Blind Devotion

Posted by ASandoval on February 23, 2009 under Games | Read the First Comment

I knew the minute I downloaded it I wasn’t going to be satisfied by the Resident Evil 5 demo. All the recent indicators showed me I was in for a similar experience to Resident Evil 4, a game that while I think is a damn fine one in its own right, never struck me as Resident Evil. Oh sure, the novelty of being assaulted from all sides by a force a thousand times more dangerous than your slow and painfully stupid zombie had me going when I first step foot into the Granado village, but shortly after that the experience became… more uniformed to put it politely. With the exception of the gigantic boss fights (Probably my favorite part of the game), it became nothing more than a series of rooms where I would complete the challenge (Generally involving the slaughter of los plagas infected villagers but sometimes it would vary by allowing me to protect an NPC) and then move on to the next.

Gone was pretty much many of the reasons I enjoy the Resident Evil series in the first place. Ammo and health were generously given, put in specific places and sometimes even spawned by enemies, so never once did I feel as if I was incapable of surviving. The game was mostly a linear succession of rooms, so there was no big mansion, police station or city to explore. And yes, I even missed finding nonsensical puzzle pieces that I had to get so I’d have to run back to complete the overly convoluted puzzle in order to advance. To me, the fun was exploring the world, solving puzzles and trying to survive in between. It was something of the perfect marriage of a shooter and a graphic adventure, two of my favorite genres, that formed together to make the equivalent of a gaming nirvana. In short, the Resident Evil series (And most specifically, Resident Evil 2) in it’s original form had the makings to be the perfect game.

But times changed, conventions grew stale and change over took. Whatever, it may not be my cup of tea, but I liked Resident Evil 4 just as well. Maybe not as much as some people (I’d even say Code Veronica is a better game, but I digress), so I wasn’t going to let the fact that RE5 would be near identical completely spoil my experience with it.

No, Capcom had other things in mind to spoil my experience.  Two major things at that.

At E3 in 2008, Capcom showed off a demo of RE5 showing how Chris would interact with his new partner, Sheva, who could be controlled by a second player either locally or over XBox Live. At the time, this was tantalizing stuff. It showed Chris using the second player to gain access to areas where the other couldn’t reach yet to help the other player to progress. It was new and exciting, something that hadn’t been done in games before. In my head, however, it made me question about when something like this would be necessary and how they would pull that off. I started day dreaming unrealistic scenarios, like maybe Sheva’s scenario played completely separate of Chris aside from a few key moments, and only by playing either the two players separately single player or by doing co-op with someone who will be playing through the other scenario separate until the point in the story where the two would cross paths.

As wildly ambitious as this idea was, I hadn’t imagined that Capcom would choose the worse possible path: forcing you to play through the entire game with a partner. See, in an all out shooter like Gears of War or Halo, other characters are great help because it’s another body to blow up enemies in your path. Generally the health regenerates and the ammo is easily obtainable enough on the war path (since the other enemies are using guns as well) that the other player can hand their own with no problem. In Resident Evil, however, it’s a different story. Both Chris and Sheva have limited item space, and items such as health and ammo are sparse, even though they sometimes spawn after an enemy is defeated. This essentially means that not only do you have to watch over your own health and ammo, but also Sheva’s as well, making the single player experience something akin to a babysitter simulator on top of a shooting game, a hybrid that doesn’t generally mix well together.

Capcom tries avoiding the problem of terrible partner AI by making Sheva pretty much attach herself to Chris’ hip at all times, thus allowing for easy health and ammo distribution when necessary. This presents a whole other problem, however. A good portion of the camera is taken up by Chris’ backside, a third to up to a half in close corners. If you need to turn around quickly to shoot something, chances are the OTHER portion of the screen will be taken up by Sheva, either staring at Chris awkwardly or aiming at an enemy some place else. This not only obscures your vision, but also makes Sheva more of a target than an enemy.

The argument could be made here that Resident Evil 5 was made primarily as a multiplayer experience. Well, that’s true, but wait a second, a Resident Evil game that sucks single player? Isn’t there something wrong with that statement? I mean, I know action games are usually big time multiplayer experiences, but Resident Evil fans like myself are generally slow, methodical players. That’s why we were playing Resident Evil instead of whatever first person shooter was popular at the time in the first place! Case in point, to this day I still barely if ever play a multiplayer game outside of fighting games, and I know many Resident Evil fans that are the same way.

The second point I wanted to touch on briefly is the new item management system. Aside from their being no way to not just give SOME of your ammo to the other character (which is more of a jab at the whole babysitting issue), the item screen no longer pauses the gameplay like it used to, again another pull toward making Resident Evil more action oriented. The theory here is that the action continuing while in the item screen is more immersive, simulating the feeling of fumbling through your pockets trying to find out where you put that herb moments before getting a pitchfork rammed up your bum. The problem here is that I guarantee you fumbling through your pockets and screwing around with a control stick are two completely different experiences. I’m not going to be brought into the game’s situation more when I’m looking at a HUD floating in the middle of the air. All this really does is serve to be more of an unnecessary irritation.

So yeah, This is probably the first Resident Evil that I can say has me disappointed. And yet… I’ll probably still buy it. I’ve been invested in Resident Evil for the past 12 years, through stale gameplay, weird spin offs and the like. What’s worse is today’s announcement that Resident Evil 6 will be a complete reboot , meaning that Resident Evil 5 will be the last game in the current canon. Damn you blind devotion, damn you.