Resident Evil 5

Because Christmas is that special time of year where distant relatives decide to pretend they don't hate you by uncomfortably cramming themselves into your everyday life for a week or so I found myself replaying Resident Evil 5 cooperatively with my cousine. My first playthrough of RE5 the previous year left me with lukewarm feelings. It was certainly very underwhelming when you compared it to RE4, which is one of my favourite games of all time. This second playthrough on the hardest difficulty has given me the opportunity to really figure out why I was so underwhelmed the first time. So rather than my usual game review format I thought instead I'd share with you my critical opinions on what made RE5 inferrior to RE4.

The Pirate Merchant Sex Offender
I did a blog post on this guy a while back in the days when my blog was cutting edge and exciting. Basically he was this mysterious shop keeper who followed you around and eagerly showed you his wares from underneath the kind of large coat people wear to flash the high school girls swimming team with. He was creepy and lovable all at the same time and the phrase "welcome stranger" became much more hilarious amongst enlightened individuals that it really out to be. Hell they even quoted him on Bayonetta. So you'd expect a certain level of disappointment from people, myself included, when it was discovered that this crazy merchant would not be in RE5. But not only did one of our most cherished characters not return but he was also replaced with nothing more than a menu. There was no character selling you stuff, just a list of words that took your money. But this is just one of a few examples in which Resident Evil 5 decided to...

Take All the Fun Out of the RE4 Formula
Let's not kid ourselves, RE4 was rediculous. It had weird stalkers selling you rocket launchers, it had a weirdo parasite worshipping cult who hated the USA and it had an albino midget dressed as Napoleon hacking into your two way radio system just so you and he could exchange "yo mamma" jokes. But it was rediculous in a fun way. It had abandoned almost every aspect of the original games, both gameplay and plot wise, in order to make the whole experience varied, enjoyable and hilariously camp. RE5 is also rediculous but in a way that is completely not fun. Perhaps Capcom felt that their game needed to be more gritty and serious to stand up and be counted amoungst the current generations big, serious action titles? Who knows why but for some reason they decided to make the game all serious. Which isn't necessarily a deal breaker but the problem is they also forgot to make it good. Let me put it like this, you know how there are movies that are so bad that they're good? Well that's RE4. Well you know how there are some bad movies that are also so bland and serious that you can actually feel your life wasting away as you watch them? Well that's RE5.

Co-op and the Inventory SystemI personally don't have a problem with co-op modes in games. I actually think that they can make a very welcome addition to a game. But that's exactly what they should be, an addition. The problem with RE5 is that it's set up in such a way that playing it non-cooperatively puts you at a crippling disadvantage. This is because playing by yourself is really just playing co-op except with an A.I. team mate, an A.I. that is incredibly tedious and annoying to control and put up with. But this wasn't a huge concern for me because for the most part I was playing with a helpful, human companion. BUT the ghost of this co-op game design still lingered in the inventory system. The inventory system in RE4 was excellent and allowed you to carry everything you could possibly need if you were clever with how you used it. It seems that with the addition of co-op and hence two inventory systems (one for each character) the game designers felt it would be perfectly acceptable to cripple the ammount of stuff you can carry. It all ends up being this horrible mess of swapping crap back and forth between characters and for what? It doesn't make the game more challenging, just more tedious and frustrating.

Quick Time Events
RE4 was the first game I can recall that used quick time events during what would normally be random cutscenes. While I wasn't really impressed by their inclusion I certainly never found them instrusive or punishing enough to be a dealbreaker. Then in waltzed RE5 saying "you know what? I can make Q.T.E.'s much more annoying than that." And before you knew it you were doing an entire fucking boss where you had to use quick time events the whole way through and if either me or my cousine fucked up, just once, it was instant death time to start over. It was frustration that I haven't felt for a game since trying to unlock everything in Mario Kart Wii.

But this isn't to say that RE5 is bad. Resident Evil 5 is still a pretty good game really it's just that at the end of the day it hasn't really added anything significant to the series and really just became a crippled version of RE4. The whole point of sequels, appart from cashing in, is to further develope and improve over what came before. RE5 just took steps backwards and I really don't understand why. It had less variety, less convenience, less humour, less sense and less functionality? What the fuck is with that? In the end RE5 failed to distract me from the fact that the girl I adore was in a land far far away and I was missing her warmth and companionship. At night I hug the pillow she slept on...*sigh* I miss my Moomee.