Resident Evil 5: My Review

Resident Evil 5 is a game that I wanted to play, but wasn't dying to get my hands on. Basically, I feel like I have a hard time getting into a lot of games these days, and since I never played RE4, which started the whole "not really zombies" storyline, I didn't really have the itch to dive into this game. I even played the demo when it was released on the Playstation Network and it didn't really change my mind. What it eventually took to get me excited was a taste of the two-player co-op mode. After I played the RE5 demo in co-op mode with Ricky, I immediately felt the urge to play the full game, so we acquired a copy from Blockbuster and went to town. All in all it took us three nights to beat the game, playing between 4 and 6 hours a night; Ricky as Chris Redfield and myself as the new character, Sheva. The following is my account of the experience playing through Resident Evil 5 in co-op mode:

First of all, the game looks great. It seems rare that I play a PS3 game which doesn't impress me visually, and RE5 is no exception. Second: the gameplay. We began (as we always do) on the normal/medium difficulty setting, which made the game challenging, but not so difficult that we had a problem with dying too frequently (until the end that is, which I'll get into in a little while). There's a decent variety of weapons with a pretty cool upgrading system to help give you more motivation to locate and obtain gold and treasures which you can use to purchase said upgrades. As with all of the RE titles, the game forces you to be strategic by limiting the number of items you can carry in your inventory at any given time. This adds a level of extra thought which makes the game both frustrating and fun, but if you're familiar with the RE games you probably knew that already. As far as the enemies are concerned, if you played through RE4 (or watched someone else play through it like I did) there isn't much new here aside from the bosses, but that's all well and good. There's a good enough variety of enemies that they never get old, and it was exciting to see the Lickers make an appearance for the first time in quite a while.

The game takes place in Africa, which is a pleasant change of scenery from the previous games. Speaking of the scenery, I already mentioned that the game looks great, but there are some really cool locales to play through. You begin in some dusty towns and eventually end up in a marshland, abandoned mining caves, an ancient temple, the standard underground Umbrella laboratory, and even a few boats/barges. One of the things the game had to offer which I was most delighted by were the scripted action scenes such as one which places you behind the trigger of a turret on a jeep that's speeding through the desert being chased by motorcycle-riding 'zombies' and huge trucks which you need to take out. I wasn't used to seeing that sort of action-packed gameplay in a Resident Evil game.

Now for the good stuff. The real draw of this game for me was, as I mentioned, the co-op. Resident Evil 5 offers so many great features and events for players to overcome as a team. I'm sure it works fine if you play through with the A.I. character, but nothing beats calling out to your friend for cover fire or a quick heal when you're in a tight spot. As with a number of two-player games these days you can be mortally wounded without dying immediately, giving your partner an opportunity to find you and give you a quick boost of health to bring you back from the verge of death. As far as I'm concerned, no video game moment beats the feeling of cooperation and teamwork that one gets from an instance like that. The ultimate example of this is the game Army of Two, which was designed specifically to be played by two people, but RE5 definitely still gets it right.

There are a lot of other cool moments to experience with a partner that are specific to certain parts of the game, as well. For example, there's a really tense segment which takes place in a pitch black mine shaft. As you enter said maze of tunnels you'll find a lantern with a big battery which one player must hold and use to light the way while the other takes out any 'zombies' you come across. It makes for some great teamwork. Even simple occurrences such as when one player is about to accidentally set off a tripwire and the other sees it and shouts out "STOP!" just in time to avoid a disaster make playing a game like this so much more rewarding. Not to mention, specific to the pairing of Ricky and I, we're very different when it comes to the way we like to play these types of games, which makes for some interesting interaction. For example, if a Shotgun or a Magnum is available, I'm gonna want it in my inventory, whereas Ricky tends to prefer machine guns and sniper rifles. This makes us the perfect team as one of us will always be perfectly suited for any situation. If there are enemies firing explosive arrows at us from across the level, I'll hang back and let Ricky take care of them with his rifle, and if larger, tougher enemies attack us straight on I'll take over the heavy lifting with my more powerful, close range weapons.

After beating the campaign mode, you're awarded Mercenaries Mode as was the case with the last few RE games as well. In this mode you're essentially dropped in the middle of one of eight (if I'm not mistaken) different stages and left to fend off a seemingly endless horde of increasingly dangerous enemies. You get points for every 'zombie' that you kill and bonuses for killing multiple enemies in short periods of time, earning you "combos" for rapid kills. You can either focus your attention on simply staying alive and racking up kills or also trying to locate and destroy glowing "time bonus" symbols which tack on extra minutes to the goal time you must meet to win in hopes that you can use that extra time to kill even more enemies and max out your score. Rank high enough in each level and you'll earn more characters and costumes to play with. Again, this mode takes teamwork to the extreme as Ricky and I often found ourselves healing one another, warning the other player of danger or new enemies, and swapping ammo when needed.

All in all I've got almost nothing bad to say about Resident Evil 5. Keep in mind that I did only play the game co-op, but so long as the second player A.I. isn't too incompetent, I can't imagine that the gameplay suffers too greatly from playing by yourself. I did say that I have almost nothing bad to say about the game though, and there was one part that pissed me (and Ricky) off to no end.

RESIDENT EVIL 5 SPOILERS BELOW
So at the end of the game you find yourself facing the final boss in the form of a heavily mutated Albert Wesker after your chopper goes down inside an active volcano. Crazy, right?! Well, the scenario is cool enough, but the trials and tribulations you need to face to actually defeat Wesker are infuriating. Rather than just blasting the hell out of him you need to wait for little orange orbs to appear on Wesker's body before you can injure him. This only happens on specific, scripted occasions, which is nothing new for the Resident Evil series (or video games in general), but in between these moments of target practice the "fight" can be very confusing. As we played we found ourselves dying or failing repeatedly and being forced to complete the same series' of events over and over as we tried desperately to figure out what we should be doing. I hate it when games go from being fun to becoming a test of endurance and patience via trial and error. Even that isn't the worst part though. There were other scripted events going on during the fight as well, such as a sequence where my character (Sheva) had to hang onto a cliff for dear life while Chris fought to keep Wesker off my back. During this entire segment I had to repeatedly tap the square button to keep from losing my grip on the rocks for about a minute at a time. Imagine having to do that close to 30 TIMES IN A ROW! By the time we'd finally figured out what the hell we were doing and defeated Wesker I was more happy to be done with the game than proud that we'd beat it.

END SPOILERS
Forunately, the part of the game described above was really the only down point. Aside from that one instance I never felt too confused or frustrated about what we were meant to be doing or where we were meant to be going, which is one of the most important parts of any good game. For a good co-op game, I'd honestly have to say that there are very few I'd recommend before Resident Evil 5. In fact, Army of Two may be the only one I can think of that tops it.