Personally the most bored I've been while playing a RE game. I cannot talk about RE6 as this was the last straw for me, but think about everything you like about RE4, and imagine a game that doesn't do anything to improve on that formula, but worse, sometimes it managed to make a few steps back:

Core gameplay is the same, visual are worse, barely looks like an horror game thanks to the generic pìss filter, co-op was unnecesary and broke immersion, partner's AI is braindead and vastly inferior to Ashley (at least you could put her in the Trash where she belongs), weapon shop has no charm, it just appears at the end of each chapter out of nowhere, the inventory system is barely put together and extremely limited, the gore is abysmal, might as well not be there, most weapons feel generic, the turret sections ruin the pace of the game, they happen during some bosses too, which are mid at best, the stupid quick time events during cutscenes are still here for some reason.

Seriously, I'm struggling to find something I could call an improvement over RE4, I guess a prompt for attacking downed enemies? I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel here, since this is something one could do in the previous game as well w/out a prompt. Let's be honest here for a minute, the few people who overhype this thing like there is no tomorrow aren't exactly RE fans, they're mostly meatheads coming from CoD or whatever other game looking for some couch co-op in an era where every videogame was a carbon copy online FPS, heck even the developers themselves admitted they wanted the Call of Duty audience so, yeah... good for them. Now they're gonna remake this and who knows wth they'll cook, not looking forward to it. For any actual RE fan, you'll most definitely have more fun playing the previous game.

kinda funny that they didnt learn a single lesson from re4 other than "do this again" lol.

pretty damn solid co-op game, but just like RE4 it gets worse and worse as it morphs more and more into a generic military shooter. but this time it:
- has co-op (pretty fun and clearly the highlight here by far, although i hear it's really boring/borderline unplayable in singleplayer, so this might be something you only bother with if you've got a friend who also has it)
- turns into call of gears of war way earlier than re4 does--whereas the island section of re4 (also unanimously the worst section) set the mood for the next 6 or 7 years of shooters, re5 takes inspiration from everything taking inspiration from re4 but still in the intentionally clunky tank control framework, that works perfectly for the early sections and works less and less as the game goes on
- has a worse inventory system
- has even worse & bullet spongy boss fights. we had to just rocket launcher like 3 of them to get past em lol
- is buggier than even kane & lynch 2 on PC (it was mostly fine, just really really clunky UI, but our last 2 sessions bugged out a ton and the final one crashed to desktop several times in multiple different spots)
- is also really, really, racist, to a point where its almost kinda mindboggling how something this racist got pushed to production lol. like i'm talking minstrelsy, 1930s mickey mouse levels of racist, at points. much ink has been spilled about this, but yeah, it is very racist (do they ever even say where they're supposed to be any more specific than just "Africa", a giant continent with like a third of the entire world's population living in it???)

there's a lot of things to complain about here, but in all honesty, most of this, gameplay-wise, is quite literally just "re4 but co-op and slightly worse in a bunch of aspects. and also racist". on co-op the gameplay is still fun to execute for the vast majority of its time, and really only starts to get bad enough to consider bad in a few particularly egregious sections in the last couple of chapters. can imagine this is absolutely dogshit with an AI partner though, lol

(played with @JunKami)

Playing this game, is a genuinely irritating, frustrating, and a hair pulling experience. Firstly, this game suffers from the, "Games to Windows Live" curse that games from this era suffers from. When first purchased, this game was not playable without having to edit the files. That to me, is so very frustrating and disingenuous. You have no issues leaving your game up to be purchased by people who may be life long lovers of your series, but become dismissive and non-caring because of not being able to play the game they just got. This also doesn't account for the constant and numerous bugs when playing. This time around, I played with my spouse. It was felt that it would be a fun and similar experience to another Resident Evil game we had played early in our relationship. Genuinely, the main line title was worse than the one we played, that being Revelations 2 for context. Gameplay is fun in the beginning, sadly this doesn't continue for long. It really starts to show when you get towards the end of the first part and get on the boat. The gunplay does not play well to the stiff and isometric feeling controls. It feels like you have to fight with your character constantly to them do what you want. In some instances, this can be really hindering when precise actions need to be done. The bosses also make the game feel like an unbalanced mess. Most of them, show no real tells that you are actually doing anything to them. If you have never really played this game before, you won't know that a third person shooter game has puzzles as their bosses. It just feels so unsatisfying to fight them and it makes every single one of them a reminder about the horrible choice to play this game. The story really isn't anything stand out when put next to the same games in the series from this era. Unlike RE4. all the choices for this game design make it feel less immersive and more of an arcade game. It feels like the game is constantly winking to the camera in how ridiculous some of the plot beats and abilities are. It also doesn't help that the blatant 2000's edge factor of the time this game was released, is drenched all over it. From the settings, dialogue, character designs, and many other choices, you can tell that it genuinely dates it more than it realizes. I don't think I can recommend this game to anyone who isn't a RE super fan. If you need to know the plot for lore reasons, legit just watch through a plot summary on YouTube. This game is so un-fun in every thing it tries to do and makes you feel exhausted after playing. In summation, there are so many better games you can play other than this. Do yourself a favor, go and play them and steer clear of this one. 1.5 / 5.

Huge shout-out to @paq250_, with whom I played the entire campaign, and that made this whole experience 10 times more fun than it otherwise would have been, it was amazing to experience the sheer insanity and absurdity on display here alongside someone else, and let’s be real, probably the way this game was intended to be played. And despite how much I’m about to tear into it, I can say one thing for certain; it sure is a tolerable and, at best, fun co-op experience with some pretty tense moments and cool sections, especially when the two of us were separated and had to frantically find a way to save each other’s asses, which sometimes ended poorly since I can’t aim for shit.

There are some genuine smart decisions here and there: the down time feels like proper moments of respite, and it’s always exciting to see what’s new in the store and talk about what weapons each should carry and what strategies to follow after losing. So it is simply thinking on your feet, scrambling for any way to get out of a tough situation, and saving each other constantly, especially if there’s an enemy that has one-shot potential involved. There’s no master-class in design here, but still, even if shooting Lickers down while your buddy tries to access an out-of-reach area or getting the attention of a boss or strong enemy while the other tries to set up mines and explosives aren’t the most creative shit out there, they are nonetheless fun, and tense moments that work when being alongside someone to share them. Resident Evil 5 works as a co-op third person shooter game, that I can say for certain….

Doesn’t change the fact that this shit is ASS

I know this may sound rich coming from the guy who hasn’t beat any RE game till this one, but I’ve played and know enough about other RE games to confidently say that it astounds me how much RE5 misses the mark considering the potential it had and how it sacrifices the wonderful cheesiness of previous games for half-ass seriousness which doesn’t work at all. The concept of ‘’RE4 but Co-Op’’ is fucking amazing, and I understand that Capcom made this at it is, but in the process, they seemed to have forgotten everything that made that game, or any RE for that matter, interesting in the first place aside from the core shooting.

You only get 9 inventory spaces each, and even the size of times doesn’t factor in at all anymore, that just makes this inventory system less interesting out of the bat, and that’s on top of being a pretty cumbersome and limited system in a game that at times offers you too much loot and throws you into extremely hectic situations that don’t really let you stop and manage your items properly.

Puzzles are a huge letdown, and the fact they are even here boggles the mind. If they wanted to make a pure action game, sure, go for it, but then throwing in some puzzles that aren’t fun or interesting in the slightest just because it isn’t exactly fun. Hell, nw that I think about it, I don’t even know why you have to sell the treasures you get instead of getting the money automatically, since you can’t combine any items aside of healing herbs! The closest this game comes to creating an actual involved headscratcher is the classic ‘’you need x number of items to open this door’’, if only they didn’t have the most annoying hazards and the most questionable area designs, they may have even been pretty fun!

RE5 just seems eternally confused, not only by its existence as the next RE game, but also as a sequel to RE4 and even as a game on its own: Did you like the hooded man with a chainsaw from RE4? Well, he’s back, bois! Did you like the Gigante and the sea monster? Well, they are also back... in boring turret section form! How about unskippable, weird as hell cutscenes that feel like there should be a quick time event of sorts… except it isn’t? How about a story and tone that are... questionable, to say the least…

I swear, I haven’t felt so bewildered at a game as watching one of the fucking main characters talk about how horrible imperialism is and how the terrible practices of an American company have doomed an entire African company… only to massacre an entire population of tribesmen and steal every treasure you come across in the following chapter. Hell, you keep fighting them even in the chapter after that! Isn’t that neat and not at all questionable and horrifying?

Every time the game tried to make a statement of some sort regarding the horrors of neo-imperialism, I couldn’t get that out of my mind; the first two chapters and maybe the last two aren’t that bad in that regard, but 3 & 4 are heinous and kill every chance this game had at being a serious critique of sorts, more than the motorbike scene and the showcase of every single military-movie cliché possible, I mean.

And hey, even if chapters 5 & 6 aren’t horrible story-wise, they sure are gameplay-wise. It’s in these areas that the game is completely mind-numbing: before, you had some interesting vertical design or interesting areas and mazes, but now we have metal corridors and cover emphasis in cover mechanics and it’s… not good, to be honest. There are no opportunities to be stealthy in Licker encounters, most battles feel more frustrating than engaging, and it all starts feeling like a race to the finish line that lasts too long.

Even the bosses are pretty middling overall; the only ones I can call enjoyable are the first and last one, anything in between is a passable set piece at best and a boring bulled sponge at worst… scratch that, at worst is the fuCKING 5-2 BOSS OF MY FUCKING GOD. We spent more than half an hour wondering what we were doing wrong, ‘cause that piece of crap wouldn’t die except, no, we weren’t doing anything wrong, is just that bad of a fight that it takes an eternity to beat even if you set it aflame constantly, and it even reuses the fucking model of the first boss! HOW DID THIS SHIT GO PAST TESTING??????

I can get mad all day, but honestly, RE5 isn’t terrible most of the time, just incredibly basic and full of mistakes that bog down the overall experience, and it’s sad that I have to say this; this was one of the games I vividly remember watching my father play all those years back. Should I have him play that game at such a young age? Probably not! But still, RE5 was the first RE game I ever came into contact with, and it’s sad to finally arrive at it and encounter a product that can be so inferior to what came before while trying to replicate exactly that, and how it manages to be the most predictable and by the number of things ever while also being spectacularly terrible at times… and honestly? That may be the thing that gives it charm.

I can’t stress how much me and Paq laughed at the motorbike cutscene, how we lost our minds at the punch and kick animations, how much we laughed after finding out a way to one shot that shitty 5-2 boss, and how worth the whole journey was to see Chris punching that damn rock and Western yeeting us to a fucking volcano. The game is not cheesy, it’s a joke, one that’s still funny nonetheless, and despite it all, it somehow had fun to offer, both intentionally and unintentionally.

RE5 may be generic, but there ain’t anything quite like it… And maybe that’s for the best, but hey, the guy punches a rock! Funniest shit I ever se-

I liked the game but it’s not really notable, and if you’re worrying about difficulty and you’re thinking about playing this game, then just know it gets pretty formulaic and you get used to fighting enemies very quickly in this game. Which is common with most if not all RE games but ESPECIALLY with this one. Inventory system is a pain in the ASS tho and story wise it’s decently interesting. Not much to write home about but it was ight. Just be wary of Wesker cuz he can be a bitch. Overall an ight game tho.

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.