I finished playing the Resident Evil 2 Remake a few days ago. The original RE 2 is one of my favorite games of all time and — next to RE 4 — my favorite entry in the series. I was afraid that the Remake would let me down, since it had a lot to live up to. But apart from some minor nitpicks, I was delighted by it and it brought me back to the franchise. So I decided to revisit some of the games I missed. Most notably RE 6, 7 and Revelations 2 as well as some of my old favorites. But those will have to wait until my rematch with the game that managed to convince me that I never needed any more RE games in my life almost ten years ago: Resident Evil 5.
And today I want to analyze how this game that tried to emulate RE 4 so hard, failed so miserably in understanding what made it fun in the first place.
I’m not going to fully review RE 5, but just address why it failed to spark any form of enjoyment for me. It would help if you played the both RE 4 and 5, but I hope my rambling will somehow still make sense if you haven’t. I do try to keep late-game spoilers at bay, so unless you lived under a rock for the past ten years, you have nothing to fear.
Now let me get a few things out of the way first: I am pretty sure everyone has their own highs and lows with the series and for various different reasons, too. And that’s good! You should have your own opinion and this article is just that: An opinion. Mine to be precise. You don’t have to agree with it. If you liked Resident Evil 5 or any other game that everyone else seems to hate, more power to you! Don’t let anyone spoil your fun. That’s what video games are there for.
Next, I’m not here to talk about how the shift of the series towards action was a bad idea. Because I don’t think it was. Actually, the setting RE 5 (and RE 6 for that matter) takes place in makes sense to me: A Zombie virus, biological weapons, parasites — a dream come true for terrorist organizations, military groups as well as your everyday mustache-twirling madman. That’s kind of the outcome that Umbrella had in mind from the start of the entire series. And in a way, I am glad Capcom went mad and made the entire world their sandbox.
“But it got so dumb,” I hear you say. Yes, indeed. In fact, Resident Evil has always been dumb. But that’s not a bad thing. You can’t have Mr. X without the Jill sandwich. It’s an unhinged series that never knew its own limits and that is where some of the best ideas came from. I admit, the scale it eventually grew to was a bit alienating for me as well, but I am more than ready for the all the crazy shit this series can throw at me.
And that it did. Just like RE 4, 5 gives you a bit of exposition as to why you are in that particular area lets you wander around for a bit and then shit breaks lose. The resemblance to its predecessor is really strong: barrels and crates you slash open for loot, enemies that can run, jump and occasionally dodge out of the line of fire… but something felt off. And for ten years I didn’t really think about why that was. It just felt so… unrewarding and downright frustrating. Mainly because I got overwhelmed a lot with enemies cornering and surrounding me way more than they should.
And I had several ideas on why that was the case. You can blame the Motion controls of the Wii for a lot, but for aiming — especially in RE 4 — it was amazing. In fact it made the game downright easy compared to the Gamecube version. Going back to Gamepad aiming was bound to be frustrating. Secondly, RE 5 put me together with an AI-controlled partner, Sheva, and it would surely be a much better experience if she was controlled by a human. But I will have to retreat on that, too. Yes, your partner will never be good at distracting an enemy so you can tackle their weak spot or perform another task, but overall, the AI is largely capable enough to not be a burden (except in boss battles).
So what did make my experience so bad compared to Resident Evil 4? To get to that, we need to establish what made that game fun in the first place. And there are a lot of things I’ll address as I go, but let’s start with what frustrated me the most: The gameplay.
We can break down the main gameplay loop of both Resident Evil 4 and 5 into four main ingredients:
The player character(s), the enemies, the weapons/gunplay and the level design.
And at first glance, these elements seem to be virtually identical in both games. After all, RE 5 tries to emulate its predecessor in meticulous detail. However it does fall short on several fronts.
Resident Evil 4 introduced a lot of changes to the series. One of them was the shift from a fixed camera perspective to an over-the-shoulder view. This allowed for a much more dynamic gameplay, but one should not forget that this new point of view didn’t eliminate the often hated “tank controls” at all. If you think about it, in a general sense, Resident Evil 4 still controls like its predecessors and adds manual aiming on top of that. At the same time, your enemies evolved a lot, too. They can run, jump, dodge and even use weapons. Leon however can’t even run and shoot at the same time.
And this is where the level design comes into play. The very beginning of Resident Evil 4 starts you in a house after dealing with its very defensive owner. Suddenly his friends show up and approach the house. From there you are given several options. You can run outside, shoot them from the window, run up the stairs and tackle them on the way up or jump out the second floor window, ideally after luring the attackers up there, giving you plenty of time to escape. And that’s just the start of it!
The next big fight takes place in a village which gives you tons of options: There are multiple houses and shacks with windows to leap through and doors to barricade. Additionally there are ladders leading to higher ground, which you can push over, sending your enemies flying. Or you could wait for them to climb up, slashing them with your knife before they have the chance to grab you. Naturally you have to keep moving, since no barricade will last and enemies eventually find a way to you. But you are always encouraged to experiment and find ways how to deal with a situation. And efficiently dealing with masses of enemies in imaginative ways are the best and most rewarding parts of the entire game! And a lot of areas in the game are built in this playground-like fashion. Not all of them are super elaborate, but typically offering you as much freedom as possible.
Now let’s take a look at how Resident Evil 5 does it, shall we? Like in the previous game, you enter a building, a Plagas-Zombie comes running at you, you gun it down and… that’s it. Not a single window was harmed in the encounter. A short time later you will witness the execution of a minor support character on a market square. Naturally you’re spotted so that RE 5 has an excuse to emulate the village scene from the previous game. Conveniently you even start in a house that allows you to barricade a window… which makes little sense due to the house being swarmed by enemies through the many other entrances (including a skylight) within seconds. There’s a total of one other building for you to enter, but don’t think it’ll provide protection, since the executioner, who serves as a kind of Mini-Boss, just doesn’t care about things like doors… or walls. And don’t even start looking for ladders. There are none. Your best strategy is to run to one end of the area, shoot at everything that moves until you’re surrounded, then run to the other end of the area and repeat. Sounds fun, right?
Enemies are also a tiny bit faster than they were in Resident Evil 4. And with less obstacles to break up their movement, encounters often end up as chaotic as a bar fight. And even if an area provides you with some sort of opportunity, you tend to not have a lot of time to make use of it. This also makes knife combat and melee attacks — two other really fun elements from RE 4 — a lot less useful. Eventually, I think the level designers just gave up and turned half of the game into what we like to call a “Hallway Shooter”. Make no mistake: Resident Evil 4 had very linear passages as well. But it used them to build atmosphere or for fairly controlled enemy encounters.
Did you know that Resident Evil 5 introduces a new enemy called Reaper? Did you also know that it can instantly kill you? You’ll first meet it on a narrow walkway, jumping right in front of your feet. Maybe now it’s also a good time to mention that you still cannot run and shoot at the same time.
What makes matters worse is the gunplay. Not that it seems very different from Resident Evil 4, but let’s quickly acknowledge that the big thing of RE 5 is its Co-Op mode! Logically, opening your inventory will not pause the game. Makes sense, right? That way, if you need to manage your inventory, your partner will need to cover you. Yeah… no. Remember those Reapers with their instakill attacks? They’re not the only enemy type that can do that. Maybe this is somewhat fun with a human partner, but playing alone is an exercise in frustration. And I’m barely scratching the surface here.
I know not everyone was happy with RE 4’s “Inventory Tetris”, but it gave the player the opportunity to carry a lot of items. And guns! Remember, we went from Survival Horror to Action. So instead of making do with whatever you just have at hand, you’ve got a broad palette of weapons which all had their use for a specific situation and/or enemy type. It’s a good and well designed system. Being able to shoot a stick of dynamite with your rifle, detonating in the hands of a villager before they can throw it at you or quickly annihilating the shield of an oncoming cultist with a shotgun — good times. Fun times.
Resident Evil 5 throws that out the window by turning the inventory from a tool into an obstacle. Each player character gets nine inventory slots and a single egg or healing herb occupies the same space as a rocket launcher. Because that makes sense. Either way, with very limited space and ammo, you’ll have to divide your arsenal and it is entirely possible that you’ll run into a situation where your one of your characters simply doesn’t have the right weapon for the job. And while exchanging items is possible, it’s just frustrating, even if you got no instakill enemies on your tail. And for whatever reason, you can only move items in your inventory in between missions. Not during gameplay. You can exchange between two characters, sure, but once you pick up a new weapon or a grenade and it doesn’t land on one of your quickslots, your only way to select it is by painstakingly selecting it in your inventory which — and I cannot stress this enough — doesn’t pause the game, even if you play alone!
It’s a mess. A chaotic mess. And I have to be honest and say that I had little to no enjoyment when I first played it. However, revisiting it ten years later, I had a slightly different experience. Parts of the game were actually fun to play, especially the marshlands provided some great moments. But I strongly recommend that if you play the game for the first time, play on the lowest difficulty setting. That way the game won’t punish you too hard for selecting or upgrading the wrong weapon and on your next playthrough, you at least know what’s coming. In fact the game encourages multiple playthroughs anyway and I think this is the best strategy.
But overall, if you are a fan of Resident Evil and want to see where the series goes, check it out. Especially fans of Wesker (and those who hate his guts) will have a lot of fun with the story. Also, do yourself a favor and pick up the Gold Edition as it comes with both DLC. Desperate Escape is just more of the same, but Lost in Nightmares — which serves as a prequel to the main game — is great and actually scary. It does run mostly on fan service, but it’s definitely worth it.
And that concludes my little analysis of Resident Evil 5. While writing these lines I’m now about two hours into Resident Evil 6, and while it has been torn apart by some fans and critics, I personally have to disagree. At least it’s a mechanically solid game that knows what it is instead of trying to be something that it doesn’t understand. Resident Evil 5 may have jumped the shark — or rather — punched the boulder, but lets not forget that after Resident Evil 7 and the Remake of 2, fans have all reason to be optimistic about the franchise. In worst case, the series has a lot of really good games to offer. On that note: Have fun!
