First of all, thanks a bunch to @DeemonAndGames for agreeing to play through the entirety of this in spite of his fear to weird mutated zombie spiders. Very sorry for that.
Finally, the 7th-Genification of Resident Evil 4.
It is widely said that RE4 is the most influential third person shooter to define what action games should be moving forward, and while that’s definitely true, it is the games that released later, like Gears of War or Call of Duty, that ended up having a bigger impact on the industry and leaving a bigger mark. When we talk 7th Gen, the term “COD Clone” was way more used than “RE4 Clone”, because while it is Resident Evil 4 the one that helped establish some of the elements, later released games sort of, for the lack of a better word, elevated the third person shooter formula, and now you had gritty self-serious military-themed cover shooters that looked like gray sludge and leaned more towards empty spectacle rather than improving player interactivity.
Resident Evil 4 brought the blueprint, Resident Evil 5 fell victim to its master’s apprentices. Now the gun laser point is replaced by a generic crosshair, the level design is more streamlined, and exploration is reduced in favor of hallway shooting gameplay. From the get go, you’re shown a handful of set-pieces remade from RE4; you got: village shootout, masked guy with a chainsaw, and as you go on you’ll find yourself driving a boat on a lake and fighting in underground mines. Late game enemies are zombie soldiers that bear a resemblance to the island chapter of RE4. All of these callbacks make it feel like they’re trying to replicate the success of the previous entry to lesser effect, but most importantly is that this shows off the shift in videogame design in-between generations. By 2009, the directing force of game design was to be visually spectacular and comfortable to play. In contrast to RE4, which demanded more dedication from the player to progress and overcome the challenge, RE5 wants you to follow the only path possible, open a door or cross a hallway, get a cutscene and jump straight to the next set-piece or hallway.
The problem with the overabundance of cutscenes is that they create a feeling of disconnect with the world, and since level navigation is reduced to the minimum, the resulting experience is a game that might feel fun to play in small doses, but one that overstays its welcome way too fast. The journey of RE5 is one of set-pieces. You never know when a door or an elevator might lead you to another set-piece in which you fight a shit-ton of enemies in enclosed spaces - did I already mention the level design is hallway gaming -. Also, the soldier zombies now have guns instead of crossbows, so you better enjoy the cover mechanics you’re given. Yeah, Resident Evil has cover mechanics now. The way these mechanics are implemented could not feel more out of place. You can only take cover behind specific walls and corners that have a diegetic visual indicator (red and white stripes, not yellow paint, sorry twitter nerds) to make you know you can take cover there, since you cannot take cover anywhere else.
The boss fights of this game are a real downer. It’s not just that they’re not as iconic as those from the previous game, the important thing here is that most of them are just set-pieces. And not the cool kind, they’re the visually-great-but-not-half-as-enjoyable kind. By this I mean that you fight the same giant from RE4 but instead of having a rad doggo by your side and stabbing the monster on the back, now it’s a lamer version of Time Crisis. And of course, all of them have blatant weak points, same as ever. There was this one boss in chapter 5-2 which I and @DeemonAndGames spent like more than half an hour trying to beat, blowing up its weak points and lighting it up with the flamethrower over and over. We died and restarted so many times that we thought “maybe we’re doing something wrong?”, but no, it’s just that that boss has a fuck ton of health, so I decided to buy an RPG to one shot it because we didn’t have enough ammo to take him on. And not only that, it is also a reused miniboss from earlier in the game. And it’s not the only boss they recycle. Not all bosses are like that, some are even fun, but none feel special or particularly interesting.
Everything RE5 attempts feel like a downgrade from the previous game, and the constant callbacks make it more apparent. Sure, the co-op mechanics are really interesting and bring a much-needed fun component to the game, and there are certainly some improvements like the more limited inventory that does not pause the action and that lets you switch weapons on the fly, something that brings more tension to the game and immersion to the world, but that immersion is broken when you’re thrown into set-piece after cutscene after set-piece while being presented the most lame and mind numbing puzzles ever thought out by a human being. It’s hard to connect with the world. A similar thing happened to me while playing The Evil Within last year; everything was so unconnected and random that I could not connect with the world and it started feeling more like a random array of rooms and less like a world, which kind of worked there since it never really took place in an actual place, but it took me out of the experience more times than I can remember. This ends up feeling more like a trend-chasing and risk-aversive version of a far better game.
The story of RE4 had its silly moments but was a more relaxed experience and less bombastic. Meanwhile, Resident Evil 5 story goes full-on gonzo summer blockbuster insaneo style. You got biker zombies! a Temple of Doom (no Indiana Jones minecart sequence this time sadly)! Huge-ass sci-fi underground facilities with… clones I guess! Volcano showdown! The story here is equal parts unbelievably stupid and unbelievably racist. Since the story in games like this is just an excuse to generate challenge, the game makes use of anything it can to create a new type of enemy, or boss, or set-piece, or whatever. This means you end up shooting up an entire local tribe of natives because……. reasons - we were looking for one of the bad guys I think, which for some reason was hiding somewhere nearby or something like that I don’t quite remember sorry -. And since there is a shop in here (another one of the lame as hell decisions this game has is completely removing the merchant. I’ll count it as a failed opportunity to include a zombie weapons trader or something like that since this has huge Black Hawk Down/Lord of War/Blood Diamond vibes), all of the money comes from looting and selling to literally no one all the looted gold and treasures from the people the game keeps telling you that you are saving in some fakeass moral discourse or whatever they said in the final cutscene. RE4 did something like this, but it never drew much attention to anything and it felt more like a B-movie fun ride. At some point in the development of RE5 someone thought that what this franchise needed was getting serious and making actual statements about real problems. The issue here is that the anti-colonialist or whatever message here is contradicted by how you slaughter these guys and steal their stuff. Yeah, they might be zombies, but who’s gonna be left if you go around world police style instead of looking for actual solutions that aren’t gunning down everyone that gets in the way. Resident Evil should’ve stayed in the gonzo silly style instead of taking itself so seriously, because the end result is the disaster that Resident Evil 5 is.
This is pretty much an average game, and I found myself enjoying the overall stupidity at points (boulder punching should be a worldwide sport!!) but like, it is so unmemorable that none of this is gonna stick with me the same way Resident Evil 4 did. RE5 feels insecure about itself, trendy, and uninteresting at times, especially towards the second half, so the game ends up being just perfectly fine, or mid as the kids say nowadays. But it is the boring set-pieces and levels and the lame attempt at Saying Something that hurts the game the most.
Finally, the 7th-Genification of Resident Evil 4.
It is widely said that RE4 is the most influential third person shooter to define what action games should be moving forward, and while that’s definitely true, it is the games that released later, like Gears of War or Call of Duty, that ended up having a bigger impact on the industry and leaving a bigger mark. When we talk 7th Gen, the term “COD Clone” was way more used than “RE4 Clone”, because while it is Resident Evil 4 the one that helped establish some of the elements, later released games sort of, for the lack of a better word, elevated the third person shooter formula, and now you had gritty self-serious military-themed cover shooters that looked like gray sludge and leaned more towards empty spectacle rather than improving player interactivity.
Resident Evil 4 brought the blueprint, Resident Evil 5 fell victim to its master’s apprentices. Now the gun laser point is replaced by a generic crosshair, the level design is more streamlined, and exploration is reduced in favor of hallway shooting gameplay. From the get go, you’re shown a handful of set-pieces remade from RE4; you got: village shootout, masked guy with a chainsaw, and as you go on you’ll find yourself driving a boat on a lake and fighting in underground mines. Late game enemies are zombie soldiers that bear a resemblance to the island chapter of RE4. All of these callbacks make it feel like they’re trying to replicate the success of the previous entry to lesser effect, but most importantly is that this shows off the shift in videogame design in-between generations. By 2009, the directing force of game design was to be visually spectacular and comfortable to play. In contrast to RE4, which demanded more dedication from the player to progress and overcome the challenge, RE5 wants you to follow the only path possible, open a door or cross a hallway, get a cutscene and jump straight to the next set-piece or hallway.
The problem with the overabundance of cutscenes is that they create a feeling of disconnect with the world, and since level navigation is reduced to the minimum, the resulting experience is a game that might feel fun to play in small doses, but one that overstays its welcome way too fast. The journey of RE5 is one of set-pieces. You never know when a door or an elevator might lead you to another set-piece in which you fight a shit-ton of enemies in enclosed spaces - did I already mention the level design is hallway gaming -. Also, the soldier zombies now have guns instead of crossbows, so you better enjoy the cover mechanics you’re given. Yeah, Resident Evil has cover mechanics now. The way these mechanics are implemented could not feel more out of place. You can only take cover behind specific walls and corners that have a diegetic visual indicator (red and white stripes, not yellow paint, sorry twitter nerds) to make you know you can take cover there, since you cannot take cover anywhere else.
The boss fights of this game are a real downer. It’s not just that they’re not as iconic as those from the previous game, the important thing here is that most of them are just set-pieces. And not the cool kind, they’re the visually-great-but-not-half-as-enjoyable kind. By this I mean that you fight the same giant from RE4 but instead of having a rad doggo by your side and stabbing the monster on the back, now it’s a lamer version of Time Crisis. And of course, all of them have blatant weak points, same as ever. There was this one boss in chapter 5-2 which I and @DeemonAndGames spent like more than half an hour trying to beat, blowing up its weak points and lighting it up with the flamethrower over and over. We died and restarted so many times that we thought “maybe we’re doing something wrong?”, but no, it’s just that that boss has a fuck ton of health, so I decided to buy an RPG to one shot it because we didn’t have enough ammo to take him on. And not only that, it is also a reused miniboss from earlier in the game. And it’s not the only boss they recycle. Not all bosses are like that, some are even fun, but none feel special or particularly interesting.
Everything RE5 attempts feel like a downgrade from the previous game, and the constant callbacks make it more apparent. Sure, the co-op mechanics are really interesting and bring a much-needed fun component to the game, and there are certainly some improvements like the more limited inventory that does not pause the action and that lets you switch weapons on the fly, something that brings more tension to the game and immersion to the world, but that immersion is broken when you’re thrown into set-piece after cutscene after set-piece while being presented the most lame and mind numbing puzzles ever thought out by a human being. It’s hard to connect with the world. A similar thing happened to me while playing The Evil Within last year; everything was so unconnected and random that I could not connect with the world and it started feeling more like a random array of rooms and less like a world, which kind of worked there since it never really took place in an actual place, but it took me out of the experience more times than I can remember. This ends up feeling more like a trend-chasing and risk-aversive version of a far better game.
The story of RE4 had its silly moments but was a more relaxed experience and less bombastic. Meanwhile, Resident Evil 5 story goes full-on gonzo summer blockbuster insaneo style. You got biker zombies! a Temple of Doom (no Indiana Jones minecart sequence this time sadly)! Huge-ass sci-fi underground facilities with… clones I guess! Volcano showdown! The story here is equal parts unbelievably stupid and unbelievably racist. Since the story in games like this is just an excuse to generate challenge, the game makes use of anything it can to create a new type of enemy, or boss, or set-piece, or whatever. This means you end up shooting up an entire local tribe of natives because……. reasons - we were looking for one of the bad guys I think, which for some reason was hiding somewhere nearby or something like that I don’t quite remember sorry -. And since there is a shop in here (another one of the lame as hell decisions this game has is completely removing the merchant. I’ll count it as a failed opportunity to include a zombie weapons trader or something like that since this has huge Black Hawk Down/Lord of War/Blood Diamond vibes), all of the money comes from looting and selling to literally no one all the looted gold and treasures from the people the game keeps telling you that you are saving in some fakeass moral discourse or whatever they said in the final cutscene. RE4 did something like this, but it never drew much attention to anything and it felt more like a B-movie fun ride. At some point in the development of RE5 someone thought that what this franchise needed was getting serious and making actual statements about real problems. The issue here is that the anti-colonialist or whatever message here is contradicted by how you slaughter these guys and steal their stuff. Yeah, they might be zombies, but who’s gonna be left if you go around world police style instead of looking for actual solutions that aren’t gunning down everyone that gets in the way. Resident Evil should’ve stayed in the gonzo silly style instead of taking itself so seriously, because the end result is the disaster that Resident Evil 5 is.
This is pretty much an average game, and I found myself enjoying the overall stupidity at points (boulder punching should be a worldwide sport!!) but like, it is so unmemorable that none of this is gonna stick with me the same way Resident Evil 4 did. RE5 feels insecure about itself, trendy, and uninteresting at times, especially towards the second half, so the game ends up being just perfectly fine, or mid as the kids say nowadays. But it is the boring set-pieces and levels and the lame attempt at Saying Something that hurts the game the most.
3 Comments
Impressive that you guys give it a lower score than me, given that I played this game all by myself lol
paq250_
21 days ago