Rant - Resident Evil 5 Demo

I'd like to start this entry by shedding a tear for my fallen Xbox 360. It was only a matter of time and overheating I suppose, but it served me better than most electrical equipment unfortunate enough to be owned by me. It now faces an uncertain future that I'm somehow tempted to blame on the Resident Evil 5 demo I downloaded last week.

For starters this isn't a survival horror game, it's just a shooter in which you run out of bullets more often and your enemies rarely shoot back yet they're still carrying bullets for whatever reason. That's fine. What drew me into this series has always been the puzzles. The horror was capable and the storyline was woeful.

If I judge this as a shooter there are a few kinks in the controls I'd like to see ironed out before the game goes gold. In terms of gun play you can’t move while reloading, aiming, shooting, healing, looking at your inventory or basically while doing anything. Apparently Chris is really bad at multitasking. This would all be fine if I could fire from the hip (shooting without holding the aim button; less accurate but quicker). In the more claustrophobic moments I got a brief glimpse of the horror game this was trying to be. Being able to fire from the hip or move while aiming could vastly improve these areas without giving the player too much tension breaking power. As these moments stand, they're simply frustrating. Aside from that, the controls aren't exactly intuitive but effective once I got used to them and the aiming was impressively smooth.

The new zombie virus thing is a horrifying parasite that, upon the death of the host, melts their entire body into just the bullets they were carrying. Hitler couldn't come up with that shit. It's hard to be afraid of these guys though, because you're far from vulnerable. Within the first few minutes of play I'd taken giant axe in the face no less than six times without healing myself at all. My teammate just patted me on the back and I was right as rain. The only sense of the survival element is aforementioned rapid bullet depletion cracking action. But even then, the knife actually kicks arse against your garden variety zombies.

As far as story goes my best guess is that the bad guys are trying to enslave an impoverished African nation while the good guys are performing incidental genocide on it. Which is pretty much as ambivalent as it gets.

All bugs and glitches aside though, I think I will buy the full version of this game. Basically I really liked Resident Evil and Resident Evil Zero on the Gamecube. And this game basically looks like it is to RE4 what RE was to RE0. The same basic formula applied to two characters with different strengths and weaknesses, and playing co-op this time around is actually a lot of fun. It's no giant leap, but it's a small step in the right direction.