The Resident Evil 5 demo went live on Xbox Live today, but only for residents of Japan. Luckily enough, I happen to now be a resident of Japan, and I’ve put a little time into the demo (if you live in another country you’ll have to wait, but if you are adventurous you could try this). The game is very clearly an evolution of Resident Evil 4–it’s the same basic interface, the same controls, the same enemy reactions, the same sort of game play. Run into a house, barricade the doors, fight off the hoards of zombies that approach. The graphics are in HD now and look great, but they retain the same sort of feeling as the previous game; dilapidated shantytowns inhabited by angry zombies are again the norm. There’s even a couple of analogs for the chainsaw man, including an axe-wielding giant. The second character, Shiva, seems to be more of a burden than a help, which is unfortunate; Resident Evil 0 had really nicely controlled AI partners that didn’t need a lot of hand-holding.
I feel like this game is a culmination of all of Capcom’s recent Resident Evil work. The co-op mode works off the rules defined by Resident Evil Outbreak, the moment-to-moment game play is all Resident Evil 4, and the play-with-a-partner puzzles are straight out of Resident Evil 0. One biggest change compared to RE4 is that the item select menu does not pause the game; switching weapons and using health items doesn’t stop the crazy knife-wielding zombie dudes from bearing down on you. While this change makes the combat all the more stressful, I think its a feature that was necessitated by the network play requirements of this game rather than the horror aspects (Outbreak, if I remember correctly, works the same way).
The demo contains two missions, “Public Assembly” and “Shanty Town”. Both are hard. It’s been a couple of years since I played Resident Evil 4, and my Xbox controller is running out of batteries which causes the game to pause annoyingly every few minutes, but I was still surprised by the level of difficulty that the demo commands. I have only played about an hour so far, but in that hour I’ve died several times and I have yet to complete either mission. I suspect that the final game will be quite challenging, though I also think that it will get easier as I remember how this type of game is supposed to be played.
Interestingly, the zombies themselves come in several shapes, sizes, and ethnicities. I wonder if Capcom added non-black zombies to the game to address the accusations of racism that early gameplay videos received. In any case, other than their appearance the zombies themselves seem to be absolutely the same as those in Resident Evil 4.
All that said, I think that the co-op mode may be the feature that sets this game apart from its predecessors. There’s a lot of opportunity for interesting co-op play (one character reaches a sniper location and covers the other, etc), and games like Gears of War, which were clearly inspired by Resident Evil 4, have received a lot of praise for their multiplayer. I’m really interested to try this online with friends and see how well it works (offline co-op, a rare feature nowadays, is also supported).
Wow…You actually made RE:Outbreak sound remotely playable!
I feel for your game freeze issues.
I got tired of not having a 100%
reliable controller and bought the
hard wired USB one.
well i didnt think it would be a bad thing if re 5 would be runnin on re 4s formula but if its exactly the same… i mean a facelift aint enough right?
I’m worried it is too much the same. With an annoying partner.
I just found that whole “RE5 is racist” thing to be retarded. Maybe this is for some odd reason news to a lot of people but there are whole lot more black (is the the PC term? Do I give a shit?) people in Africa than there are white people. How weird would it be if it was in Africa and everyone was white? Is “white-face” PC?
Btw, as a Scandinavian I take offense to vikings being shown with horns on their helmets all the damn time in US media. Also, Swedish women are not named Helga and do not have bigger boobs than other women. Now if this isn’t an outrage I dont know what is.
I agree with Soulbender, it would be very strange to have only “white” people in a african country.
And I didn’t see no one complaining about the others RE games because there are “white” people being shoot.
… as I remember Spanish people did not accuse Capcom of racism if the RE4 zombies were all Spanish countrymen… 😛
@Soulbender
As I know, the case of the Vikings described with hornet helmets is an error in the medieval transcription of an ancient book, something like “Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus” (“History of northern people”). It seems the monk who copied this book placed the wrong description “miles septentrionalis” (“northern warrior”) under the picture of a Gothic/Vandal warrior 😛
I’m waiting on a PS3 downloadable demo… hope it comes soon.
I agree with you Soulbender the racism charges in RE5 were retarded, but we already had that conversation. Has anyone else gotten access to the RE5 demo? Neogaf is saying it’s kinda easy…
Well,it is our own fault but not quite like that. Some dumbass swedes back in the 1800’s or so wanted to revive the glory of the vikings and decided to put horns on their helmets. We have seen the error of our ways since but I guess most film makers haven’t.
Oh, yes, thank you. I have checked Wikipedia also. I ever thinked it was an wrong iconography from middle ages.
The game looks incredible, and co-op will be a bliss. But at the same time, it just looks like the next, all around new rendition of RE4. It even has a chainsaw boss and it begins in a village.
Why is it every game copies enemies, situations or characters from another game?
hey so you are a fellow gaijin here in nihon? Where abouts? Im here in osaka and just recently found an import store with english games…whoo doggy I am in heaven now!