I’ve been a fan of survival horror games ever since I cried myself to sleep at night after playing Aliens vs. Predator on my PC. Every time the disc would load, I would curse myself for putting it in the drive, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to play it for more than half an hour.
But something about the game and the terror it ensued stuck with me each time I would hastily switch it off. Sure it gave me nightmares, but like Lt. Ellen Ripley herself, I knew that the only way to conquer those nightmares was to face my fears and finish the game. I kept coming back, over and over again, until I had overcome ridiculous odds and defeated the alien hordes once and for all (or, at least until the sequel). The nightmares stopped, the terror melted away, and I took pride in the knowledge that I had survived.
While the Resident Evil franchise is the godfather of survival horror games, it wasn’t the first game to include the staples of the genre (lone protagonist, limited weapons and health aids, eerie environments, dark lighting, spooky sound effects, and ghastly, terrifying villains), but it was the first to introduce the genre to a large audience and the first to engender a loyal fan base.
As technology has evolved, video games have become more sophisticated; and gamers have come to demand a more intuitive and immersive experience. The Resident Evil franchise had to update its image and break free from its static camera, two dimensional planes, and the never-ending, monotonous march of stale zombies, if it hoped to thrive in this new environment.
In 2005, Capcom released Resident Evil 4 on Nintendo’s Game Cube to rave reviews. The game was one of the most positively received games of the last console generation, and was ported over to the Playstation 2 and the Nintendo Wii. Like many, I fell in love with the game’s gorgeous graphics, revamped (but still stiff) control scheme, unique enemies, and entertaining combat.
Over the last four years, gamers have wondered if Capcom could improve upon the best entry in the franchise to date. With the release of Resident Evil 5 this March, Capcom’s game developers hope to take this critical acclaim and popular support, and turn it into a successful debut on the next generation consoles. The game succeeds, more or less, but it is sadly lacking in the magic that made its predecessor one of the best video games of all time.
In many ways, Resident Evil 5 is simply a revamped version of its last generation ancestor. Once again peaceful villagers (this time in the African plain instead of the Spanish countryside) have become infected by a mysterious parasite that renders them unnaturally aggressive, grants them super human strength, and makes them susceptible to the coercion and command of nefarious evildoers.
Players take control of Chris Redfield, an agent of the BSAA, an international organization tasked with responding to biological terror threats around the world. In a break with genre conventions, Redfield is joined by a fellow agent and African soldier, Sheva Alomar. While survival horror games have traditionally been single player affairs (all the better to emphasize the player’s sense of isolation in frightening surroundings), Resident Evil 5 is a decidedly multiplayer game. As you would expect, bringing in a competent and reliable fellow solider to fight by your side robs the game of some of its potential fear factor, but the developers have tried to compensate for it by designing tense moments where you must rely on quick reflexes and clever planning to save your partner from certain doom.
You can play alone as Chris, and the computer’s artificial intelligence does a fairly good job of controlling Sheva (although it can be difficult to figure out the best way to utilize her talents), but to really experience the game, you need to play it with a friend in the split-screen or online modes.
The game’s graphics are good, but nothing spectacular. The over-the-shoulder camera angle is unchanged after four years. The maps are large, but still fairly linear, and while the character models and textures are nice, the animations are stiff and sometimes unrealistic. The same animations are used repeatedly and seem to have been heavily recycled from Resident Evil 4. There are some nice (and grisly) little touches, though, like smoldering bullet wounds that leave a trail of sizzling smoke.
The game’s controls have been largely carried over from the previous entry. Your character still moves like a tank sinking in a tar pit, you still can’t move while aiming your gun, and it is still just as hard to pull off a headshot. These things are nothing new –they’re actually standard conventions of the survival horror genre (the idea being that making your avatar difficult to control heightens your sense of vulnerability in the face of the oncoming armies of the undead), but the controls can make you feel like the game is moving in slow motion. In fact, when I turned off the game and started playing Call of Duty 4, the change in speed and fluidity of movement made me dizzy for a while.
In contrast to the controls and graphics, the weapon and inventory interface and the map screen have all undergone a major overhaul. While you still have to manage the limited space in your inventory to make sure you have the best weapons, ammunition, and health aids; you and your partner now share items and you must work together to ensure you are both adequately armed for each new challenge. Chris and Sheva both have only nine slots in their inventory, but on the plus side, weapons no longer take up multiple slots. There is also a shared inventory that you can access between missions. This shared inventory lets you store unused items and allows you to pick which weapons to carry into the next battle.
Between each level you can also sell any treasure items you have picked up and use the cash to buy new weapons or upgrade your old ones. This process can be a little frustrating since the second player isn’t allowed to sell or upgrade items and must first transfer those items to the common inventory before the first player can sell or upgrade them.
While playing the game, you can bring up the map at the push of a button, and you can quickly switch between up to four different weapons (without having to access your inventory) by mapping them to the directional buttons.
From the standpoint of gameplay and funcitionatily, these are all welcome and necessary changes. It’s great to be able to access the map without having to pause the game and I loved being able to switch to a bigger weapon on the fly. Still, I miss the lovably bizarre and quirky merchant from Resident Evil 4 and the convenience of having an in-game map comes at the price of diminished detail.
I had trouble following the game’s story. I think it has something to do with the evil corporation testing the Las Plagas virus (the bug that makes the locals go all crazy-like) in hopes of turning it into a viable weapon that can be sold on the black market. I don’t know. Seriously, you try to figure it out.
Once again, though, this is nothing new. The Resident Evil games have always had their share of silly cut-scenes, ridiculous dialogue, and goofy boss battles. It’s part of their charm, really.
Overall, Resident Evil 5 falls into a tough place. It hasn’t changed enough to make it a worthy follow-up to one of the greatest games of all time, and yet the changes it has made rob it of the essential magic that made Resident Evil 4 such a thrilling experience.
Simply put, this game just isn’t scary. It’s a great action game and it can be intense, but there is nothing in it that can compete with the eerie dread that hung over the player like a dark cloud in the first few levels of the previous game.
Now, make no mistake – even if this new Resident Evil isn’t all that terrifying, it is still an intense and bloody experience. You will kill hundreds of zombified villagers, many of whom look like ordinary people, in a number of brutal and graphic ways. You can shoot them or blow them up, and if all else fails, your trusty knife, heavy boot, or sharpened machete will finish the job.
When you pull off a perfect head shot (which I still say is tougher than it should be), the villager’s head explodes into a cloud of gory chunks, complete with a gut-wrenching crunch. Some villagers refuse to die even after being decapitated, continuing to charge toward you until the ghastly parasite inside them burst from their necks and slashes at you with razor sharp claws. If you fail to evade one of the zombies armed with chainsaws, you are treated to the sight of your own lifeless (and, it is implied, headless) body falling to the ground in a pool of blood.
The game also includes some strong language, and Sheva’s clothes are a bit tight and revealing. There are worse games out there, but parents should still exercise extreme caution.
Finally, some have charged the game with racial insensitivity since you play as a white government agent killing black zombies in the African countryside. While I can see where these critics are coming from (and one moment in the game did seem to play to a racial stereotype), on the whole, I felt that this charge was without merit.
While it’s true that Chris Redfield is a white agent who kills plenty of African zombies, not all of the zombie’s are black, and he’s teamed with Sheva and other African agents who join in the fight for survival without ever questioning the race of their assailants. Ultimately, I don’t think the developers meant any offense. This is simply a zombie game that takes place in Africa, where, one would assume, most of the zombies would be African.
In the end, I’ll never forget the way my stomach dropped the first time I heard the soul-crushing roar of a chainsaw echoing off the dingy walls of a forgotten Spanish village in Resident Evil 4. This time around, the crazed, chainsaw-wielding super-zombies are back, but they’re slower and much easier to evade. The giant, troll-like El Gigante also returns, but this time you face him armed with a mini-gun instead of a pistol and a knife. In making the switch to multiplayer and in emphasizing the action elements of the formula, Resident Evil 5 resembles last year’s Army of Two more than it does a traditional survival horror game. After all, it’s a bit hard to get creeped out by a zombie riding a motorcycle.
After playing this game, I’ve decided that EA’s recent hit, Dead Space, is the true spiritual successor to Resident Evil 4. That game managed to take Resident Evil 4’s control scheme and camera angle and make it much more fluid and intuitive, while at the same time combining exciting and innovative combat with genuinely creepy environments and terrifying enemies, all to develop a top-notch title. I really enjoyed EA’s sci-fi horror masterpiece – so much so that Resident Evil 5, despite being the true sequel and the next step in the franchise – feels like a letdown.
Caution Rating: 10
