Are scripted car chase shooting scenes what Resident Evil has become?
I picked this game up on launch day, but unfortunately, I also picked up Halo Wars that same day and have been trying to balance my time between those two games, as well as Street Fighter IV, ever since. For the most part, Halo Wars and Street Fighter IV have been winning – Resident Evil 5 is just not an excellent game. I guess I sort of already knew that from playing the demo, but still decided to take the plunge anyway. Here are my initial impressions on the retail game, after getting through about half of it already (I’m just starting Act 4 now).
Gamers new to the Resident Evil series will most likely find Resident Evil 5 to be a relatively enjoyable experience. It’s got various firearms, zombies and mutated enemies, looks good, and co-op. Not being able to move and shoot at the same time is probably the most jarring issue that a newcomer to the series faces, especially given other contemporary 3rd person shooters like Gears of War and Dead Space allowing for that. In Resident Evil 5, the moment you draw your gun, you are stuck in your position and cannot move when you’re aiming your gun. If you’re going up against an enemy that wants to get close and melee you, you have to lower your gun, turn around 180 degrees, run back, turn around another 180 degrees, then raise your gun and shoot. When the enemy gets closer again, you have to do the same motion. Simply being able to walk slowly backwards while aiming would have solved this cumbersome issue, but the RE5 team apparently felt that adding in moving and shooting would strip away the essence of Resident Evil. As if enough of it hasn’t been stripped away already! Still, you do get used to it though so it’s not exactly a deal breaker. Just an annoyance.
For returning Resident Evil fans, everyone pretty much agrees that while Resident Evil 4 took a huge departure from the core Resident Evil games, it was an excellent change and stands as the best game in the entire series. Not only was the pacing, gameplay, and level design captivating and well-balanced, but it was a 20 hour game with interesting boss battles and innovative enemies (remember the blind one?). Resident Evil 5 attempts to follow more along the lines of what Resident Evil 4 was, but fails to even come close to capturing the magic of its predecessor. What happened to the design team of Resident Evil 4? It appears that they did not play a part in Resident Evil 5, as the levels are bland, the game is short, and even the gameplay itself is somewhat mundane.
For the most part, Resident Evil 5 feels like a summer blockbuster – a lot of fluff but not enough substance. There’s action sequences, scripted shooting sequences, etc. Lots of explosions and pretty graphics (it might as well be a Michael Bay game), but what about the gameplay? It seems like that has clearly taken a backseat, as you often find yourself simply walking down some sort of indoor or outdoor corridor and a half dozen or more enemies are just sent after you. You move into one room, several enemies appear, and you have to fend them off before moving on and then another helping of enemies spawns. Is this entertaining gameplay? The main exit is blocked off until I’ve taken out all of these waves of enemies over and over? Might as well just have me trapped in a room and keep throwing more infected humans at me. Why have me move at all? That’s part of the reason why I’m having a hard time making my way through the game. It just doesn’t feel fresh – one room after another I’m just surrounded by a handful of enemies, and when I kill them, I’m shortly ambushed by another handful while just shooting whatever I can with a handgun. It felt like work – just trying to kill all of these infected humans over and over just to progress in the game. I might as well be playing Space Invaders at the rate this game is throwing enemies at me. To be fair, as I’m starting to get into Act 4, it looks to be a little bit better with the ruins, but at this point the game is already half over.
On top of the poor gameplay design, I have to deal with an AI partner. Granted, playing with a friend is enjoyable, but for Resident Evil vets, we all know Resident Evil is a single player game and want to experience survival horror all by ourselves. I hate having a second player in the game. I would rather not have co-op at all just to not have to babysit the AI when I’m playing solo. Here I am conserving ammo as much as I can – a technique I’ve learned from my Resident Evil 4 days: shooting one bullet into the enemy’s leg so he keels over, then I go in and uppercut him, and then I pretty much finish him off on the ground to spend just one bullet to kill an enemy. But now I have an AI partner who is just emptying her clips into enemy’s chests over and over and running out of ammo. What the heck? Part of Resident Evil’s core gameplay is being able to manage and conserve ammo, so you use it when necessary. But now my AI partner just eats up any ammo that I’m trying to save. If I was by myself, I could get through the game with just a handgun but now with an AI partner, I rarely, if ever, even have enough handgun rounds. How is this fun?! In any case, one good thing that comes out of it is leaving mixed herbs on the AI partner since she will automatically come heal us if one (or both) of our lifebars is running low. But honestly, I could do that myself if not for the poor inventory management system.
Obviously I’m venting but it’s just because Resident Evil 4 was one of the top (if not the top) games that came out on last generation’s consoles. This new one is so watered down compared to it that I can’t help but feel disappointed. If it wasn’t named Resident Evil, I would have still considered it to be a pretty enjoyable shooter. But calling itself the sequel to Resident Evil 4? Presentation is great, but gameplay not so much. It’s all action now and not much adventure or horror. Just don’t go in expecting it to be as good as Resident Evil 4, and you can still probably enjoy it. Unfortunately, I made that mistake and am now having a hard time shaking it to try to enjoy Resident Evil 5 as its own title.
resident evil 4 was pretty lenient on ammo. enemies would drop ammo if u were low, but not drop anything if u were stocked. the only time you really needed to really think about ammo was before boss fights.
hmm maybe i’ll pick up re5 later on when it gets cheaper then.
yeah re5 is not so different in that aspect – if you’re dying, herbs are more likely to drop, etc. but the problem is that this time around you’re not able to plan ammo usage anymore when the AI is eating it all up! the AI doesn’t know how aim for vitals on enemies, so she uses far more ammo than necessary. i realize that with all of the infinite ammo upgrades i’ll eventually not have to worry about it, but at that point around i would have already beaten the game and would just be fooling around. first impressions are important!