Game Review: Resident Evil 5

Before I sink my teeth into the jugular of Resident Evil 5 it's only fair that you all know exactly whose opinion you're about to read (or skim over to quickly check the score, either way). This is all coming from someone who has not only never played any of the Resident Evil series before this, but who has not even bothered to play this one all the way through. So if the idea of reading the opinions of a jaded and overly cynical misanthrope appeals to you then by all means read on, but if you'd rather ignore them because said misanthrope didn't do his homework properly, then you might as well stop round about now.

So then, Resident Evil 5 is the latest instalment in Capcom's highly successful survival horror series. At least that's what I've been told, because from where I'm standing (or rather sitting, typing furiously) it doesn't seem anything like the latest instalment in a survival horror series. Rather it seems like the fat, clumsy, wannabe action hero cousin of the series, that has deluded itself into thinking that because it shares the name of the older generations it's capable of achieving the same tension and horror that they could. It can't.

The obvious reason for Resident Evil 5 being incapable of spooking anyone old enough to cross the road by themselves is that it makes the same mistake that every other developer trying to redefine horror makes: putting you in the body of a heavily muscled agent carrying a large and fully loaded machine gun. For some reason developers don't seem to clue onto the fact that no matter what kind of horrors they think of, it's not going to be scary if we're handed an assault rifle and a handful of grenades. Thanks to Resident Evil 5 performing the same dick move, any potential horror elements are instantly dismissed as protagonist Chris Redfield grabs hold of his mighty weapon and fires a load in it's face. Shortly before shooting it with his gun.

The blame doesn't lie completely with the lousy choice of protagonist, because it's not as if anything in Resident Evil 5 could ever qualify as proper horror anyway. As it turns out the "Fear you can't forget" is usually a bunch of African blokes (or occasionally African dogs) with garden tools who exhibit a strange tendency to grow tentacles from their mouth. Once you remember just how white your burly, gun-toting protagonist is, it becomes very easy to mistake Resident Evil 5 for a glorified retelling of Apartheid, and as soon as you start making similar connections connections every politically incorrect fibre of your being is going to find the experience hilarious rather than unforgettably terrifying.


By carelessly throwing the survival horror aspect aside Resident Evil 5 forces itself into becoming a third person shooter, something which it isn't terribly good at. Emphasis on the terribly. Actually, just get rid of the "good" altogether and stick with terrible. Yeah, that sounds about right.

"Terrible" might sound harsh, but there's so much wrong with Resident Evil 5 that it's totally warranted. Character movement, or lack of it, is a good place to start, with Chris Redfield's hulking upper body doing little to disguise the fact that his legs don't work properly. Don't get me wrong, he's rather good at walking in a straight line but once he finds himself in a more difficult scenario - such as walking around a corner - he slows right down, a particularly unhelpful trait when there's ten or twenty tentacle-faced Africans threatening you with spades.

You could always try shooting the Africans before you take on the dreaded and almighty corner, but there's a problem with that too; Chris Redfield can't move and shoot at the same time. Maybe dynamic shooting is something they forgot to teach in super-secret-anti-biohazard-terrorist-agent boot camp, or maybe it's just representational of how Chris Redfield is the last bastion of defence for the white man against the rabid indigenous populace. Either way it's completely broken from a gameplay perspective, further restricting the already embarrassingly clunky movement and robbing Resident Evil 5 of any pace it may have had. Yes, I realise that all the other Resident Evils played in the same way, and that if 5 didn't perform this seemingly obligatory fan service then there'd be an outcry from the fatter, nerdier, mother's-basement-dwelling portion of the fanbase who'd claim it "just wasn't Resident Evil". But if anything that just highlights how dated the series has become if Capcom, in their ineptitude (or reluctance to lose fan's tongues from their backsides), haven't changed it in the thirteen years since it's debut.

The inventory isn't exactly intuitive either. Once again you're forced to stand still and watch as the locals gather foaming at the tentacles, except now you're not even capable of fighting back because Chris is too busy rummaging through his pockets to do anything else. Once he finally does find what he's looking for he then takes a little bit more time to decide what he actually wants to do with it, although by this time it doesn't really matter because half of his body has already been digested.

Fortunately there's always your partner (who for some reason is named after the midget spaceman from Pikmin) to occasionally provide a distraction while you fumble around with aiming or rummaging. Unfortunately she's utterly useless and spends most of her time either wasting ammo that you've graciously collected for her or getting in the way. Unless you've blackmailed a friend into playing co-op then her only real use is as a pack mule, although doing that requires you to fiddle with the horribly unintuitive inventory again, which nobody in their right mind would want to do.

In case you haven't yet figured out what I'm driving at here, let me be clear: Resident Evil 5 is a bad game. Everything about it - movement, shooting, inventory, dialogue, camera, whatever - is either clunky, dated, unintuitive or a combination of all three. There simply isn't anything about it that could possibly convince me to recommend it to anyone, at least not anyone I liked. The only people who might get something out of this are the fans, but it's not like I need to tell them that. They've already beaten it twice and are now spending their evenings re-watching the cutscenes for the hundredth time while tentatively rubbing themselves with a Jill Valentine action figure. Until they read this of course. Then they're coming to kill me. Good news is they have to stand perfectly still when they try to attack, so maybe I can get a head start.

Summary: The series' debut on the new generation plays like it belongs on the old ones. Capcom needs to stop catering for the fans, otherwise their next release is just going to be as dated and disappointing as this one.