It’s with great shame that I admit that I finished Resident Evil 5 more than a month ago, wrote 90% of a review, and then did nothing with it until now. You can go read my thoughts on the game if you are interested.
The executive summary is thus: Resident Evil 5 is clearly a horror game, and clearly a Resident Evil game, but more importantly in terms of its design focus, it’s an action game. It shows that action and horror do not need to be mutually exclusive, and also follows Resident Evil 4’s lead and brings many of the elements of its previous format into its new design, but it’s ultimate goal as a game is to be fun and action-packed rather than scary. And in that regard, it’s almost entirely successful.
I totally agree with the review. Re5 played and looked great. I played way too many games this year that did neither.
While not as good as 4, RE 5 is still a good SH game.
I give Capcom credit for keeping the franchise relavent and selling unlike Konami with Silent Hill.
Uhh, still not sure RE5 is horror at all, but that debate is older than dirt now, so whatever.
Maybe it’s just “gushing horror” and not “strange horror”… is there a better term for this?
Don’t know why so many people hate RE5, though. It’s totally great and, as an action game, it’s every bit as good as RE4.
I hated RE5. And I completely disagree that it’s a horror game. Isn’t one of your criteria that the game has to at least TRY and scare the player? The hell if I noticed if RE5 ever did that. It was a pure co-op shooter through and through, and not a very good one at that.
> Hal
The overwhelming enemies? The unkillable enemies? The sections where you must carry a light or your gun, but not both? The area that introduced the lickers?
Don’t mistake the focus on action for a lack of horror content. It’s there, it’s just on the sidelines.
Mhh I don’t agree with your review, I don’t consider it a great game.
Capcom removed its survival horror soul as in Dino Crisis’ sequels and turned it into a boooooring horror shoot’em up (only Leaker’s scenario is funny cos the first part is a bit scary, then becomes just a bloody massacre of weird creatures).
Also it’s a clone of RE 4, too many scenarios and some boss fights are taken from RE4 and just settled in Africa…
If I wanna play an action game, a horror action game, I prefer RE Darkside Chronicles: it’s more funny and it has a great atmosphere (RE2 and RE CV scenarios are awesome).
BTW it’s just my opinion 🙂
Cheers
>Scissorman
That’s cool, there’s no need to agree. Reviews are subjective anyway–there’s no objective metric of quality for a video game, other than the software doesn’t crash.
That said, I think that your opinion might be colored a lot by your appreciation for the older games in the series. I am a big fan of the old Resident Evil games as well, but I tried to approach this one as if it was something new. And I liked it, a lot. I was just disappointed to see horror take the back seat.
@ Chris
Thank you, that’s why I like your site 🙂
I rememeber when I reviewed SH3 for an italian horror portal and I nuked it… I got many offending e-mails…
Anyway, yeah, I love old survival horror style (“fear is fascinating…” 😉 ) but, I love brainless shoot’em up too (Gears of Wars, Loaded, etc…).
I don’t like RE5 just cos too many parts, fights, etc… are taken from RE4 (which I love).
In my opinion, it’s like for SH3, it’s a recycled game with upgraded graphics.
Cheers 🙂