Capcom’s 1996 game Resident Evil – an adventure game with horror elements, inspired the horror genre that most console gamers today recognize. In 2005 Capcom drastically altered the franchise with Resident Evil 4 – introducing heavy action and shooting elements. Resident Evil 5 takes RE4’s action elements, polishes them, and optimizes them for cooperative play.
Resident Evil 5 stars Chris Redfield – the protagonist of the original RE, as he and partner Sheva Alomar investigate a biological weapons maker in Africa. As in RE4, players desperately fight for survival against hordes of relentless infected people and other creatures. This time however they must do it as a team.
“Co-op is the main way to play Evil 5.”
Capcom has stated that Resident Evil 5 was built from the ground up as a cooperative game, and it shows throughout the campaign. RE5 optimizes itself for co-op possibly more than any other game, but optimizes itself only for co-op.
Most cooperative campaigns are simply extra modes or extensions of traditionally singleplayer campaigns. Co-op is the main way to play Resident Evil 5 whether it be online or offline. There are many instances throughout the game requiring strategic coordination between Chris and Sheva. Sometimes the only way to progress is for them to split up and perform jobs separately, time actions in sequence, or plan coordinated attacks on enemies.
Resident Evil 5 throws a lot at players, even more than Resident Evil 4 which is considered to be one of the most intense games in recent memory. As hard as the game is, when two players familiar with RE team up, the challenge feels just right and the result is one of the most elaborately-designed and polished team games ever. It feels just as tense and expertly-paced as RE4 did, just with two players.
A person playing alone however will not feel like they’re getting the optimal experience with Resident Evil 5. The AI that controls Sheva in singleplayer get’s the job done and almost never get’s itself killed. However, there are many parts throughout the game that players will realize were designed specifically for two players coordinating tactics. Lone players will feel handicapped against most of the bosses.
More troubling to some players might be Resident Evil 5’s danger of drifting too far from its roots.
Still a Horror Game?
The original Resident Evil was a classic adventure game not unlike Myst or the 1992 Alone in the Dark, but with elements inspired by horror films. Vulnerable players would survive on meager supplies in areas full of monsters while solving puzzles and uncovering mysteries. Resident Evil 4 turned the focus towards shooting and running from large groups of these monsters with little focus on the adventure.
Resident Evil 5 tunes its action/adventure balance to something resembling Capcom’s own Devil May Cry. There are only a handful of basic puzzles to speak of throughout the entire game. Their amount and complexity are low, even compared to RE4. The action in RE5 also runs at a faster pace than even its famously intense predecessor.
Resident Evil 5 however still plays under the interface of an adventure game like its predecessors and this has irked both RE fans and fans of action games. RE games are challenging because they make players feel vulnerable. This clashes with the run-and-gun gameplay of games like Gears of War which RE5 emulates in many ways. RE5 is a great game in its own right, but the franchise is feeling less and less like Resident Evil.
Bottom Line
Resident Evil 5 uses RE4’s revolutionary gameplay as a base for an extremely tense and well-designed cooperative adventure. A casualty of that however is a stilted singleplayer experience and a classic franchise that needs to figure out where it’s going.
 |
 |
 |
 |
