Resident Evil 5 Review - Is it the first downfall of the series?

 By Sam Coles:

Resident Evil is a series that has been a bit…. Oh dear recently and there are different opinions which game caused the problem, some say Resident Evil 4 was the first nail in the coffin and some say 5 was the problem. However in my opinion Resident Evil 6 started the downfall of the series because Resident Evil 5 wasn’t a bad game by any means, yes it wasn’t the scariest game in the series but it had great gameplay, visuals and music believe or not.

You play as Chris Redfield who is no longer part of the of STARS unit in the Racoon City police department because the city is no more, he now works for a counter bio-terror unit to stop terrorist who use biological weapons. His journey takes him to Africa where he teams up with his new part Sheva where they are investigating rumours of a new virus infecting the local populous similar to the situation in Resident Evil 4. The story is decent with good voice acting although there are the staple cheesy and over the top lines especially from the villains where they laugh in an over the top fashion.

If you’ve played Resident Evil 4 then you should have a good grasp of how 5 handles with its gameplay as it is pretty much identical to 4 with the same over the shoulder action where you point and shoot with the human enemies acting in the same way. It doesn’t mean it’s an exact copy of 4 it sprinkles in a few new features to make the game feel fresh such as the addition of a co-op partner throughout the game, but I strongly recommend playing with a friend because the A.I is brain dead as it wastes ammo, all you healing items when they’re not needed and just getting stuck. Luckily you don’t have to play online because this was during a period where local multiplayer was still relevant before online gaming took over so you can play this two player splitscreen which is great.

After each chapter you have a chance to sort your inventory out and unfortunately this is a pain in the backside because they ditched the fantastic attaché case system from 4 where you could sort your items and weapons into a nice neat space. Resident Evil 5 however tries to go for the traditional inventory from 1-3 where you only have a certain amount of slots, so now an egg takes up the same amount of room as an AR15 assault rifle. It’s just mind boggling why they would get rid of an intuitive system and replace it with an arduous system that makes me want to bite my thumbs off in frustration.

The visuals are fantastic considering this game came out in 2009 and it still holds up minus a few graphical flaws I found. The introduction of the game still looks great where you see Chris Redfield drive across the African Savana with dust kicking up behind him. The detail in the market as you walk through it is beautiful as you see the locales getting on with their business etc. There is only one problem I had with the visuals and that is the screen tearing in gameplay and the cutscenes this occurs with character movement and it gets very distracting this is only on the 7^th generation versions as far as I’m aware.

Is Resident Evil 5 the downfall of the series? No. Yes it has its issues but it is still a Resident Evil game at heart and it knows that. Resident Evil 6 is a horrible focus group mess and lacks focus. Resident Evil 5 is a fun game especially with a friend so I urge you to pick it up and if you don’t want to play it on 360 and PS3 you can get it on Xbox One and PS4 with a buttery smooth frame rate of 60 fps.