Huge shout-out to @paq250_, with whom I played the entire campaign, and that made this whole experience 10 times more fun than it otherwise would have been, it was amazing to experience the sheer insanity and absurdity on display here alongside someone else, and let’s be real, probably the way this game was intended to be played. And despite how much I’m about to tear into it, I can say one thing for certain; it sure is a tolerable and, at best, fun co-op experience with some pretty tense moments and cool sections, especially when the two of us were separated and had to frantically find a way to save each other’s asses, which sometimes ended poorly since I can’t aim for shit.

There are some genuine smart decisions here and there: the down time feels like proper moments of respite, and it’s always exciting to see what’s new in the store and talk about what weapons each should carry and what strategies to follow after losing. So it is simply thinking on your feet, scrambling for any way to get out of a tough situation, and saving each other constantly, especially if there’s an enemy that has one-shot potential involved. There’s no master-class in design here, but still, even if shooting Lickers down while your buddy tries to access an out-of-reach area or getting the attention of a boss or strong enemy while the other tries to set up mines and explosives aren’t the most creative shit out there, they are nonetheless fun, and tense moments that work when being alongside someone to share them. Resident Evil 5 works as a co-op third person shooter game, that I can say for certain….

Doesn’t change the fact that this shit is ASS

I know this may sound rich coming from the guy who hasn’t beat any RE game till this one, but I’ve played and know enough about other RE games to confidently say that it astounds me how much RE5 misses the mark considering the potential it had and how it sacrifices the wonderful cheesiness of previous games for half-ass seriousness which doesn’t work at all. The concept of ‘’RE4 but Co-Op’’ is fucking amazing, and I understand that Capcom made this at it is, but in the process, they seemed to have forgotten everything that made that game, or any RE for that matter, interesting in the first place aside from the core shooting.

You only get 9 inventory spaces each, and even the size of times doesn’t factor in at all anymore, that just makes this inventory system less interesting out of the bat, and that’s on top of being a pretty cumbersome and limited system in a game that at times offers you too much loot and throws you into extremely hectic situations that don’t really let you stop and manage your items properly.

Puzzles are a huge letdown, and the fact they are even here boggles the mind. If they wanted to make a pure action game, sure, go for it, but then throwing in some puzzles that aren’t fun or interesting in the slightest just because it isn’t exactly fun. Hell, nw that I think about it, I don’t even know why you have to sell the treasures you get instead of getting the money automatically, since you can’t combine any items aside of healing herbs! The closest this game comes to creating an actual involved headscratcher is the classic ‘’you need x number of items to open this door’’, if only they didn’t have the most annoying hazards and the most questionable area designs, they may have even been pretty fun!

RE5 just seems eternally confused, not only by its existence as the next RE game, but also as a sequel to RE4 and even as a game on its own: Did you like the hooded man with a chainsaw from RE4? Well, he’s back, bois! Did you like the Gigante and the sea monster? Well, they are also back... in boring turret section form! How about unskippable, weird as hell cutscenes that feel like there should be a quick time event of sorts… except it isn’t? How about a story and tone that are... questionable, to say the least…

I swear, I haven’t felt so bewildered at a game as watching one of the fucking main characters talk about how horrible imperialism is and how the terrible practices of an American company have doomed an entire African company… only to massacre an entire population of tribesmen and steal every treasure you come across in the following chapter. Hell, you keep fighting them even in the chapter after that! Isn’t that neat and not at all questionable and horrifying?

Every time the game tried to make a statement of some sort regarding the horrors of neo-imperialism, I couldn’t get that out of my mind; the first two chapters and maybe the last two aren’t that bad in that regard, but 3 & 4 are heinous and kill every chance this game had at being a serious critique of sorts, more than the motorbike scene and the showcase of every single military-movie cliché possible, I mean.

And hey, even if chapters 5 & 6 aren’t horrible story-wise, they sure are gameplay-wise. It’s in these areas that the game is completely mind-numbing: before, you had some interesting vertical design or interesting areas and mazes, but now we have metal corridors and cover emphasis in cover mechanics and it’s… not good, to be honest. There are no opportunities to be stealthy in Licker encounters, most battles feel more frustrating than engaging, and it all starts feeling like a race to the finish line that lasts too long.

Even the bosses are pretty middling overall; the only ones I can call enjoyable are the first and last one, anything in between is a passable set piece at best and a boring bulled sponge at worst… scratch that, at worst is the fuCKING 5-2 BOSS OF MY FUCKING GOD. We spent more than half an hour wondering what we were doing wrong, ‘cause that piece of crap wouldn’t die except, no, we weren’t doing anything wrong, is just that bad of a fight that it takes an eternity to beat even if you set it aflame constantly, and it even reuses the fucking model of the first boss! HOW DID THIS SHIT GO PAST TESTING??????

I can get mad all day, but honestly, RE5 isn’t terrible most of the time, just incredibly basic and full of mistakes that bog down the overall experience, and it’s sad that I have to say this; this was one of the games I vividly remember watching my father play all those years back. Should I have him play that game at such a young age? Probably not! But still, RE5 was the first RE game I ever came into contact with, and it’s sad to finally arrive at it and encounter a product that can be so inferior to what came before while trying to replicate exactly that, and how it manages to be the most predictable and by the number of things ever while also being spectacularly terrible at times… and honestly? That may be the thing that gives it charm.

I can’t stress how much me and Paq laughed at the motorbike cutscene, how we lost our minds at the punch and kick animations, how much we laughed after finding out a way to one shot that shitty 5-2 boss, and how worth the whole journey was to see Chris punching that damn rock and Western yeeting us to a fucking volcano. The game is not cheesy, it’s a joke, one that’s still funny nonetheless, and despite it all, it somehow had fun to offer, both intentionally and unintentionally.

RE5 may be generic, but there ain’t anything quite like it… And maybe that’s for the best, but hey, the guy punches a rock! Funniest shit I ever se-