It's a Rush, It's a Scream--It's the Return of Resident Evil

Author's Rating:

Pros: Replay value, graphics, exciting, continuing story of the RE franchise

Cons: Controls are still a little outdated

The Bottom Line: 
A fun frenzy of death and mayhem with tons of violence and gore coupled with exciting and jaw-dropping moments. A worthy addition to your PS3!

Author's Review
Resident Evil 5 is the direct sequel to the actual core of the series unlike some of the spin-offs Capcom is infamous for. Chris Redfield returns in a story that takes place in 2009 where he’s investigating Umbrella’s reach in Africa where bioterrorism seems to be running amok turning people into crazies. Redfield teams with another agent named Sheva to combat this threat and figure out who’s behind this madness and survive an onslaught of foes where they are outnumbered and outgunned.

Usually I don’t find the Resident Evil games having very noteworthy stories as I think that the overall plot of the games have become confusing and labored, but this game had a story I could follow quite easily and I have to say it was pretty exciting--much in the same vein as Resident Evil 4’s.

As you investigate the happenings of this small African town (and later environments), you piece together slowly what’s happening before the fateful climax where you track down the big evilness in hopes of destroying it before the world is in jeopardy of defeat. As much, you can easily jump into this game without prior experiences of the last games no problem--especially because some parts of the game help you play a little bit of catch-up.

While the franchise is rooted in survival/horror--hell, they invented the very concept back in 1996, Resident Evil 5 is more of an exciting action game than a straight-up horror one. That’s no to say there are moments that will make your palms sweat as you navigate through a swamp with alligators biting at you or coming undone when you are being chased by chainsaw-wielding maniacs, but it’s much more downplayed making much of the horror taking place during the daytime instead of brainless zombies jumping out at you.

Quite possibly one of the biggest selling points of RE5 is the co-op offered. You can definitely play the game by yourself  as Chris Redfield with Sheva right beside you as a non-playable character who helps you out, I definitely encourage blasting away at this game with a friend because that’s almost the way it was intended. More than that, you can take your game online and play through with anyone you wish. This two-person concept makes this extremely interesting as there are moments in the game where you have to separate and the safety in numbers quickly goes away.

There aren’t many puzzles in RE5, which are one of the mainstays of the genre, and the ones that are offered aren’t very exciting. The exciting moments happen when you are outnumbered with running infected peeps coming towards you holding objects after you to maim and kill you. The action is fast-paced and interesting with an almost Gears of War attention to pacing so that you’re constantly doing things to advance the locations and story. This isn’t one of the longer Resident Evils, but it did take a friend and I about fifteen hours to blast through it--with more opportunities to play through it using different weapons and difficulties to throw caution in the wind.

As you traverse through the landscapes of bodies and tasks, you come into contact with a variety of weapons from simply handguns to automatic weapons and shock rods even. The game lets you play around with weapons and upgrade them to their maximum potential by having you purchase and tweak them in between levels and/or if you die. The gameplay is varied as well with moments in the game that have you shooting from the back of a vehicle to protect yourselves, a boss battle on a ship with you manning turrets, and a cool boat portion.

The controls aren’t as bad as they were in other incarnations of the game and actually sticks close to the loveliness that Resident Evil 4 brought to the series. You still can’t fire your weapons as you’re maneuvering, which doesn’t make any sense, but after a while you get used to it. Switching between your inventory on the fly as combat is occurring is insanely tense and there are definitely awkward moments where you’ll use items or discard them accidentally, but what can you do? The developers still haven’t woken up from their control scheme and while it works and definitely gets easier as you play, I wish they would wake up and smell the future of gaming.

I opted for the Playstation 3 version of the game for reasons unbeknownst to me. Most likely because it was my first game for the PS3 (thank you, thank you) and I wanted to see how the graphics looked in regards to the Xbox360 version (one I’ve played a few times with another buddy of mine). The PS3 version is definitely superior. These graphics are state of the art with key lighting that makes the game look alive and frenetic action and movement without any slowdown or frame-rate loss. The varied environments are breathtaking and no matter how grungy the locales are, you’ll be in awe at how breathtaking the visuals are.

Resident Evil 5 was twenty bucks well spent. I was joking with my friend that I could easily start from the beginning again and play it with a host of different techniques to see how easier or difficult the game could be. Strategy is key to success with some of your enemies and it makes for intense gameplay that’s super fun to experience. Mixed with a pretty thrilling story, very suitable voice-acting, and moments that will get you pumped again and again, this is one of the strongest entries in the series and some of the most fun I’ve had playing video games.

© Jason Haskins, 2011


Resident Evil Zero (GC)
Resident Evil (GC)