Survival of Horror: Resident Evil 5
So, Final Fantasy VII Remake. Pretty good game, right? The reveal at E3 2015 was astounding, with everyone absolutely flipping their lids that the meme finally existed. It felt like the entire world was hyped for it. The next year, to keep the Final Fantasy hype train going, Square Enix released Final Fantasy XV. After that, they released the highest-rated Final Fantasy since Final Fantasy VI Advance in 2007, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers. It all helped to soften the blow that Final Fantasy VII Remake released five years after its announcement! Even without that, despite some jokes about it never releasing, the general consensus was that this was fairly indicative of the times. Games take time in this day and age.
Now, imagine this little horror scenario: It’s July 2005. Resident Evil 4 has just released this year and is blowing everyone’s minds. People are brimming with excitement and praise for this industry-changing event of a game. You notice Capcom making an announcement… and sure enough, they’re just striking while the iron is hot. Resident Evil 5 is announced a mere six months after the release of 4, and it’s coming to next-gen consoles. So far so good, right? Well, keep in mind that the longest-ever gap between mainline Resident Evil releases at this point was the 2 years between Resident Evil 0 and Resident Evil 4.
Try to imagine, then, the utter travesty of the Resident Evil fan when it took the fifth entry four years to release after its announcement. Back then, this length of time was considered abnormal for everyone, let alone a fan of a series that had content shoved down their throat with almost terrifying regularity for nine years. Worse yet, it was four barren years; the only releases in this period were a DS port of the original Resident Evil as a 10th anniversary commemoration, and a Wii rail-shooter spinoff called The Umbrella Chronicles. There was nothing substantially new and exciting to tide players over, so by March 2009, there was an unfathomable wave of hype… for most people.
Resident Evil 5 had all the hype boxes checked. Follow-up to a god-tier action horror game? Check. Co-op when co-op demand seemed to be at an all-time high? Check. Four years since announcement to allow hype to build? This train’s getting a little off the rails now. Gorgeous visuals that showed the strength of next-gen? You know it. Everything leading up to its release had all but the most hardcore of Resident Evil purists vibrating with anticipation. Even yours truly was won over.
See, I was in the middle of my dumb teenage phase after its announcement where I was firmly entrenched in Camp “Not-Real-Resident-Evil”. How could it be? It had action in it, just like that stupid Resident Evil 4. Anyone who liked the action games could enjoy them, but by my decree as Lord of Enjoying Things, you couldn’t call it Resident Evil because without fixed camera angles it clearly wasn’t part of the series. Yet, one week before the game released, 16-year-old Connor was in a GameStop with his friend Matt, looked at a poster for the upcoming title and had this sudden, immediate and visceral realization: who… fucking… cares?
In an instant, the tribalism that was chaining my dumb brain shattered and I kid you not, I pre-ordered the Collector’s Edition on the spot with the scant spare money I had (and also my lunch money for a week). Matt was stunned, even commenting that I was insane for spending four years complaining about a game and then diving into the CE. However, such words rolled off my back now. I accepted games for what they were at this point, rather than what I wanted them to be. No more “real fan” tests.
Instead, the game had to stand on its own merits. This holds true for it today, as well. I’m going to give it another look and see what it is about Resident Evil 5 that propelled it to one of the top-selling games in the series! Hopefully you brought some sunscreen or a hat, it’s gonna be a scorcher in Africa.
Resident Evil 5 — March 5th, 2009 (X360, PS3, PC, Shield TV, X1, PS4, NSW)
Version used for review: PlayStation 4 remaster, 2016
Warning: This review will spoil the entire game!
Story
“More and more I find myself wondering if it’s all worth fighting for.”
Resident Evil 5 begins with a rather chilling visual: a mysterious cloaked figure with a plague doctor mask is seemingly torturing a man in an industrial area. This plague doctor forces something into the man’s mouth, and the last thing we see from him is his eyes going black and his eyes bleeding. Great start!
From here, we see that our first main protagonist is series mainstay Chris Redfield. He’s visiting Kijuju, a country in Africa, as one of the founding members of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance. This worldwide organization was founded by Chris and ten others, including his partner Jill Valentine, as a shield to defend the world against the growing wave of terrorism involving bio-organic weapons following Umbrella’s destruction. There have been rumblings of a bioweapon deal going down in Kijuju, so they’ve sent Chris in to investigate. However, he may have his own personal reasons for showing up as well…
Upon his arrival at a local town’s security checkpoint, Chris meets Sheva Alomar, his contact from the BSAA West Africa branch and his partner for this adventure. The two exchange some pleasantries and immediately get to work tracking down a weapons dealer named Ricardo Irving. They meet with one of their insider contacts in the village quarantine zone and are almost immediately attacked by a large group of locals. After narrowly escaping a group of villagers trying to kill them, they find themselves out of the frying pan and into the fire as they’re trapped in a giant group of these very same villagers that have turned out for a public execution.
Sadly, it appears their contact has been outed, as a large executioner saunters up and relieves him of his head with an enormous axe. Chris and Sheva face off against waves of enemies as their help from the BSAA shows up in the form of a helicopter pilot named Kirk. He wipes out the villagers that Chris and Sheva haven’t finished off yet and they’re able to continue through the town. As they continue through the dangerous quarantine zone to find Irving, they come across a squad of brutally murdered BSAA members.
Irving appears but slips away, leaving them to face off against the horrifying monster that killed the squad. This pulsing mess of goo and tentacles has been created by Uroboros, a virus which Chris recognizes as a “myth” of a weapon. Realizing they’re in big trouble, they call for a retreat and backup and are utterly stunned to find that the BSAA denies their request, ordering them to continue pursuing Irving. Rather jilted by this, the two nevertheless continue their chase.
This eventually leads them to a crashed helicopter, where the body of Kirk lies impaled on the wreckage. Here, they’re surrounded and assaulted by more crazed, infected villagers, and are luckily saved by BSAA Delta Team, headed by team leader Josh Stone. Sheva trained with their team for several months in the past, so they’re well-acquainted! Josh mentions that they saw Irving escaping through some mines nearby, and they head off to continue a mission while Sheva and Chris give chase.
Eventually, they run into Irving and corner him, only for the same masked plague doctor to barge in and save Irving. Chris and Sheva find a document pointing to an oil field in the nearby marshlands and meet up with a single member of Delta Team, who picks them up in a Jeep. En route to meeting Delta Team, Josh relays info over radio that these villagers have been infected with a new type of Plaga parasite from Resident Evil 4. Stage 2 Plagas are more brutal and dangerous than their initial counterparts and they come in various forms, so they’re warned to be careful.
The Jeep heads to the meeting spot for Delta Team and the three BSAA members find it almost completely wiped out by a Gigante-esque monster called T̶h̶e̶ ̶W̶o̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶B̶o̶s̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶E̶n̶t̶i̶r̶e̶ ̶G̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶N̶e̶a̶r̶l̶y̶ ̶I̶m̶p̶o̶s̶s̶i̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶P̶r̶o̶f̶e̶s̶s̶i̶o̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶D̶i̶f̶f̶i̶c̶u̶l̶t̶y̶ ̶I̶ ̶H̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶S̶o̶ ̶M̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶G̶r̶i̶e̶v̶a̶n̶c̶e̶s̶ ̶W̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶T̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶A̶s̶s̶h̶o̶l̶e̶ Ndesu. Ndesu dispatches the team member you drove in with and after you take it out, Sheva pleads with Chris to fall back. He decides to go it alone, but Sheva realizes this is an even worse mistake and chooses to stick with him. As they use an airboat to ride out to the marshlands, Chris explains his ulterior motive for being in Kijuju.
Several years ago, he and series regular Jill Valentine raided the castle of Umbrella co-founder Ozwell E. Spencer. Instead, they found him dead, murdered by a superpowered Albert Wesker, who turns on them and attempts to kill them too. He’s about to kill Chris when Jill tackles him out a window and off a cliffside, into the rocky waters below, sacrificing herself to save him. Some data he’s retrieved since then had him thinking Jill was still alive, so he made the immediate decision to investigate in Kijuju.
Sheva understands that he won’t back down now, no matter what, and chooses to stand by him. Together, they make their way through the oil field and run into Josh again, the only survivor of Ndesu’s attack. The three of them chase after Irving by boat, catching up to his ship only to find he’s infected himself with this new Plaga. After dispatching the horrifying sea monster that he becomes, they continue onward with their mission to find Jill. They’re soon in the sights of one Excella Gionne, head of the African branch of pharmaceutical giant Tricell.
As they search some old ruins, they eventually find an old lab that once belonged to Umbrella, and from there they end up running into… Albert Wesker. He taunts Chris and brings out the very same plague doctor that saved Irving, nearly cracking Chris’s mind when he drops the hood to reveal the very same Jill Valentine that he’s been looking for all this time. Immediately, Sheva and Chris square off against Wesker and a mind-controlled Jill. After a few minutes, Wesker runs off to continue his devious, mysterious plan, leaving Chris and Sheva to fight off Jill. The two manage to remove the mind-control device from her chest and free her, only for her to explain that Wesker is going to kill millions of people.
She sends them off to chase Wesker while she recuperates, promising to meet up with them afterward. They manage to get on the giant ship that Wesker is using before it leaves port, trapping them at sea on a large tanker. They fight through the giant ship full of enemies to reach Wesker, who uses the deadly Uroboros on Excella to create a giant pulsing monster that requires a satellite laser to take down (yes, I’m being totally and completely serious). After this, they find out Wesker’s ultimate plan: to spread Uroboros worldwide using a stealth bomber that will take off from the ship in an attempt to fast-forward human evolution.
They finally find him on the ship and fight him, evening the odds by overdosing him on the very virus that keeps him superhuman, poisoning his bloodstream and weakening him. He escapes onto the bomber and Chris and Sheva barely manage to get aboard. An enraged Wesker attempts to take them out, and the ensuing fight brings the stealth bomber down in an active volcano (again, yes, I am being serious). Chris and Sheva, somehow now instantly boiled alive from the proximity to such heat, escape the wreckage only for Wesker to pierce a tank of Uroboros, making a deadly combo of his superhuman abilities and the wildly-dangerous virus. The three have a final showdown amongst the rocks in the volcano, leading to one of the most memorable moments in Resident Evil history.
The fight ends with Wesker’s footing crumbling under him. He spills into the lava and begins to burn, while a helicopter piloted by Josh shows up. Jill appears from the helicopter to drop the rope ladder, and Chris and Sheva are saved — until Wesker, in the throes of death, latches onto the ladder and attempts to bring them down with him. Sheva and Chris grab two rocket launchers from the weapon rack in the chopper and take aim, obliterating Wesker once and for all and freeing them from his years of treachery. They all fly off into the sunset with a renewed sense of hope that life was worth fighting for and that the world would improve from the bioterror hellhole it had become.
I think Resident Evil 5’s story is great as is, and anyone who wants to play it can get a good experience from it without needing to play other games in the series. It does a great job of giving you the history of each character so that you can connect with them. However, as a fan of the long-running series, these story beats are way more powerful. The utter gutpunch that Jill might actually be dead (but there’s no way, you guys, come on) is brutal, especially with the second kick to the nuts that she’s being brainwashed and you have to try to reason with her while she’s trying to gun you down with two SMGs.
Resident Evil 5 lives for its references and buildup from other games. Wesker is a douche if you just play this game, but Chris and Wesker’s climactic fight is intensely more satisfying when you’ve seen how the two have gone at each other before. On its own, though, it’s serviceable and interesting enough to keep one entertained. It’s a wild ride that only gets more intense the more of the series you’ve played. I feel satisfied every time I play through it, and after 1000 hours the story still hasn’t gotten old, so I think they must be doing something right!
Graphics
“Something doesn’t feel right… I can’t explain it.”
Before RE Engine, there was MT Framework.
MT Framework was Capcom’s in-house engine that they used starting with Dead Rising back in 2006. It was mastered so early on by the company that it was insanely easy to use and build on. Its scalability is unmatched, at least until RE Engine has time to stretch its legs. Its ease of use gave Capcom the ability to use high-quality models and textures with solid performance. To give you an idea of how long this engine was used and iterated upon, you can see it still being used today; the most recent (and likely last) MT Framework game is Monster Hunter World and its expansion, Iceborne. Pretty neat, huh?
As you might expect, Resident Evil 5 uses this same engine, and it works wonders for the game. Characters are very detailed and the environments are fantastic, even today. Textures are good for 2009, and they hold up well 11 years later provided you don’t zoom in extremely close up. The only thing is that, while the character models are great in general, you can see them showing their age a bit. Little things here and there, like Sheva’s bangs looking a bit jagged in close-ups or lighting looking weird when on a character in certain shots. It’s nothing gamebreaking, but the cracks show through just a tad when examined closely.
The game performs very well, however, when it comes to smooth gameplay. Performance is another of MT Framework’s strong suits, and even back on the Xbox 360, Resident Evil 5 ran at a nice, smooth 30fps almost the entire time. Performance was a little rockier on the PS3, but on the whole it was still fine. This extends to the remasters as well, with the PS4 and PC versions I played running at a smooth 60fps and 120fps respectively. This is to be expected given the initial release’s great performance, but it’s nice to have confirmation that the ports aren’t a botched job like some have been in the past.
Aside from these, the art direction of the game is excellent. Kijuju feels fantastic as a place, the African influence coming to life in the environments of Resident Evil 5. The dusty city streets, the gorgeous cliffside, the marshlands, the native peoples’ straw huts, the ancient African temple with the sunlight puzzle, it all comes togethe — wait, what? Native straw huts? Let’s back up for a minute here, because there’s a thing here that could be considered minor or major, depending on your view.
Back when the game was first shown off, there were cries of racism from some people because of the content of the game. A white man running around and shooting lots of black people in Africa certainly does not sound good on paper. Resident Evil 5 was first envisioned as a single player game, but by the time of its release, it had shifted gears (as many Resident Evil projects do) and it became a co-op game co-starring Sheva, a black woman. This was always assumed to be a response to those criticisms, but it’s possible that it was going to happen regardless since the game had a change in direction partway through. In addition to this, it appears the Majini were made more varied and unique, especially in terms of skin tone, from what we saw in the first trailer. This was almost assuredly to take the heat off of Capcom.
Why am I talking about this in graphics, of all places? Well, I mentioned several of the environments before, including native straw huts. By itself, this isn’t racist; there are places in Africa with this sort of domicile, though they’re usually in extremely rural locations. No, the part that makes this a little awkward are the enemies you encounter here. Resident Evil 5 has its fair share of enemies, which is great. Most of them look properly gross or intimidating. Then you encounter… the natives.
Yeowch. I honestly don’t even know what to say. A bunch of tribal men with shields and spears, with straw skirts and clay helmets. Their leaders are giant men with full headdresses and clubs. I get that it feels exotic for an adventure, but I’m still shocked that Resident Evil 5 was so tonedeaf in this area. I never really paid much attention to that at release, but looking at it now, it’s extremely messed up. For all the amazing enemy designs in this game, this whole section sticks out as somehow even worse than the initial trailer of Chris gunning down hordes of black people.
In case you were wondering about that African temple, by the way? Yeah, that’s a thing too. A gigantic ruined temple (almost a city, really) underground, filled with booby traps and giant sacrificial altars. Oh, and sun-powered laser traps and puzzles. This whole section of the game comes out of left field and feels like it exists only to make the player experience Capcom’s warped view of what “African adventure” means after being fed decades of racist pop culture and cinema about what constitutes Africa.
Like I said, depending on your view, this may not be much of an issue or it could be a big problem. I stand somewhere in the middle, where I enjoy how pretty these locations are and they give off this feeling of adventure, but it’s still problematic in how they’re enforcing the stereotype of Africa consisting of straw huts, temples and dusty rural villages, and it’s especially bad how some of the enemies are presented.
A much lesser problem in the grand scheme of things, but still something worth noting, is the almost total omission of gore. Unlike other entries in the series, Resident Evil 5 decided against having different versions. For example, the chainsaw decapitation is in the North American version of Resident Evil 4, but not the Japanese one. Instead of changing things for everyone, Capcom chose not to take the time to personalize regions this time around. Because of this, the gore suffers immensely. There are still some gruesome things in the game, but they’re nowhere near the utter brutality of what came before it. It’s not a big deal in the grand scheme, but it takes a lot of wind out of the sails of something like the chainsaw guy when the instakill is now just an off-screen attack where it doesn’t even chop your head off.
I really wasn’t expecting this section to go on this long, but the more I ruminated on this problem, the more I realized it was a problem. On a technical and artistic level, Resident Evil 5 is still gorgeous. It runs well, it looks great for the most part, and the art direction is strong. Things just take a turn for a bit in the middle and it feels like two chapters of completely tonedeaf direction that, while they look good technically, just feel really… wrong. It can be a tough pill to swallow even if you love the game, so be warned of that.
Sound
“Things are really getting interesting now, eh Chris?”
One area where I feel Resident Evil 5 shines is in its VA and music. This entry marks the first performance of fan-favorite Roger Craig Smith as Chris Redfield, who does a fantastic job as a jilted soldier and a desperate man searching for his partner. Karen Dyer excels as the wonderful Sheva Alomar, who can quietly ruminate on the tragedy of bioterror one moment and rev a gatling gun, telling a BOW to eat shit the next. Patricia Ja Lee similarly hands in a great performance as an exhausted and weakened Jill Valentine, who has just woken from years of mind control. The side characters are often eccentric and hammy as Resident Evil games tend to me, but it’s reined in just enough to not be as over the top as the original Resident Evil.
The standout here, however, is one DC Douglas. DC Douglas took over the mantle of Albert Wesker one game earlier, in the previously mentioned Wii spinoff The Umbrella Chronicles. When I first played that, I was worried. See, he really hadn’t gotten the voice down well in that game at all and, to be honest, his performance wasn’t very good there. In Resident Evil 5, Douglas takes another stab at it and hits right on the bullseye. He embodies the egocentric Wesker so well this time around that I have a hard time even considering anyone else as the big bad, Richard Waugh included.
Thankfully, the music doesn’t suffer in the same way that some of the artistic decisions do. Resident Evil 5. Kota Suzuki took the helm this time around, a composer that had been with the company for six years by that point. His work on the Resident Evil franchise began right here, and it was an excellent start. Suzuki manages to incorporate lots of ethnic instruments that help the atmosphere of Africa come to life, while also crafting a thrilling, tense and dramatic soundtrack to fit the various challenges that Chris and Sheva face.
“Haze of Horror” is not the track to listen to if you hate bugs. Suzuki emulates the sound of skittering and buzzing throughout this tense track. As you might have figured out, this is the theme of the Reaper, a giant, grotesque insect creature that can instantly kill you. Suzuki also uses synths and reverb to give off a sense of mystery to the intensity, much like how fighting the Reaper can be difficult. As you shoot it, if you miss its weak points, it expels a thick, hazy mist to hide its weak spots. Encountering one of these can be nerve-wracking, and this track is a big reason why.
The Majini have many different encounter themes in Resident Evil 5, and most of them are great. However, I think “Majini V” is among my favorites of them all. It’s got heavy hand-drum percussion to set a tense undertone to the piece while staying true to the African environment. The constant, droning strings keep the player on edge as they get surrounded on all sides, with a piano playing a menacing low-note melody to ensure Chris and Sheva never feel safe with this playing.
The standout track of Resident Evil 5, “Sad But True” is the theme when you’re forced to square off with your partner, Jill Valentine. Her mind control device is making her blind to reason and it’s up to Chris and Sheva to save her. A constant heartbeat-style percussion and high-pitched strings convey the desperation Chris displays as he tries to bring his long-lost friend back to him before they kill each other. The high-pitched strings make way for a bittersweet string melody, and when I listen to it I can practically feel the swinging emotions running through Chris’s head. First he thought his partner was dead, and within minutes he’s learned that she’s being used by his mortal enemy. He’s so close to Jill, and yet one wrong move could end with one of them gone forever. It’s shockingly tense and regarded as among the best tracks in Resident Evil 5 for a reason.
This one I just wanted to throw in as a lovely little extra. While Resident Evil 5 has its own chapter ending music, the Lost in Nightmares DLC chapter ending has its own special treat: a remix of the save theme music from the very first game! Even this is made to fit the game better, as the theme is constantly swirling from left to right in your ears, especially with headphones. It’s quite disorienting, which puts you right in the shoes of Chris, who just saw his partner for nearly a decade plunge out a window over a cliff to her presumed death. It’s supposed to be a theme that makes you feel safe, but it feels warped and twisted into something wrong. Great use of a good theme!
That’s about what I have for the sound in this game. The acting is excellent and can be cheesy at times without being over-the-top, and the music is fantastic. I’d argue that it’s some of the series’s best! Resident Evil 5 delivers the goods, and Kota Suzuki’s debut on the franchise is a welcome one.
Gameplay
“Wait, we’re the only two left, you want us to go in there alone!?”
Resident Evil 5 marks a shift in the series that is nearly as large as its predecessor. Up until this moment, each numbered Resident Evil game had been single-player. Resident Evil 0 dabbled with swapping between characters, but it was still a game for one. In the growing age of online connectivity for consoles, however, it was time to give something major a shot. You can play Resident Evil 5 solo, with your partner being AI-controlled. You can also, for the first time, play the entire game co-op with a friend, either in split-screen or online.
This changes the very foundations of what Resident Evil 5 can do. Areas are designed for two human players, allowing for the type of separation-puzzles that Resident Evil 0 enjoyed while keeping the challenge high for both players at the same time. Instead of just swapping to whoever is in the Hunter pit while the other person messes with the controls safely, you can have the second player be assaulted as well. You can have a bigger horde of enemies that would normally be too much for one person to handle at a time. Bosses can be more intricate, with different objectives for each player. There are so many possibilities!
Thankfully, Resident Evil 5 takes advantage of most of them. When played co-op, this is some of the most fun you’ll ever have in a third person shooter. Each character gets their own nine-slot inventory, discarding the fun attaché case inventory Tetris from Resident Evil 4 since that would be too difficult to manage with co-op. The inventory is also in real-time, meaning whatever you’re doing with your ammo and healing items should be done in-between fights to ensure you don’t get attacked while organizing.
The game plays out in chapters just like Resident Evil 4 did. After each chapter, you enter the shop menu. Sadly, there’s no mysterious Merchant character this time around. Instead, you get a normal BSAA shop menu where you can buy weapons, healing items, weapon upgrades and sell your treasures. Treasures do make a return, and while they can’t be combined for extra value like in the previous title, there are many more treasures to compensate. Some of them are very well-hidden, too, so getting the achievement for finding them all can be tough. Keep a look out!
During the game, as you might expect, Chris and Sheva play similarly to how Leon did in Resident Evil 4. Both are over-the-shoulder and plant their feet so you can’t move and shoot, forcing the player to stand their ground when they engage a foe. However, Resident Evil 5 contains a few new tricks up its sleeve in the form of contextual melees. In the previous game, you would get a prompt for a melee attack if you shot someone in the head or in the knee. These exist in 5 as well, but they’re greatly expanded. Each character has their own unique melee attack for a shot to the face, in front of someone after shooting their arm, behind them after shooting their arm, in front after shooting their knee, behind them after shooting their knee, and when they’re on the ground after falling over. There are certain fights where you can do a sweet melee combo by yourself against a boss, namely Wesker. As if that wasn’t enough, they added what I can only describe as fighting game super combos into the melee mix. If you shoot someone in the arm and hit them from the front, then your partner can combo with a melee as well. If they hit from the back, you can finish the combo with a super-powerful melee to style on fools. Each character gets two of these finishers, one for a front-back-front combo and one for a back-front-back combo. This kind of in-depth melee is wild and I absolutely love it!
As you might have guessed, this is a very action-packed Resident Evil entry. You will constantly find yourself swamped by enemies on all sides, with tons of enemy variation to keep you busy. You’ll encounter plenty of new situations, bosses and enemy types that will make sure you never know what to expect going forward. It’s thrilling to see what’s around the next corner, keeping the same design ideology as Resident Evil 4 in mind so that the player is always experiencing something new. The pace remains strong in Resident Evil 5, with little time feeling wasted. There are a few exceptions, namely the stairs room in 4–1 that feels like it drags too long. Aside from that, I never felt that an encounter or a chapter overstayed its welcome.
To keep things fresh for the player as well, there are tons of weapons you can find, buy or unlock. Chris and Sheva will come across most of the available arsenal in-game, but some weapons can only be bought in the shop, or unlocked after the game once they complete certain in-game challenges. There are multiple types of handguns, shotguns, rifles, SMGs, magnums, and grenade launcher rounds, as well as ridiculous bonus weapons like a triple-barrel shotgun, a gatling gun, a bow and arrow. You can even get a giant stun rod as a melee weapon! If you pay attention, you can even find a free rocket launcher throughout your adventure…
The weapon variety meshes perfectly with the game’s commitment to throwing new things at the player to ensure that every encounter can play out differently every time, depending on what you decide to bring to the fight. Not to mention, the heavily expanded melee system allows for excellent crowd control and more stylish variety to how you dispatch crowds. You feel truly powerful, which sounds antithetical to how Resident Evil should be, but I ask you this: If you’re Chris Redfield and you’ve been through no fewer than four outbreaks before this one, and you know that there’s possibly a superhuman with a vendetta against you out there, would you not train and bulk up like crazy to compensate?
Resident Evil 5 is a wild ride, and it’s still insanely fun to play today. If you’re playing solo, it’s not nearly as awesome, but give your AI partner a sniper rifle and a shotgun and they’ll mostly stay out of the way. Co-op, however, it morphs into one of the most thrilling and exciting campaigns in a game. It’s a nonstop roller coaster (with one stair-shaped exception) and I can’t help but want to play it again right now.
Extras/Replay Value
“I can’t leave until I complete my mission.”
Of all the things Resident Evil 5 does wrong or right, one of the more impressive feats is that it is packed with an insane amount of content to keep the controller in your hand. Aside from the usual suspects (New Game+, Professional difficulty), Capcom dumped an ungodly amount of additional material into the game.
For starters, while you can get the Infinite Rocket Launcher by beating the game in under five hours, it’s not just limited to that. Throughout the games are blue emblems, called BSAA emblems. Shooting all 30 of these gradually unlocks more things you can purchase using points acquired at the end of each chapter of the game, as well as after any Mercenaries or Versus match (we’ll get to those momentarily). Eventually, you’ll be able to purchase all manner of character models in the character viewer, infinite ammo for each individual weapon, new costumes for both Chris and Sheva, new filters for the game, and more.
“More” includes characters to unlock that you can play in the Versus mode, the first ever DLC for the Resident Evil series. There are four modes: Slayers, in which two to four people compete to kill the most enemies and get the most points, Survivors, where players get points by killing other players, and team variants of both modes. This is often overlooked, but I admit I put a lot of time into it when it first launched. I even met some friends on it that I’m still friends with today!
If you only have the base game on the Xbox 360 or PS3, however, they still made sure to keep you entertained as well. The Mercenaries minigame is back from Resident Evil 4, but they do a complete overhaul of it in Resident Evil 5. You can play it solo or co-op, and the goal is no longer to just kill as many people as possible in the time allotted. Instead, the goal is to get the highest score possible by killing 150 enemies in a row with as much time left on the clock that you can get. To that end, all melee kills add five seconds to the timer, which smartly puts all the expanded melee options to use. It’s a thrilling score attack mode and the main reason why I have officially put over one thousand hours into this game since its launch. Yes, one thousand.
In Mercenaries, you originally started with BSAA Chris and BSAA Sheva, along with one stage. You could eventually unlock seven more stages and a bunch of other characters, including Clubbin’ Sheva, Tribal Sheva, Safari Chris, S.T.A.R.S. Chris, Midnight Wesker, S.T.A.R.S. Wesker, Battlesuit Jill and BSAA Jill. Each variation has their own loadout to use, making each character unique even if they were a different outfit on the same character. However, they went one step further and, with the release of two story DLCs, added even more characters to the Mercenaries pool. These include Warrior Chris, Gatling Gun Chris, Fairy Tale Sheva, Business Sheva, Josh Stone, Excella Gionne and the two big surprises: S.T.A.R.S. members Rebecca Chambers and Barry Burton. For those keeping count, that is eighteen characters to use in Mercenaries. That’s amazing!
As I said, the extra characters originally came with the purchase of story DLC. These two episodes are called Lost in Nightmares and Desperate Escape. The first, Lost in Nightmares, details exactly what happened the night that Jill supposedly fell to her death when saving Chris. This DLC is very much a throwback to old-school Resident Evil games, with some light puzzles and tight corridors, and even a cheeky callback to the old door opening animations. It should last you about half an hour or so and is fairly replayable if you’re looking for all the score stars to add to your high score. Also, make sure you check the door three times when you start it. You’ll get quite the welcome surprise!
The second DLC, Desperate Escape, details how Jill and Josh managed to grab a helicopter to save Chris and Sheva at the end of the game. This is far more action-packed than the more atmospheric Lost in Nightmares. You’ll be facing off against waves and waves of enemies, pushing through large environments with enemies surrounding you the entire time. This one should also take about 30–40 minutes, but I usually don’t replay this one as often. Fun fact: for a long time, I attempted to get number one on the leaderboards for Desperate Escape on the Xbox 360. I got so close! Top 5!
Other than all that, Resident Evil 5 has unlockable bonus weapons you can also get that I mentioned before by fully upgrading other weapons. The Hydra is a shotgun with three barrels, which is cool as hell. You can get a bow and arrow for Sheva, which does a ton of damage but has no aiming reticle. Chris gets a gatling gun, which slows him way down but is great for mowing down crowds. You can unlock a super-powerful magnum, the S&W M500, which is the Handcannon from Resident Evil 4. The M93R is a three-round burst pistol that I think is cool in theory, but I don’t love it in practice. All these in addition to the Infinite Rocket Launcher make for an incredible array of bonus weapons!
Resident Evil 5 wants you to spend a lot of time playing it, and it knows the best way to do so is to provide you with lots of toys. You’ve got bonus game modes, difficulties, costumes, weapons, DLC, everything under the sun that you can think of. Most of it is substantially entertaining, and it feels like there’s something for everyone. Even knowing what’s coming next, in terms of extras and replay value, I would argue that Resident Evil 5 has the most extra content of any game in the series.
Conclusion
“Yeah, it’s worth it.”
In terms of pure game, Resident Evil 5 is a total delight. To this day, it remains one of my most-played games ever and in my opinion, one of the best co-op games ever made. Between the weapon variety, enemy variety, and the sheer amount of content on offer, there is a metric ton of fun to be had here. However, we can’t let our love for something blind us to its problems. Resident Evil 5 has a whole lot of uncomfortably racist imagery in several parts of the game, and I wouldn’t fault anyone for finding it unplayable for that reason. I still find it to be one of my favorite Resident Evil games, but things like the native enemies and the random ancient temple are simply indefensible and should never happen again.
This is what I would call a flawed masterpiece. Despite its problems, the foundation is so strong that I will always be able to return to Resident Evil 5. It’s not perfect, but when it comes to a game I would wanna play with a friend, this one will come up every time.
