rockyoumonkeys said:
Resident Evil 5. For the love of god, RE5. Worst implementation of co-op I've ever seen.
I've wanted to say a piece on RE5 for a while now and I'm glad you gave me the opportunity to say that you are dead wrong.
RE5 is the best Co-op game since L4D. In some ways it's even better. Your limited inventory and the need to share pool your health and ammo makes distributing resources a million times more interesting than almost any other game that isn't an RTS or strat game. The enemy design has the same mechanics that encourage cooperation as L4D (an enemy that grabs you till you partner comes to save you, being knocked over and require a teamate's healing touch) but the game also doesn't totaly punish you for being away from your partner so that you can implement more complex mercenaries strategies.
Speaking of mercenaries, its one of the best minigames of the generation. Decent stuff like FF in ODST and Horde in Gears have completely fail score mechanics. High level mercenaries has a lot going for it, your most valuable resource is time so that instead of trying to live foreverer behind cover you actually have to perform your route as fast as possible. Planning goes into how many time bonus's and score amplifiers you collect between keeping up your combo up and getting time bonuses from melee attacks. The bonuses of melee keep in check OP magnums and Hydra (remember in RE4 where your always throwing away pistol ammo with wesker.) All this doesn't make it much better than RE4, but just having co-op once again makes it a million times better. Distributing health and ammo is once again one of the biggest part of the game, even on high level play dying is a threat so the game is a very intense experience that rewards risk but also rewards knowing your limits and not putting yourself in too much danger.
Campaign has some problems because Capcom mad some horrible decisions, but if you follow rules that capcom was to stupid to implement it plays like dream. Don't use the merchant, don't go back to previous levels and grind in one playthrough, don't join a game with someone that has new game plused like 20 times, don't do new game plus (or at least try simulated true new game by not using any of the weapons you aquired on an old playthrough.) Never use infinite ammo. I had a friend who loved to use infinite ammo and I almost despise him. I did a NG vetran no merchant run once, it was great fun but I had to give up on the part where Sheva pushes the dumpster and there are a bunch of lickers
None of this would important if the game didn't completely adapt the amazing, wonderful, PERFECT combat of RE4 but RE5 manages this exact task with flying colors. The "tank" controls and limited movement are necessary and what makes the RE series the defining game of it genre. When SHMUP/FPS/run n' gun at the time were as much about dodging crap as it was about shooting, RE forced you to pick your shots, sometimes shooting only to disable opponets so you can walk right past them and save ammo. RE5 is a brilliant game and (as said before) co-op makes it 1,000,000x better.
