Resident Evil is one of those games that helped start the survival horror revolution. It also helped revive the popularity of zombies and giving them a new twist on a real world situation that could cause a person to become a zombie. I'm not saying that we have the bio technology to actually pull it off, but it's not far from the truth with bio terrorism. This storyline to these games helped the games' popularity. The puzzles and cheap frights also made it a game you loved to play. Who can forget the Licker dashing by the window just as you turn a corner in RE2?
But recent RE games have drifted a bit from it's predecessors. In RE4 they decided to take the gameplay into a different direction along with the storyline. Sure Umbrella has been taken down, but bio weapons still live on, all thanks to Umbrella. The game changed more into a 3rd person shooter then a survival horror with hoards of zombie like people charging at you. They have become faster and smarter as well. The debate is out on whether these are zombies or not. Sure you could use the definition of a zombie as one who has lost all their personality and only has one basic function rather then that of a reannimated corpse, but what fun is that?
Resident Evil 5 is more like 4 then any other, but it brings back a villain that I am most happy with. I'm sure you all have heard who it is by now, but I'll keep it hush hush in this review. The big major change in RE5 that hasn't been done before in any other in this series is that you can choose to play alone with the AI character or with a partner either online or right next to you. I have to say that I love and hate this feature. I hate it when you play alone because AI characters are never really that helpful. Sure they will save your life when you are dying and they somewhat help you take out the bad guys, but in Boss battles it leaves more to be desired. But what can you really expect from an AI player? However, playing with a friend is a lot of fun. You just want to make sure that you have some sort of verbal communication with your partner if you are playing online. The button commands are general commands, but in this game you will need to strategize a bit more then just telling someone to come here.
This new game play has also taken out some of the puzzles you have seen before and is more about shooting the bad guys, just like in RE4. I don't recall seeing any puzzles asking you to enter a key code where you must find the code first, or ones where you have to put objects in a certain place in a machine to activate it. I dearly miss all the puzzles and would trade them in for hoards of zombie like people any day. The game does keep some puzzles though. But these puzzles have become more Tomb Raideresque. My brother loves Tomb Raider games and while playing he made a comment on how close it was. Luckily there was no swimming underwater. I'm not a fan of water levels.
The controls are also different from past versions. For those of us who played the older Resident Evil games, we got used to what have been named as tank controls. There was a lot of complaints about the way you controlled your character. I know when I first started it took some getting used to. And in RE5 I had to get used to controls all over again. What was once the x button for reading info and gathering items is now square. You still hold down a button to aim your gun, but it is now L1 instead of R1. Then you have to press R1 instead of x to shoot. This does leave you with fumbling around with the controls for a bit.
I was pretty happy with the storyline though, which brings back old characters and more back story on Umbrella. There is also a few new Enemies and a new form on the virus. Of course the enemies turn on each other and seem a bit too eager themselves to become monsters. The story does lead itself to some crazy storylines, but what can you expect from a game about a virus that turns people into monsters. I of course don't want to give up to much on the story and ruin the surprise for those who want to be surprised.
With all the changes it is proving hard for me to give this game a rating. It was even hard for me to even decide if I wanted to pick this game up. I am a fan of the older games and have been playing them since Resident Evil: Directors Cut. So ya from the beginning. I loved the style and puzzles in the game. The storyline was one that grabbed my attention, even with the cheesy dialog. I must say that the dialog gets better as the games go on, but the storylines seem to get worse. When I got RE4 I was highly disappointed. The thing I think that grabbed my attention and my decision to get RE5 was the storyline. As I said the return of one of the characters was a good selling point for me. I was also intrigued by being able to play RE with a friend. So I decided to give this game a try. With a friend along I couldn't stop playing this game. It is a lot of fun and I am glad that I did pick it up. However it did still leave me longing for the old games.
So for those reasons I reluctently give this game a rating of 3.5 stars out of 5.
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