I'm going to keep this one brief, as I feel I've already wasted enough of my life on this. For those who don't want to waste time with the review, here's my succinct and honest opinion. Do not buy this game. Do not rent it. Don't even borrow it from a friend. There may be some fun to have playing with a friend online, but there are a tonne of better co-op games out there. Borderlands, for example.
Still here? Ok, let's get this out of the way.
So Leon is back in the states, annoying President's daughter in tow, and the worst seems to be over. Umbrella is finished, Las Plagas is all but destroyed and Ada and Wesker have vanished into the sunset. Enter the BSAA, a corporation founded by the remaining Pharmaceutical companies in an effort to salvage there image as "Not Umbrella". Chris Redfield, stalwart hero of Resident Evil 1 and Code Veronica, is back with bigger muscles, a new beard and a new partner. It seems Jill went an kamikazeed Wesker out a window and now Chris is feeling bitter and disillusioned with the world. Why he didn't celebrate her surprisingly apt departure I'll never know (The joke here being that she is a massive "wet fish", for those who aren't following me and my intense dislike of her character. Just wait till my REmake review). Anyway, Chris finds himself in a nondescript African nation, with Sheba, his new partner, who is neither a wet fish, nor annoying (at least as a character). In fact, she definitely ranks up with the Claire's and Ada's. Not quite as well rounded and intriguing, but still well written and acted. So there's another Las Plagas outbreak or something, Wesker on some doomsday device, the pharmaceutical companies are secretly evil and the whole gig is just a cover operation. Stop me if you've worked out where this is going. Oh, and Jill's still alive. Yay. Though weirdly she magically turns into not only a bad-ass, but an interesting character. Go figure. She took the Gandalf route and came back as Jill the White; older, wiser, less wet. And strapped into a hot jumpsuit, just cause they hadn't squeezed enough sex appeal out of her tight body yet. Sarcasm aside, the characters are all well written in this game. The story, though cliche and terrible, is well written, acted (especially for a Resident Evil game) and is paced very well. Wesker is my favourite villain and it's nice to see him get a whole game to himself. His relationship with Chris is explored a lot more thoroughly than previous games, as well, which is nice. The music is good, too, easily on par with Resident Evil 4, but now even more cinematic and dynamic. This is also a very good looking game. Character models look great, the environments are detailed and varied, and the lighting effects are very nice. The game utilizes Direct X 10 very well and easily competes with more recent titles.
Right, that's all the good out of the way. Let's get on with the bad.
Remember Resident Evil 4? Ok, good, welcome to Resident Evil 4.1. You're fighting 90% of the same enemies (I'm not even joking, there's maybe 2 'new' enemies, and they're both pinched from earlier games), the controls are exactly the same, and it's a permanent escort mission. Yes, your partner can technically look after themselves better, but that doesn't mean they actually will. Oh, and you're back to 9 inventory spaces a piece and for some stupid reason the game doesn't pause while you access it, leaving you desperately pressing buttons like an idiot trying to pick a new gun while a massive enemies rapes your face with a chainsaw. Still, these controls worked for the most part in Resident Evil 4, because the game was built around them. They design the over-the-shoulder control system from the ground up to work with that game, a slower paced survival-horror game with an action feel. Tank controls do not work in a straight third person shooter. Which is what Resident Evil 5 is. And a pretty stock standard one at that. They try to mix things up with ranged and melee enemies, but the cover system is terrible and a lot of enemies can stunlock you, allowing the other enemies to shoot you to shit. Still, this would all be bearable if only the partner AI wasn't an insult. Resident Evil 0 this is not, you have basically no control over Sheba, other than to call her to you and set her routine to cover (which means only shoot at things attacking her and stay close to you) or attack (which means shoot everything all the time and waste all the items you give her). She spends the rest of her time getting killed, wasting all your ammo and healing items and generally just standing around shooting the wall or something. It makes the singleplayer campaign all but unplayable. I had to play on Easy just to make the enemies stupid enough that they at least kind of matched the partner AI level. This game is specifically designed to be played by two people, there's just too many enemies to tackle alone. Also, back to the controls for a bit, but not being able to move while shooting does not work in this type of game, especially when all of the enemies dart around like they're on caffeine. Especially the bosses. Stop to take a shot or two and they'll warp straight up to you and fuck you up. Also, the game is completely filled with almost broken quicktime events. By the time the button has flashed on screen, it's already too late. This wouldn't be so bad if 9/10 of them didn't result in instant death and a bump back to the last checkpoint. This happens a lot in boss fights, too. The Wesker fights are plagued by these. All of the boss fights in general are terrible. Fighting Wesker should be fun and exciting, but instead devolves into him repeating the same three moves while you desperately try to initiate the one context sensitive action that kills him, which requires you and your partner to work together. In fact, the last fight with him is so awful it's nearly broken. I'll be honest, I haven't gotten past it and I'm not going to. The only solution I can see is jumping back to the start of the chapter and trying to stockpile ammo (the last chapter throws more enemies and mini-bosses at you than the entire game combined, mind you, and I have 6 bullets left thanks to a terrible checkpoint system that saves your equipment from the last save, not from where you start the game from).
This is the first time in my reviewing career that I've given up on a game. Honestly, I tried. I've restarted this game 3 times. I've played through all the way from the start with different co-op partners, I've played it singleplayer. I've dropped the difficulty to Easy, but I'm tired of wasting my time. This game is not fun, it's not interesting and it's badly designed. Resident Evil 5 is not a bad Resident Evil game, it's just a bad game. It's plagued by bad game choices, broken partner AI, counter-intuitive controls and an uninteresting story. Only die-hard fans should consider playing this, and even then I'd recommend finding a way to not spend any money on it. I got it for $5 and I still feel ripped off. I cannot recommend strongly enough that you don't waste your time on this game.
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