty much the same as RE3 but they added some abilities from RE2, namely the ability to use side packs to carry more items, as well as upgradable hand gun parts, but they added some cool new weapons such as a crossbow with exploding arrows as well as the ability to use 2 guns simultaneously, one in each hand, allowing you to track and shoot at 2 different enemies at the same time. the game also went back to its roots in many ways and the sense of dread was back, the enemies were cooler, the various locations were fresh and the game while not allowing you to choose between 2 characters initially, did span 2 different characters as you played the first half as Claire Redfield and the second half was played as her brother Chris Redfield. there was also the now obligatory mini-game and over all code veronica was just fantastic.

then came a game cube remake of the first resident evil and back we went to the pre-rendered backgrounds, which was necessary for the nearly photo-realistic environments and it was stated that the remake was "70% different from the original", a claim that certainly has merit. it would be almost impossible to list all the differences between the remake and the original but suffice to say that playing through the remake was like playing a completely new game, certainly worth the money.

which brings us to resident evil: zero, a title that certainly does a great job of describing how much i felt the game was worth. unlike any of the previous resident evils, zero was an installment that i had to force myself to complete, just to see what the ending was, but i hated playing through it with a passion. sure the graphics were better than any of the previous resident evils, but the fact that you now controlled 2 characters, Rebecca Chambers and Billy Coen and the new "partner zapping" feature that allowed both characters to move together with you controlling one and the computer the other OR separating them so that they can search different areas at the same time, with you switching back and forth between the 2, as was required to solve certain puzzles made for a very tedious and tiring game, a game should not wear you out, it should relax you after a hard days work. all in all it sucked big time.

resident evil 4: what a game this was!!! it completely moved away from previous resident evils, both in focus and gameplay, and now the enemies were not zombies but parasite controlled humans. these enemies were way smarter than previous enemies in that they were almost bizarro-like carrying out chores, working, "living" a strange existence all while trying to kill you and threatening you in spanish (i love it when the villagers would threaten to chop you into ground meat, in spanish). the types of enemies were so varied it's outside the scope of this post to describe all of them. i will add that despite the radical changes from previous resident evil editions and despite only having 1 playable character during the main game (except for a very brief interlude where you play as a little girl), the classic resident evil atmosphere was, for the most part, maintained, the sense of foreboding was there and thanks to all the unlockable weapons and the mini-games, the replay value is quite high. all in all RE4 ranks right up there with code veronica as one of the best of the series.

and so it was that i had really high hopes for resident evil 5 when i heard it was coming to the playstation 3 and after i saw some of the trailers, i bought a PS3 in anticipation of RE5. so, did the game live up to my expectations? allow me to answer that by pointing out that not only is RE5 the first game in the series that i not only did not finish but also have no desire to finish the game. not only don't i want to finish the game that i actually sold the game and my PS3 (i have been really disappointed with the over-priced games for the console).

what don't i like about the game? perhaps the first thing is that it's no longer "resident evil", i don't know what it is. capcom basically took resident evil 4, improved the graphics considerably, added some new animations, such as when you are using a health spray or eating an egg, ruined the controls (which i wasn't too crazy about with RE4, the only thing i didn't think was great), added a partner that can either be AI or co-op controlled, paid homage to some of the previous editions by including elements in the various stages from previous games, introduced enemies that are for all practical purposes humans, the zombie or parasite controlled aspect is gone, they are for all intents and purposes human enemies, and basically made an action game. gone is any semblance of "survivor horror", gone is the sense of dread, foreboding, the eeriness, the feeling like you stepped into a horror movie. if resident evil directors cut is like one of the scarier zombie flicks, like some of the "dead" movies, then RE5 is like the latest die hard movie or maybe a jackie chan movie.

what made resident evil great is gone and in its place is a summer block buster action flick and i personally think it's a shame. now i know this isn't much of a review of RE5 but RE5 isn't much of a game and doesn't deserve a more thorough review.

stay away from this clunker, unless you like half-assed action games.