Brutal Gamer

Resident Evil 5 (Xbox 360) Review

By Leigh - April 4, 2009 - 00:58 UTC

Resident Evil is one of the few franchises to this day which are still going strong with its main titles – not the crappy side titles; I’m looking at you Code Veronica. Resident Evil 4 was one of my favourite games of the last generation of consoles, and after how much I loved the game, couldn’t wait for the next one in the series which is finally here by still going strong Capcom – who have put out some quality titles so far this generation.

We start Resident Evil 5 with our old protagonist friend, Chris Redfield – y’know… the guy from the original Resident Evil title, remember him? Well, Chris has now moved on from S.T.A.R.S and is now a member of the BSA anti-terrorism unit who has been sent to Africa to meet up with Shiva, your objective? To hunt down some evil bastard called Irwvin who is an international arms dealer and has got his hands on some nasty piece of kit – Project Uroboros; the disease which mutates people into the zombie-like creatures known as Majini. You’ll later on meet with some old friends who you can’t help but remember.

Like any game which is good at telling story (something past Resident Evil games have pretty damn good at) and the latest game in the series doesn’t fall down in that category. It keeps you wanting more every time you put the game down, also while playing you can’t help but keep thinking and guessing what could happen next which every game which is good at story telling should do. Another strong point in the story telling section of the game is how it slowly unravels the back story of the key characters you meet during the game.

The games main story line will only take you 5-6 hours in co-op on normal if it’s your first play through, and the harder difficulties the time spent to complete those raises dramatically. It’s able to go from 5 hours on normal to 10 hours on hard – and finally to 15-20 hours on professional which can be unlocked after finishing hard. The harder the difficulty you chose, the even less ammo the game will give you – which is pretty damn tight as it is. Heads up to people yet to play the game; the AI is absolutely useless and playing it in co-op makes the game an incredible amount more fun.

Through out the story you go through a wide range of environments, all looking fantastic in there own creepy way; whether you are fighting the infected villagers in the marshlands near the oil fields or a few hundred feet underground hunting for the keys for a door in areas which look like Aztec ruins. While mentioning the great looking environments, might as well mention how fantastic everything else in the game looks – the fluid body animations while fighting, the great lighting and finally Shiva’s great ass. One thing which must be brought up though is how if you kill multiple Majini at once with say… an RPG sometimes it enjoys giving all 5 of the Majini the exact same death animation – you can’t help but laugh at it.

After you hit certain milestones during the games story line, you’ll be greeted by something Resident Evil games have had in the past is boss fights and I’ve always had a major problem with them. This being that how to kill the bosses is so blatantly obvious it’s more like there mocking you by showing it – I much prefer bosses which you even have to slightly think about how to kill them, but in this game they make it so clear they literally spray paint the weak points orange – they really might as well of hanged a giant red flashing neon sign saying ’shoot here you dumb fuck!’. This will be a good time to bring up how this game has a rather worrying obsession with incredibly frustrating quick time events which involve 10+ different button combination’s and if you or your partner fail hitting it you will then have to restart the whole event. Oh and F.Y.I Capcom, having to mash the same button for nearly a minute is not fun, at all – which ever designer decided to do that can honestly rot in hell.

The main thing which will keep you coming back for more and more through out the game is the amount of hidden items and unlock-able weapons. The most notable thing is the BSAA emblems, which are some of the hardest things to find in a game I’ve played to date – yes I do understand that hidden items are meant to be well… hidden but when the item sometimes isn’t even within the playing field and can only be spotted by using your trusty sniper rifle, surely that’s taking it a tad to far?

As the topic of hidden/unlock-able items, it’ll be a good time to bring up the other 30+ things you can buy from the in game store using the points you get from the ratings you get from missions (the points increase depending on how well you do on and the difficulty being played). Your able to buy things from documentation about the characters (things you previously didn’t know), figures of the enemies and characters, special costumes and finally the most important one; unlimited ammo for each weapon once they’ve been fully upgraded using the in game gold. Another nice little bonus feature in the game is the Mercenaries mode which was also in Resident Evil 4 if I remember rightly, where your giving a specific time to kill as many zombies as possible which earns you points.

Before Resident Evil 5 originally launched on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, Capcom released a demo onto both of the consoles online services. The demo received a lot of criticism, the main point being the games controls – everyone was incredibly pissed about not being able to move and shoot at the same time. Yes, I will admit originally it did annoy me but I was able to move on and understand why it was done this way; to add tension. It certain situations it can become quite annoying while your trying to run away from a blood soaked bag-headed chainsaw swinging bastard and then realizing you’ve got to stop to reload, it makes you be a lot more cautious about how you use the bullets in your clip – only reloading when need be and you have the time to do so.

Final verdict

Being the oh-so-pessimistic bastard that I am, I honestly expected this game to suck ass compared to Resident Evil 4, as usually when a game starts seeing large numbers near the end of it’s name the novelty behind them starts to wear off – but it hasn’t with this bad-boy. Hands down it’s one of the most enjoyable games I’ve played in co-op so far this year, and I can see me playing it for a good few months yet trying to defeat professional mode and finish finding the hidden treasures and BSAA emblems.

Although I do love this game, it still doesn’t change my opinion in thinking that charging for the multiplayer vs. mode for the game is beyond a joke – it should have been on the disk.

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