Resident Evil 5 roundabout review

Racial stereotypes in games are super fun yo. Consider Mario. Who in the gaming world can think of an Italian without a big mustache and overalls? Or an American without being rough and ready and in a cowboy hat? Or black people without picturing them stamping things to death and raping white women. Wait, what?

Before I go on, I'd like to point out that I am absolutely not one of the PC brigade that gets offended by anything. 

           (Except that man's suit; it's offending all our eyes. ZING!) 

But I couldn't help but feel that a few elements of Resident Evil 5 were a bit, you know, black people = animals. 

At the start of the game we are treated to our hero Chris Redfield strutting through an African village. Although things seem a bit off, there haven't been any face-monster attacks yet - though the player has been privileged to see some freaky stuff that Chris and his bang tidy sidekick Sheva Alomar are unaware of. 

Then Chris walks past a group of villagers. Nothing too weird there, except they are totally stamping on something tied up in a bag. The bag isn't big enough to hold a person. So yea, they're just killing a dog in there. 

                   (YOU STOP LAUGHING AT MY RUBBISH AIM)

These things happen though. They're infected with all sorts of crazy face cracking monster demons. That's cool. I can accept that maybe a bunch of dudes would get together, tie an animal in a bag and then stamp the crap out of it. I mean c'mon, who hasn't been to summer camp, am I right? 

But then you see the first whitey in the game that isn't Chris. And she's a girl. And she's probably being raped. Yeah, really. (First few seconds of vid).

                                        

Wow. I mean, wow. Should we even go in that room after that or just call the cops? Because they probably need a psychiatrist or some other specially trained professional in there first. Last thing that girl needs to see after whatever the hell happened in that shack is some steroid-packing mercenary waving a gun around. 

Don't agree with me? Go right ahead and bitch in the comments. But before you do, consider this – why the hell make her the only white girl in the game so far? It's not like it's referenced anywhere before hand.

Racism aside, the game offers some wonderfully worked graphics. Shading and faces are good with only one or two glitches on Chris' eyes as Capcom's MT Framework engine struggles to keep up.  

The voice acting is okay-ish but the script is terrible. Not bad, not awkward, genuinely terrible.

How terrible? 

(This terrible)

Considering how much time you spend popping fools in the head, Sheva gets very upset at strange times and in predictably God-bothering ways. Here's a few scenes from the script: 

SHEVA: A bomber equipped with missiles? He can't fly around in that without
getting shot down...oh God!

SCENE ENDS

[By shooting explosive barrels, CHRIS and SHEVA manage to stop the truck and
eliminate a horde of Majini. Going down into the sewers, the two are ambushed
by packs of Adjule, but manage to get back outside. Sprawled out on the wet 
ground are several corpses.]

SHEVA: My God...

SCENE ENDS

[CHRIS and SHEVA open the doors and run towards the crash site to find the
chopper ablaze.]

SHEVA (turns her head): Oh my God.

SCENE ENDS

Sheva's one expression of shock gets pretty grating after a while, as does her inability to differentiate between varying scales of concern. God gets wheeled out when she runs out of ammo just as He does when she sees swathes of dead bodies, like they're totally comparable. 

This broke me out of the experience more than anything else in the game. 

Resident Evil 5 is not scary, nor is it survival. Instead of cheap jumps that are so abundant in previous incarnations of the franchise, this is full on 28 Days Later streams of zombies, just begging for headshots. 

(I guess there's worst things he could've done to that mouth)

Ammo's never really a concern. From time to time you run out, but the next suspiciously similar breakable crate is just around the corner filled with bullets. The game errs towards action and adventure. This is fun, but there's a few design flaws which don't stand up to the action genre.

The shooting mechanic is awkward. As with previous games, you push one button to put your pistol up and another to shoot. While aiming your weapon, you can't move. You're like a gun toting rabbit waiting for the 18-wheeler zombie truck that's about to slam into you from every direction.

(Like this, but with guns, and zombies, and nothing like this)

And forget changing weapon mid-fight. For a reason which I can only assume was driven by the designers' desperate need to go out and score more crack real quick, the game doesn't pause when you access the weapon menu to change guns. This means that to equip a new gun, you pull up a menu that takes up a large portion of the screen, frantically find the damn thing and then whip it out. All while this guy tries to cut your face off.

(Hey, mind holding up with the murder spree for a sec? Gotta find my boomstick)

Luckily, the AI of Sheva is almost up to the task of covering you while you flail around uselessly in a weapons meanu. From time to time she sprints around like a slack jawed moron but usually she's pretty good. I loaded her up with a machine gun early on and she was content plugging bad guys with that. 

The bosses are satisfying, all big and need some mild, albeit entirely obvious unless you're a stone cold moron, lateral thinking to kill and shit. The puzzles are a bit of a letdown. They're as cryptic as a massive arrow on the wall saying PULL THIS LEVER!!! QUICK PULL IT!!! 

Overall, I'd say the game was worth a punt if you can get it at a decent price. I got mine for £10 with instore credit. Wallop, job done.