Resident Evil 5 is out today. Are you on the fence about whether to pick it up? Maybe you’d like some help deciding. I’ve pulled together five reasons why you might enjoy Capcom’s latest foray into survival horror.
Now you can get the top stories from Kotaku delivered to your inbox. Enter your email below.
By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Resident Evil 5 is out today. Are you on the fence about whether to pick it up? Maybe you’d like some help deciding. I’ve pulled together five reasons why you might enjoy Capcom’s latest foray into survival horror.
Just to provide a different perspective. (Incidentally, it is incredibly annoying that Kotaku pages refresh every 5 minutes and flush the entire comment field >:( )
You might not like Resident Evil 5 if:
You want to be able to enjoy the game on your own
The AI for your co-op partner is generally not very smart. She blows through ammunition, shoots you in the back because she’s too stupid to move to get a clear line of fire, and tends to get herself killed far too frequently.
You want a remotely intellectual experience
The puzzles in RE5 are practically nonexistent. Whenever a puzzle is present, the solution is blindingly obvious. There is no thinking required. The whole game is about slaughtering of zombies with another player in co-op, and the bulk of the design hinges around facilitating this with action set-pieces. Almost like it’s a third-person action game.
You want to feel you’re controlling a person, not a tank
RE5’s controls may have been tweaked, but they are still practically identical to RE4’s. Which in turn are fundamentally identical to the controls of the first game, the only major change being control of the camera. What was acceptable in 1996 on the Playstation is not necessarily acceptable thirteen years down the road. There has been significant development in the field of over-the-shoulder third-person action games since RE4. Dead Space, for example, is not only played from the same perspective, it’s in the same genre and unabashedly cribs most of its game design inspiration from RE4. Yet it has practically perfect controls for the type of game it is, where RE5’s feel archaic and clunky.
You want to see something new from the genre
Survival Horror was stuck in a rut for years. RE4 should have broken it out of that rut, but instead it seems to have simply carved a new hole for the genre to fall into. There’s really nothing new here beyond an admittedly very nice coat of paint and an essentially mandatory co-op mode (assuming you don’t enjoy frustration).
You don’t already have Dead Space
Probably opening a can of worms here given how militant some RE fanboys can be, but Dead Space is at least as well executed a game in most aspects as RE5. Graphically it’s on par, it has better sound design and better controls, and it has fundamentally the same underpinnings – killing zombies in a survival horror setting – but with some interesting ideas and at least attempts at breaking the mould that RE is stuck in. If you like survival horror games then you should be giving it at least a rental. Don’t judge it by the demo, as the demo was horrible.
I bought resident evil today, and I’m happy to say it was worth the $170 i forked out for it’s collectors edition. Sitting down and shooting hordes of zombies with a mate sitting next to you is the most fun i’ve had in ages.
How come it came out today, though? I thought it was supposed to be tomorrow. Not that i’m complaining.
Lol @ NegativeZero.
LOl.
Anyway-
I picked thsi up straight away and only put it down cause i realized i had homework to do:P
I love you, NegativeZero. In a completely platonic way of course.
I played the RE5 demo after finishing Dead Space twice; all I could think was “why couldn’t they just rip off Dead Space?”. The RE5 demo was like wading through mud, it has the most frustratingly terrible “what were they thinking?” controls I’ve used in years. 110% rose-coloured glasses on the gaming public with this game…
I’ve played a little under half of it I think and I’m not overly impressed. And I’m the biggest RE4 fan ever. The problem is not that they made it too much like RE4, they didn’t make it ENOUGH like RE 4. They took out everything which gave that game atsmosphere and character! The inventory system in this game sucks, there’s no merchant (!), so far the level design is pedestrian, the pacing of the story (especially at the start) is awful and so far there’s just a general failure to inject any character or that constant delightful surprise that RE4 had around every corner.
It’s like they’ve been hamstrung by having to use the graphics technology when the actual art direction and design is very dull and what’s actually happening in the game in terms of level design and plot is just, kind of, meh, so far.
Still, I’m hopeful that things will liven up when Evil Neo – I mean Whesker – actually turns up.
Leave a Reply