Resident Evil 5 Review
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nutcrackr
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As somebody who has never played any of the Resident Evil games I was anxious to finally try the game on the PC now that Capcom had put some real effort into a decent port. On one hand I’m pleased to report that this indeed is quite a good PC port, the graphics are outstanding and it runs superbly on mid range systems. There is mouse support and aside from some mouse sway it’s fairly easy to get headshots. However I feel that there are just too many flaws related to the basic game mechanics that I cannot ignore them even under such a polished exterior. Many of these relate directly to the design decisions that come into play heavily around the high action segments. Fans of the series will probably be perplexed at why these are a problem and indeed they may not be to some. However as a new gamer to the franchise I felt constantly at battle with the stiff controls rather than the zombies I should have been focusing on. I was cautious of the game restrictions rather than the world restrictions and this pain was barely alleviated once I had a good handle of the controls. In short I wasn’t scared of a zombie running towards me holding a chainsaw; I was terrified of reloading at the wrong time knowing my neck would be a victim because I couldn’t disengage that reload. These stiff controls / gameplay decisions are illogical choices in my mind that hamper greatly the rest of the amazingly well designed game. Many will argue that this game is a heavily strategic, slow paced third person shooter; I’ll argue that it’s simply flawed to make it harder. The good news is the game is basically designed around co-op play, so while I strongly recommend against single player those who venture online might enjoy it quite a bit.
The basic action elements during the story are pretty straightforward, the Majini are red-eyed zombie like humans who use weapons and their own teeth to try to kill you. Most of the time this just means going along a fairly linear path and meeting these zombies at set places along the way. Other times you will be presented with an open layout scattered with huts or rooms that will hold ammo and health goodies. A trigger will then cause a mad zombie rush and you must hold your ground or maybe defeat a bigger boss-like foe to progress. This happens a few times and it breaks the game objectives down pretty simply. Your job is to find ammo, because there is very little of it, and get some distance between you and the slow moving zombies.
In these open regions you’ll have a few choices to move around in different directions to position yourself. You’ll get in a position to attack then unload a few rounds; kill a few guys then run away to do it again. You might mix in a melee attack if the enemy is staggering. While the normal zombies don’t kill you instantly you will be damaged badly by a few hits and won’t really want to be cornered by half a dozen of them trying to bite your face off. The big guys amongst the action take a lot of damage and require quite a lot of resources. You can’t afford to focus all your attention on them though, the smaller guys can mess you around if they are left unattended. This running and shooting open gameplay element contrasts with the general progression where you come across a few zombies along a confined path. Many of these situations the spawn points are quite predictable and at times I felt tired of having to put up with another group of mindless red-eyed aggressors after a short entrance cut scene. Later in the game, you will be dealing with these semi-mindless Majini wielding assault rifles and rocket launchers. They have pretty good accuracy so you need to use cover a lot more and juggle Majini so they don’t unload rounds into you. The basic combat mechanics used throughout the game have some serious game mechanic problems however.
Just a nice drive in the desert with some motorbike zombies.
The problems I have with Resident Evil 5 are that I just cannot forgive many of the game mechanics, or design decisions for this game in single player. As a new player to the series I feel confused about why these archaic and frustrating mechanics might be used to enhance tension or make the game harder. One example is not being able to move while you shoot / aim, this has been used in a few games so it’s not something I’m greatly opposed too although I think being able to move a little bit would not drastically hurt any of the gameplay. The next problem is not being able to move while reloading; now this seems the first step too far. In many of the open areas you will be running around and will need to reload as you restock, but you need to stop and reload which makes you run away constantly from groups. Perhaps the final annoyance is the very fact that you cannot turn around when reloading. This does not seem to enhance tension, if you could turn and face your incoming attackers while reloading you have a visual timer, instead you just get attacked from behind. These controls also seem to make the game terribly static. None of these features offset the difficulty, the enemies are very slow and if you run and gain enough distance these features don’t usually get you killed. I’d rather be able to turn while reloading, move while reloading and move a little while shooting. To offset they could simply increase the speed of the Majini, then the frustration is solved and you are under a bigger time pressure.
There are other problems too, commanding your AI partner cannot be done while doing another task. You cannot buy ammo directly from the “store”, only through weapon capacity upgrades. The reason for this lack of purchasable ammo is pretty simple – the game revolves around the fact that you will have next to no ammo for the majority of the game. Some of the sections are more about ammo hunts than shooting galleries especially early on. The combat makes this game feel like a turn based third person shooter, that’s how slow and cumbersome it can be. The real reason for many of these mechanics becomes clear when you play coop with somebody in mercenaries or story mode. Since there is very large movement restriction you must cover your partner from attacks to the side or behind. It was quite common for me in the Mercenaries mode to be aiming around my partner while they did the same, looking toward each other. To top off these gameplay problems is the difficulty I had with the partner AI that stays with you the entirety of the game.
Unfortunately the AI for friend and foe is also terrible and at times adds unnecessary time wasting and frustration. The Majini are essentially zombies so calling their AI bad is a lot harder to justify. Nevertheless they seemed to get stuck behind doorways or have problems navigating tight spaces quite often. The real problem however comes from your female partner, Sheva, and her incredible ineptitude. Sheva will get in your way, shoot you, waste ammo, and kick you down among other things. In the open areas often you will need to run and then turn around to unload a few bullets. Unfortunately more times than I can count as soon as I turned around Sheva was standing right in my line of fire! Now if I could move slightly this would probably have eliminated this problem too. It is quite hard to throw grenades when Sheva just stands directly in your way. The next thing she loves to do is shoot you. Now clearly Capcom worked out she does this so her shots do not damage you unless she has a grenade launcher. However in a world where ammo is very rare unloading 10 bullets directly into my back makes me cringe. She will also regularly kick you down as you are near other zombies and she goes for a flying jump kick.
She has some scripting that will take her near barrels and ammo caches so you can see them easier, but she will just stand there as I use my knife to slice her and the barrel open. You can order her to attack or cover you. In cover mode she simply took control of the stun rod and stood by my side taking only those in close range. In attack mode she would move forward and shoot fairly accurately at enemies but often running into my line of fire or unloading her weapon very quickly. Of course a few times during the game she seemed to ignore both of these orders. This might be charging in to a group of weapon wielding Majini with a stun rod even though she had ample ammo. Other times just standing by my side as I ordered her to attack a boss. In one game section she was stuck on a conveyor belt for 10 minutes, trying to run along it. There really is only one good thing about the AI and that is it shoots very accurately so a few places so she redeems herself a little bit for weak spot bosses. The AI is badly flawed and is not good enough for people who want to play alone without being frustrated.
Hey let me show you my shiny spear, oh and my gum disease.
Fortunately there are some redeemable qualities here, graphics and cut scenes among the top. The graphics on the PC are pretty amazing most thanks to the character design. The main story characters have been modelled amazingly well with crisp textures. They also have put some high quality work into the cut scenes with some good directing, clean voice work and impressive animation sequences. In fact in many ways the cut scenes are perhaps the best part of the game, they are entertaining and you won’t be struggling with stiff controls. There are some good lengthy cut scenes that honestly felt more fun than most of the single player gameplay did. Sadly there is some button mashing cut scenes, requiring you to push a button in rapid succession or tap a button in time. In comparison with other button mashing RE5 is generally pretty easy to complete, especially at the start.
The graphics aren’t just good in the cut scenes though, the world is desinged really well and the Majini look incredible sometimes. This is partly due to the good animation work in conjunction with the attacks. Shoot one Majini in the head and watch him hold his head and bend over. Shoot one in the leg and he will kneel over. Many later in the game also do some evading so headshots don’t come easy. Two sequences featured a rather unique “flowing” boss creature in some sewers that looked amazing I can’t quite work out how they managed to animate it so well. Even the presentation carries over to some of the action set pieces. One was a car chase across the desert, featuring motorbike riding Majini and trucks. It’s one of the best chase sequences I’ve played for a long time in video games and these can be really hard to pull off. At times I would have to say the graphics easily rival Crysis, the game’s speed is nowhere near as fast which might explain why it can produce such good visuals. It doesn’t have huge levels but there is some really great design here. If you are a big eye candy gamer than RE5 is really a no brainer. Some of the problems with single player do seem reduced when stepping online.
Resident Evil 5 features a few different multiplayer modes for the adventurous to get a hold of. The first is co-op of the single player story. You can simply start playing and leave the game open to join, or join an existing. This as you can imagine eliminates the very poor AI problems you face alone, although you sacrifice good aiming and occasionally (depending on your partner) a good inventory list. One of the later missions I had a new player join equipped with a basic pistol and not much ammo, spending $20,000 of my money to help him out he left after 3 failed attempts, leaving me with next to no left over funds up against two chain gun bosses. Mercenaries mode is basically a horde like onslaught of zombies, wave after wave. The focus is to get combos (kills) and survive, along with smashing timers to extend your available time limit.
The open sections in the single player story are used in this mode so you should be familiar with the layouts if you completed the game. You can also use several of the story characters which have different starting load outs along with a set of unlockable outfits and finishing moves which are purely cosmetic. Managing ammo and distance from enemies is a non-stop task here but the pacing and the teamwork makes it just a little more exciting. There is no text chat in game, so you’ll need to use the cumbersome GFWL message system or voice, the characters do have basic “Thanks” and “Come Here” commands though. I definitely had more fun in both coop single player and coop mercenaries modes which leads me to conclude that this game was built around coop and sadly that means badly sacrificing the single player portion. I would not recommend this title to those who strictly stay offline because the game has far too many issues to overcome. If you are willing to play online then it’s a fairly enjoyable experience if you don’t have somebody as inept as the game AI.
Crocodile infested waters are nice traps for red-eyed zombies.
The single player component of RE5 might not be as bad for all gamers as described, especially if you are familiar with the series. If you are already well aware of the design restrictions relating to shooting, moving, opening things then you’ll probably want to forget all of the complaints I made and focus on the graphics and fairly enjoyable story. If you aren’t worried about playing alone with the very dumb AI because you have a coop partner set up already then there is no reason to avoid the game. The bottom line is for me the game is simply not enjoyable playing through alone when I’m constantly in battle with my own character, Chris Redfield, and my AI partner rather than any African “Zombies”. Resident Evil 5 features GFW LIVE, so it has achievements and allows you to play multiplayer via the service although it didn’t seem that many were online.
I will also say that RE5 rarely scared me, mostly due to me being annoyed with the controls – and therefore always knowing that I was very much playing a game. I don’t really recommend RE5 unless you love the slow, strategic, stiff gameplay as described above. I didn’t find the game overly hard, at times the direction and puzzle type scenarios were incredibly simple. The combat was only really tough when you ran out of ammo or failed to reload at the right time. There are other horror third person shooters, like Dead Space, that I believe offer much better fluid gameplay and more scares. Fans of the series will probably love the title because it’s such a great looking game. As a new player I cannot forgive what I consider faulty gameplay mechanics that seem to be in place just to make it harder when there are other techniques that could’ve been used.