Resident Evil 5 Demo - My thoughts

So as I wait patiently for the LOTRO servers to come back online with the new Lorien Book 7 content, it gives me a chance to talk about other games!

Resident Evil 4 was certainly a blessed game when it was released four years ago. At the time of 2005 the Resident Evil franchise had become stale after ten years of pushing the survival horror adventure genre into the mainstream audience. Of course the original game launched in the mid-nineties owed a lot to the seminal PC series Alone in the Dark, but Capcom managed to polish the concept up and offer it to the Playstation generation. But after a few sequels of pre-rendered backgrounds, fixed cameras and restricted controls, a change was required to reinvigorate the series.

RE4 certainly did that. Pushing the Game Cube's graphics to the limit, the game threw the original template out of the window and introduced an over the shoulder camera, free-aiming and a much more action orientated game. This formula successfully produced probably the best roller-coaster ride to date, especially when you consider the ride lasts some twenty five hours and rarely stops for breath.

So four years later comes Resident Evil 5 which has a lot to live up to. I have played the demo for about an hour and sadly have decided it does not.

As expected for one of Capcom's flagship series, the visuals and presentation are top drawer and do not let down RE4's ground breaking graphics of that time. But unfortunately Capcom have decided to introduce co-op play, even if you play solo an AI colleague will be at your side. This dynamic changes the whole game and instead of enjoying being scared on your own, you now have to worry about saving your friend's butt and waiting for them to save you if you get knocked to the floor.

With lots of different joypad buttons to worry about, the situation is made worse by uncontrolled mobs of enemies that run straight up to you. Bring back slow crawling orderly queued zombies, all is forgiven! When knocked down your colleague helps you up asking politely "Are you ok?" whilst four mutated henchmen are trying to chop of your head with an axe! The controls don't help of course. Not being able to move while aiming seemed to work for RE4 where perhaps the enemy pathways were planned a lot more than they seem to be here in RE5.

Here is hoping that Resident Evil 6 will take us back to basics with solo zombie-filled survival horror.

The EDGE review