(2016 Discussion) Resident Evil 5

[llsaidknockyouout]

7 years later. Despite this game outselling Resident Evil 4, it doesn't leave behind nearly as much of a legacy. RE4 was widely praised because the series re-invented itself in a mix of half-survival horror and half-action/shooter. It was a great balance that brought in new audiences while still staying within the core of the franchise. RE5 was about 90% action and 10% horror. While RE4 balanced open and linear, RE5 is plagued by level checkpoints.

As a corollary, most of RE5's sales must have been from general gamers looking for a shooter rather than horror fans. The most damning thing about this game was not the concept, but rather how it was executed. They had a good idea from the start. Horror can happen in daylight. The first few chapters were really scary, in a much different way than the previous Resident Evil games were. But a few chapters in, they decide to focus more on having bigger set pieces and more enemies. Capcom forgot about framing environments and making those handful of small enemies (placed in the right situation) feel really creep.

One thing the game did get right is live weapon-switching system to add more tension. It also brough co-op into the series, at expense to lone players dealing with crap AI. They could have done a lot with the game. Africa is a great setting. It's a vast diverse continent with beautiful and evocative sights in spades. Instead they decided to design half of the levels in factories and indoor environments.

 

[Silvanus]

I hadn't thought about it, but you're right, they really did squander the setting in Resident Evil 5.


The game leaves a bit of a sour mark on the series for me, being the biggest departure from the horror elements that attracted me in the first place. Wesker is a ridiculous pantomime villain in this, stinking of a teenager's idea of edge and cool.

His plan is also utterly nonsensical. In previous RE outings, we had plots concerning corporate corruption and experimentation (RE 1 through Code Veronica), and cultist madness (RE4). Here, we have Bond-esque "conquer the world and become a god", which loses something for its eye-rolling cliched silliness.

And, he intends to do so by infecting the world with Ouroboros, which he maintains "chooses" certain people, though we never see or learn what happens when it does. He's aiming to create a world of tentacle-monsters, and rule it as a god, though he also fails to explain how he would be one; all Ouroboros (or his existing virus) does to him is grant him physical strength. Why the hell would that make him divine?! How on earth would he rule everyone?!

I can't take him even remotely seriously. He's a bargain-basement Matrix villain. I'm not convinced at all that pantomime cheese was what they were going for; he's meant to be cool and threatening, and falls flat on his face. I can't understand the love of this cheap, cheap character.

Pretty solid gunplay, though.

 

[llsaidknockyouout]

I think the emphasis on technology hurt the game. The early RE games had haunted abandoned indoor areas and creepy outdoor areas. An emphasis on labs, super-weapons and so on, has resulted in sterile factory setting.

The opening had genuine horror. Walking through seemingly silent shanty towns, knowing an enemy can be lurking anywhere. Then the scene, where you're hiding in a building and thousands of zombies are coming at you over the fence. I'm not saying the whole game had to be like the beginning, but there's a lot they could done.

Agree on the story. RE has always been corny, but RE5 was on a whole new level. At least RE4 had a eerie post-9/11 anti-American terrorism group as a villain. For all the silliness aside, it was at least slightly believable for fantasy standards.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

While RE4 balanced open and linear, RE5 is plagued by level checkpoints.

RE4 is an extremely linear game, but one that uses the same areas over and over again with backtracking to find the door that the key you just found works on. There are pros and cons to this approach, but it is ultimately a legacy thing largely driven by the need to recycle as much content as possible. The save system changing was the product of co-op design, and also the fact stripping out backtracking and wandering around lost for extended periods of time made the typewriters redundant.

Shinji Mikami's The Evil Within is (mostly) solo, and it abandons Resident Evil 1-4's design and adopts semi-linear map design akin to RE5/6. It's not really a co-op concession thing, but rather how developers prefer to build their games. I mean, let's not forget that Mikami didn't like fixed camera angles in RE1, and only conceded to them because the PS1 was too weak for 1st person 3D like he wanted.

As a corollary, most of RE5's sales must have been from general gamers looking for a shooter rather than horror fans.

Yes and no. Resident Evil 4 marks the point when Capcom abandoned the survival horror genre in order to save Resident Evil from collapsing sales. Since RE4, it has been basically impossible to clearly distinguish the factions of the fragmented fanbase. Some people like RE4 for its fundamentally broken attempt to stay survival horror. (It marks the point RE games started rewarding the player for seeking out combat, which dramatically undermines it as a "survival horror" title. The Evil Within has the same problem.) Others like the game as a third person shooter. Others like it because it stars Leon, the most popular character in the series.

I like to call it the "World War Z audience".

It also brought co-op into the series, at expense to lone players dealing with crap AI.

Co-op was introduced by the Resident Evil: Outbreak games (2003-2005), which also introduced moving while shooting. They were directed by Eiichiro Sasaki, who went on to direct Resident Evil 6. And of course RE0 introduced AI partners even earlier, something Capcom had been trying to implement all the way back with RE1.

RE5's basic problem is the AI partner is a liability. He/she wastes ammo, gets themselves chainsawed, and is generally a nuisance.

I'm not hugely fond of RE5 for the simple reason that I find the game kind of boring. The game meanders along. Resident Evil 5 is fundamentally a Resident Evil 4 clone, with very little innovation, and it kinda feels tired. Similar to RE: Code Veronica and its prequel, Resident Evil 2. And like Code Veronica, there's an annoying disconnect between what the characters can do in cutscenes and what you the player can do. It's a good game, and I recommend people play it, but I feel it's one of the weaker entries in the series.

 

[Saelune]

People just don't like it cause its not scary, but its a great game otherwise. Same issue with Fear 3. The thing is, how the hell is it supposed to be scary for so long if its a continuous plot? I think people have unfair standards for the series, and if they want to be scared should look elsewhere. I also think its ironic that 4 gets such high praise yet its the whole reason 5 is the way it is. Resident Evil cant be scary anymore. If you can obliterate your enemies, how is that scary?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

To me it's "RE4 Africa Edition". Same deal except with forced co-op, awful cutscene direction and a return to dumb storytelling.

 

[BrawlMan]

People just don't like it cause its not scary, but its a great game otherwise. Same issue with Fear 3. The thing is, how the hell is it supposed to be scary for so long if its a continuous plot? I think people have unfair standards for the series, and if they want to be scared should look elsewhere. I also think its ironic that 4 gets such high praise yet its the whole reason 5 is the way it is. Resident Evil cant be scary anymore. If you can obliterate your enemies, how is that scary?

The irony is some of those same fans complained about RE becoming too stale and samey before 4 came along. I played a demo of 5, and didn't enjoy it (I was getting tired of the series at the point). I saw a playthrough on Youtube, and the game looked okay. The graphics and art design were great, but the game has the worse monster design. It's either a giant bug or some mass of tentacles. Wesker I found hilarious and the best part of the game. How could you not like "COMPLETE. GLOBAL. SATURATION"? Other than that, like others said, it's best to play 5 if you have a co-op buddy.

And Saelune, you're right, I don't know what fans think what was going to happen after the successful sales of 4. We all know what happened when Capcom tried to please everybody with 6, a massive cluster fuck.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I don't know what fans think what was going to happen after the successful sales of 4. We all know what happened when Capcom tried to please everybody 6, a massive clusterfuck.

RE6 is exactly that, a "let's do everything" approach to design. If nothing else, RE5 had a good sense of direction.

 

[The White Hunter]

To be honest I like RE5, I played the hell out of it, i t's not bad, but it is full of cheap bullshit and the AI partner is worthless as anything but an ammo packmule.

I liked 6 a little bit more overall, barring the garbage ammo inventory thing that leads to me having no fucking bullets in chris's campaign and so many i can't carry anything else in Jakes.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

It's a damn fun Co-Op game, and that's about it.

The setting isn't that great, the story is awful, solo play is just "meh", it's basically a pure action game and not a trace of horror exists outside that mansion DLC pack.

But hot damn is it a blast to play with a buddy, especially when you start finding little ways to game the system when you get balls deep into Mercenaries mode (stuff like reloading in the menu while climbing ladders or jumping in order to save precious time, etc).

 

[Spunky88]

I wish the game was more like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3mSpmLJS3U

 

[Hawki]

RE5 was the last Resident Evil game I played. Not because it was bad - if anything, I consider it a good game, if judged on its own merits. Rather the reason I stopped was because it felt like a natural end to the overall story (death of Wesker), and that while RE4 was the pinnacle of combining horror with action, RE5 is a definate shift into the action end of the spectrum, and IMO, is weaker for it. That said, it does take the #5 spot in my list of Resident Evil games (a coincidence that RE5 gets no. 5...hah hah).

So, yeah, RE5 is fun. That said, its co-op is great for a human player, not so good for an AI, given that Sheva will use her pistol for any enemy, only switching after running out of ammo - good for ganados, bad for anything else. Turret sections don't help either. Still, I'm more partial to the plot. Wesker isn't exactly a deep character, but I could swallow his persona and plan based on his backstory (not just from the games) and how the series has gone up to that point. All in all, I enjoyed RE5. Not my favorite RE game, but hardly the worst, and it's enjoyable if played on its own terms.

 

[The White Hunter]

It's got a crap inventory system and the partner AI was god awful but overall I did really enjoy 5 and fully completed it, if I didn't have fun I wouldn't have done that.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

One thing the game did get right is live weapon-switching system to add more tension.

Honestly this alone was an excellent addition. There's still a fully functional pause menu so you aren't losing out there and having the small inventory with live management meant you really had to prioritise your pick-ups and sort your inventory in the downtime. The only thing that killed it with menu reloading, which became a bit of an exploit for Mercenary and Versus modes.

All in all I had a really positive experience with 5, despite my skepticism. But I'm firmly in the camp of people that very rarely played it solo. 80% of the time I had a friend to play it with and it made it more enjoyable.