I’ve spent many a weekend afternoon in the woods, authentic replica firearm in hand, shooting at people whilst running and walking to make myself a more challenging target. Whilst I’ve never had an opportunity to replicate this scenario with a real gun, something tells me it’s unlikely that as soon as I want to pull the trigger, I will find myself paralysed from the hips down, only able to move by pivoting about my waist, only able to unfreeze my legs by returning my weapon back to my side.
Which makes it all the more confusing that Chris Redfield, trained soldier with biceps larger than the average tank, and Sheva Alomar, who has been fighting with guerilla groups since she was eight, both seem to suffer from the same disease that makes it impossible to move from the spot when aiming a weapon. Whilst this ‘feature’ has been present and correct since Resident Evil first began on PlayStation back in 1996 before the third person shooter really took off, once upon a time it was forgiveable, before other games came and threw some innovation and modernisation at the genre. Now it’s completely inexcuseable.
Resident Evil 4 was hailed by many as a revolution in the series, a true return to form, fixing the archaic control scheme. Those ‘many’ are a tad stupid, evidently oblivious to the fact that the control scheme hadn’t changed at all. Shifting the camera to the shoulder didn’t alter the fact that it still took an hour to turn 45 degrees and that fact that you had to stand still to be able to aim or fire your gun. All it did was turn it from an old-and-dated survival horror game into an old-and-dated third-person action shooter game.
Fortunately, of the two main problems with RE4, one of them is fixed (for the most part) in RE5. Whilst when in aim mode it still takes an eternity to move the laser sight from one side of the screen to the other, in normal gameplay it is now possible to control the camera with the right analogue stick, and since the ancient up = forwards mechanic remains, it is now much quicker to steer your character whilst walking or running. Walking is of course controlled by using the left stick, but to run, in traditional RE fashion, you must hold down a button whilst moving the stick. Capcom has clearly failed to notice that the last 5 main RE games and countless spinoffs have all been developed exclusively on consoles with analogue controls. In a day of third-person action games like Gears of War, GTA IV and Uncharted sitting on the shelves with such perfected cover systems and combat mechanics, using “it’s a survival horror” no longer works as an excuse for RE refusing to get over its stubbornness and take influence from these great examples of the genre, because it isn’t.
Back in the day Resident Evil, despite the incredible campness, was a survival horror game. Fixed angles prevented you from seeing around the corners, subtle noises like creaking floorboards or very faint groanings providing the only clues to the horrors that may or may not lie behind each door. Obscure puzzles prevented progress until you’d managed to come to the same illogical conclusion as the developers. With RE4, Capcom ditched any semblance of subtlety, opting for hordes of angry drugged up psychopaths at every turn instead of trundling zombies, but there were still a few obscure puzzles. In RE5 I recall one puzzle of note, and one that took all of 30 seconds to suss. Apart from an abomination of a control scheme, Resident Evil has strayed about as far from its roots as is possible.
But it’s not all bad. Once you’ve learned to contain your frustration at the horrors of the controls, you can divert your attention to what’s on the screen in front of you. And what’s on the screen in front of you is nothing short of jaw dropping. RE5 is a graphical tour-de-force like few others. The human character models in particular are astounding (even if Chris’s steroid-pumped body manages to defy all known laws of physics), with gorgeous backdrops, lots of on-screen action and huge explosions never creating a noticeable dip in the rock-solid framerate. The in-engine cut-scenes are big action-packed affairs, excellently choreographed and a sight to behold.
The sound doesn’t quite reach the same heights. The soundtrack isn’t particularly intrusive or bad, but it’s completely forgettable. The voice-acting is mixed at best, laughably awful at worst, sticking with the classic RE camp for the most part. Notorious series villain Albert Wesker is the worst offender, with some truly cringeworthy performances throughout. Sheva, despite being voiced by a Jamaican-American and supposedly being an African character has a strangely strong British accent.
The story is as you would expect. a chemical virus, evil pharmaceutical corporations and everyone’s favourite Neo-wannabe Wesker make up the bad guys, as huge numbers of Africans become infected, which makes them to lose the ability to speak in words and causes giant octopi to grow out of their faces, and go on a murderous rampage. And you have to stop them. And that’s pretty much it. There are a few of the old cast making brief appearances, and a host of dull and irrelevant new faces. You will get through the game not feeling an ounce of emotion for any of the characters, and will most likely have forgotten the story in its entirety by the time the credits finish.
When played in single-player, RE5 has you taking control of Chris (for the first playthrough at least), with Sheva being controlled by the AI. On the easiest difficulty setting, you may as well not be there. Sheva seems able to take off an enemy’s head with a single shot in half a second from three miles away with a standard pistol. Bump up the difficulty, and Sheva finds herself unable to hit the Titanic from six inches away. It’s all very inconsistent. She also can’t manage her own inventory, meaning whenever she’s used up all her ammo (usually within a minute of you handing her a dozen magazines), you have to stand next to her and start managing her items, giving her what she needs to be able to function. Just to rub this in, for the first time in RE you now can’t pause whilst managing the inventory, meaning you have to hold her hand and manage her equipment for her whilst countless infected come charging at you. This is eased somewhat on subsequent playthroughs, as completing the game means you can unlock infinite ammo for fully upgraded weapons, so you don’t have to watch her stock levels.
It’s worth making sure you’re the sole possessor of health items. Give Sheva a fully recovering first-aid spray, and she’ll use it on you as soon as your health goes down to 99%, wasting an entire can for nothing, just before you enter a boss battle. Her AI is replicated faithfully in the enemies. Because the inability to run and shoot would make the game physically impossible if the game’s enemies behaved in any way naturally, Capcom have counterbalanced this by making the Majini charge towards you, then stop dead about 6 feet away from you for a few seconds, giving you ample time to line up that headshot. It’s ridiculous and looks terrible, but as long as the control system remains so bad it’s hard to think of any other way of making the game playable.
And yet despite almost an entire review of bitching, there’s a saving grace for RE5. This is the first time the series has introduced co-op play, with player one taking charge of Chris and player two taking control of Sheva either via split-screen or online. This is perhaps the worst designed co-op in the history of anything ever. The screen isn’t split in two, as one might expect. The game gives each player a 16:9 window at the top and bottom of the screen, with big black bars down the side, meaning each player gets around 30% of the screen, with 40% of potential space completely wasted, making it needlessly small and hard to see. And this doesn’t even happen until you get into the game, which takes forever. In any normal game you would start a co-op mode, or the second player would press start on the level select screen. Not here. Player one must choose a game mode, choose the level, choose ready on the inventory screen, wait a while for the level to load, then once it’s loaded wait another ten seconds until the game has autosaved. Then, and only then, can player two press start, and the game dumps you both back to the inventory screen, and you have to load the whole thing up again. It’s beyond ludicrous.
But all this said, once you eventually get into a playable game of co-op, it’s strangely compelling. With hundreds of enemies bearing down on you, planning strategies, working together and outsmarting the opposition can be immensely satisfying. Once it gets going and you get in the groove, most of the fundamental game breaking issues are forgotten, and the game goes from being a frustrating, headbangingly bad experience to a still frustrating but stupidly fun one. The level end stats screen that displays each of your accuracy ratings and kill counts adds a nice bit of competition to go with the co-operation. It’s hard to identify exactly what it is that turns what is clearly such a bad game in pretty much every way in which a game is measured into such a joyful shooter. It doesn’t come under the Freakout/Big Rigs/Spirit Of Speed heading of being so utterly awful that it’s hilariously brilliant, and yet there’s no denying the happy times that lie within its multiplayer campaign. Without Sheva redefining the word ‘retard’ and not having to hold her hand throughout, a lot of the needless pressure is relieved and more time can be spent focusing on blowing things up. Having a competent sidekick who can actually cover whilst you reload is a useful thing to have.
Resident Evil 5 simultaneously manages to be among the best few games and worst few games I’ve played this year. There is almost nothing good to say about it, and yet when all is said and done it’s some of the most fun gaming I’ve ever done. It’s most definitely a game worth owning, but only if you have another friend with a copy. If you’re planning to play through the game by yourself, I’d advise picking up a length of strong rope to go with it. It’s not often I give a game two scores, but it would be unrepresentative and unfair to give Resident Evil 5 a single score. Even in the terrible single-player mode, it’s a better game than RE4, but its refusal to move with the times makes it better than not a great deal else, but when it wants to be, it’s a whole lot more fun that just about anything else out there.
Single player: 4 / Co-op: 9
