Resident Evil 5 - a re-think

As noted in a previous blog entry i was very disappointed in the general direction that Capcom took this game after the awesomeness that was Resident Evil 4, my main point of disillusion being the "forced" co-op with the terribly coded A.I. partner.
Over the past couple of months however i've found that my opinion has changed considerably, i actually now really like the game! I think this turnaround is down to a few different reasons...

Downloadable Content:

The Lost in Nightmares DLC is absolutely fantastic, although short at approximately an hour long it is a lovely homage to the original game and actually shows how stunning a "proper" Resident Evil game would've looked using this game engine. Jill is a million times less annoying than Sheva was also and of course the team of her and Chris feels 100 times for natural in the context of the series.

Desparate Escape is less good but one thing i will say about it is that the partner A.I. seems greatly improved from the main game, if only they'd spent a bit more time making Sheva's AI as good as this.












The Mercenaries reunion DLC has also improved my enjoyment with Rebecca Chambers becoming my favourite character to use and I've also began to prefer the new soundtrack included in this mode.

The competitive online Versus modes have also been a blast to play with a friend although it suffers from many people using the overpowered version of Wesker that you can unlock.


Achievement & Trophy hunting:

Due to this being part of my favourite gaming franchise I've really wanted to unlock as many of the single player achievements as possible, which has lead to me tackling the higher difficulties which has increased the tension and made the experience a much more exhilarating experience especially on the Professional difficulty level with it's one hit kills.
I can honestly say that completing the game on Professional with a like minded friend is one of my treasured gaming memories of recent years.
I've also spent time upgrading all the weapons to unlock achievements which leads me nicely into my next point..












Special weapons:

After the initial couple of playthroughs one of the problems i had with the game was that there seemed to be too many generic weapons in comparison to the ones found in Resident Evil 4, especially the assault rifles. This has now changed now that i have everything unlocked and upgraded, the 3 barreled Hydra shotgun and the 3 Magnum pistols being my absolute favourites. In fact i don't even bother with the boringly similar assault rifles anymore preferring to use a fully upgraded V761 Sub machine gun with infinite ammo (reminds me very much of the glorious TMP found in the forth game)

So in closing i guess i was pretty much wrong about the game, I've put in 50hrs with the 360 version and around 25 i think on the PS3 so I'm obviously enjoying it far more than i thought initially!