Here it is, my long promised slating of Capcom's "franchise rape"
Let me just start by saying that on its own it's not that bad a game, it's certainly better than most 3rd person action games out there, it's just taken as part of a classic series and as sequel to one of the best console games of all time it's a disappointment, and this is entirely down to Capcom's stupid design decisions.
These decisions appear to have been taken to appeal to the Gears Of War crowd and to gain some of that fanbase, this includes.........
Making Chris ridiculously bulky a la' the Gears meaning he just looks stupid compared to how he looked in both REmake and Code Veronica.
Deciding to use a stupidly poor on the fly inventory system rather than the separate screen as in Resident Evil 4. Combine this with a small amount of inventory slots available and you've got a recipe for frustration right there. This also makes the Mercenaries mode much more fiddly than it should be which is a shame as this is the one part of Resident Evil 5 that is bordering on the fantastic.
The biggest problem however, and one that practically breaks the game in places is that Capcom decided in their new "wisdom" to make the entire game a fucking co-op experience.
This removes the majority of any tension as suddenly you're no longer on your own. It does provide perhaps the only scary thing about the game - the shoddy AI, many of the boss battles are stupidly designed around two players working together, which just doesn't work if the second player is controlled by the AI as they will just run straight at the boss and shoot - no strategy whatsoever.
This actually breaks the final boss battle as I found it nigh on impossible to get an "S" rank for the mission as the AI partner just kept running right at the boss and dying ("S" Rank stipulates no deaths in the chapter)
At least if you're going to provide a shoddy AI character then don't penalise me or make it game over when they die Capcom!
I'm not overly bothered about 360 Achievements but this is one game where I wanted to get them all and I also wanted to unlock everything (this is my favourite franchise after all), but they went and practically spoiled this for me too as to unlock stuff you need to collect all the BSAA emblems but yes you guessed it there's one you can only get by playing with another human player!
What an absolute joke, why should anyone be penalised and unable to unlock all the content just because they don't play on Xbox live?
(back to the game)
The setting doesn't really work either, it's too bright for a Resident Evil game and the only moments that felt right were the interior moments later on and the short sewer section near the start.
The bosses are a bit uninspired too, there's nothing there that comes anywhere near Krauser or "It" in Resident Evil 4. I will say though that there is a pretty mental boss battle in Resident Evil 5 that I pretty much loved it's just a shame the rest of them were a bit boring.
The bosses (and the game in general actually) reminded me of Lost Planet which makes sense as both shared the same director (Jun Takeuchi). Lost Planet was alright game but had a lot of flaws, how on earth Capcom decided he was the man to take over their most beloved franchise I’ll never know but I read in this month’s Edge magazine that he wants to make the the next installment in this series even more mainstream as he thinks that Resident Evil 4 only appealed to "maniac players" (Japanese term for hardcore gamers).
No wonder Shinji Mikami left Capcom.....I dread to think what the next installment will be like
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