Resident Evil 5

So then Resident Evil 5, a game all about shooting zombies, only not really.

In fact what you really spend most of the game shooting are actually living humans that have been infected with a parasite that controls their brain and makes them extremely aggressive without lowering their intellect or giving them a taste for human flesh.The actual plot of the game apparently has heavy tie ins with the rest of the series that I never played so all I really understood is you spend about half the game looking for a fellow named Irving then the next bit looking for Jill then the last bit trying to save the world. You know, just a typical day for Chris "Arms like a gorilla" Redfield. Seriously, the devs really wanted to make his arms impressive even going so far as to add a scene in during which Chris pushes a fucking boulder by punching it; a Boulder that is easily ten times the size of his body.

The game controls competently though I know there are somethings that will undoubtedly annoy some people, such as the nine item inventory and the inability to shoot whilst moving or hipfire your guns.However the system works once you get a handle one it.

And this is something I wanna stop and talk about. I said the game works well once you have a handle on it and I most certainly do. I've beaten the game a handful times, including at least once on the highest difficulty, obtained and fully upgraded all the weapons, found every treasure, shot every emblem, and you get where I'm going with this. I've done really everything doable in the game so to me the system is completely fine and I'm completely okay with the combat system and the inventory, even having before used the trick of opening the inventory and combining bullets into my guns for a reload in the short cinematic during melee attacks.

However there is the flip side of that coin. Sure I've mastered the game so none of its quirks bother me, but what about the first time though it? Certainly it kicked my ass then, right? Nope. But that was probably largely due to the fact that the first time I went through the game it was with a friend who had already been through it once and was trained for it from several playthroughs of RE4. So I definitely had an easier time through it than I would have if I'd stepped into it blindly and tried going through with the AI partner. Or even if I'd played through it with another individual of my same level that was also blind to the game.

There are a lot of aspects to that while I know them, are not intuitive. Such as, the ability to insta-kill any generic zombie (As I said earlier I know they aren't zombies but saying humans sounds more wrong.) by shooting them once in the knee then stepping behind the when they grab there leg and performing the neck breaker of throat slit if you're playing as Chris or Sheva respectively. Or the insta-kill on a floored opponent with the stomp or impale ability if you hit them in the head with it.

The game has the army of two style pointlessly necessitated co-op so it naturally play better with a friend. The game is fun and its subtleties work okay once you get used to them. Looking at it closer though I do see this rather steep learning curve that I was able to largely ignore due to my buddy. Overall still recommended, higher recommended if you have a buddy, even higher if your buddy or you know whats up with the game.

8 head snakes out of 10