Resident Evil 5 (Xbox 360)
They're coming to get you, Barbara.
3/12/2009 8:34 PM | 121 Comments | Page 3 of 4
What's Hot: No more antique-typewriter save system; Co-op works well when you've got a person with a pulse to play with; Shorter than Resident Evil 4.
What's Not: Subhuman portayals of Africans are offensive; AI-controlled partner not helpful approximately 60 percent of the time; Nothing here that you haven't really seen or done already in Resident Evil 4 (or Lost Planet).
Scott Jones
Status: Coffee makes me feel 4-percent sexier.
Making cooperative play the focal point of the game is also a mistake. While you play as Chris, Sheva (controlled by the artificial intelligence in single-player) does indeed help you at times. She's surprisingly deadly with the sniper rifle. Equip her with one, upgrade it, and make sure she's stocked with ammo. Sheva's also adept at healing you during battle; load her up with herbs and First Aid sprays.
But my problem with cooperative play is that, although it sounds good in theory, in practice it constantly took me out of the game. For example: Instead of having my own, personal experience, I'm mired in annoying decisions. I'm trying to decide if I should let Sheva haul around the proximity mine, or if I should mix the herbs before giving them to her (the AI isn't savvy enough to mix them on its own). Instead of being steeped in the fiction of the game world, I'm annoyed that Sheva has a fully-stocked sniper rifle, yet the AI insists on using the shotgun to take potshots at distant enemies. I'm annoyed that she's hoarding all the handgun ammo even though she doesn't have a handgun. And for a game that puts a premium on ammunition -- I ran out on several occasions -- the AI and I often wound up targeting the same enemies at the same time, meaning that we were always using more bullets than we needed to use to survive. The emotion I felt wasn't fear. I was irritated and annoyed by the micromanaging the game requires.
We could listen to Sheva say "Thanks, pahtna!" all night long...
If you've got a friend to drive Sheva around for you, that's definitely the way to go. But the emphasis on co-op play, personally, only made me long for the queasy, surreal solitude of
Resident Evil 4. More often than not, I wished that I had the option to ask the AI-controlled Sheva if she'd mind sitting this one out, and letting me handle this level alone.
Aside from a somewhat exciting Tomb Raider-esque digression toward the middle of the game, you'll traverse the same clichéd mine shafts, the same clichéd boat docks and military complex and sci-fi laboratories that you traversed in
Resident Evil 4 (as well as in countless other games). There's nothing here that you haven't seen or done before. Yes, you'll be confined to an area for a certain amount of time and challenged to survive. Yes, you'll have to time button presses to get through Quick Time Events. Yes, devil dogs with tentacles flying out of their heads will attack/annoy you on several occasions.
What I miss most is the theme-park-gone-wrong quality of
Resident Evil 4. That Vague European Burg? It felt more like something from an evil Epcot Center than a real village. Even the ridiculous recycling of the character models -- here comes the guy in the suspenders again! -- made the production feel playful, cheap and nightmarish at once. Remember the cheeseball castles that felt like abandoned movie sets? Or your encounter in the burning barn with Osmund Saddler? Or the little Napoleon-like guy who created a giant robot statue of himself? Nothing in
Resident Evil 5 can hold a candle to those indelible, unforgettable surrealities.
