There’s something very darkly funny about the trophy for collecting all treasures being called “they belong in a museum” which is a line from Indiana Jones - a character that famously seemed to disregard various international laws regarding the transport and sale of antiquities - often behaving more like a grave robber than an archaeologist. Either intentionally or not this draws attention to the fact that Chris spends a lot of this game stealing jewels and precious relics from innocent mind controlled villagers so he can sell them on the black market in order to buy better guns to kill said villagers with. I love the idea of someone slipping in that trophy name to draw attention to this and find it darkly funny that someone could potentially manage to select that trophy name without realizing this would be the effect.

Totally agree with everything said about this game re: racism and poorly aged 7th gen trends. It seems very clear that the developers didn’t actually do much research into their setting or try to treat it in a respectful manner. One of the most obvious elements of this is that the game takes place in an unspecified Western African country but everyone is speaking Swahili which isn’t widely spoken in that region. This is like such a basic error that could have been avoided by a simple google search. Decide what real western African country this is going to be loosely based on, do a Google search for what languages are spoken in that country, and then translate enemy dialogue and monster names into one of those languages. Depending on what Western African country the setting is based on they could have even had enemies speaking French or English. Would have probably at least been a bit easier for the devs to get translated if that was a concern. Also would have avoided making one specific group feel singled out by their language being selected as that of the enemies you kill during the game if that was a concern as well.

My first impulse is to assume this sort of thing is just laziness and not feeling the setting deserves serious research but it’s also possible the devs were fully aware of all the inaccuracies in the game but decided to go with them because they would feel more stereotypically African to mainstream audiences. This possibility also makes a lot of sense to me and would explain why the setting feels more like Africa as a monolith as opposed to one of the many distinct and culturally different regions of the continent.

There’s something to be said for the main plot and conflict in this game attempting to be anti-racist by having the plaga and orobouros infections being a result of colonialism, but this ultimately isn’t particularly effective. Despite any potential good intentions on the part of the developers you can’t tell a compellingly anti-racist story without giving the subject matter the respect and research it deserves. If this sort of well researched depth and respectfulness was attempted by the dev team it certainly doesn’t show in the final product.

Still managed to have a fun time with it though mostly due to the presence of my beloved Wesker and the gameplay which is similar to RE4 and fun because of it but overall inferior due to some alterations in enemy behavior and level design. This is overall a much faster paced game than RE4 with movement and controls that feel more in line with typical 7th gen 3rd person shooters. You still can’t move while shooting but you are more agile in this game and generally don’t feel as vulnerable. The slow and at times awkward shooting controls in RE4 are one of the things that makes it unique and keeps it in line with the disempowering survival horror elements of its predecessors despite being much more action oriented. RE5 is a straight up action game on the other hand, and there’s a decent case to be made for calling it a 3rd person cover shooter. There were maybe one or two instances of contextual cover shooting in RE 4 but it’s all over the place here. This is mostly due to the large presence of enemies with guns in RE5’s final 3rd - something that would be unheard of in RE before RE4 decided to introduce a single very rarely implemented enemy with a mini gun. In RE5’s latter levels you’ll end up fighting as many assault rifle wielding Majini as you do ones armed with melee weapons or grenades. This shift overall makes RE5 feel like a typical 7th gen cover shooter but with an RE plot and a few mechanics carried over from RE4. Thankfully it’s pretty good at being just that and a fun time overall. Just probably important for fans to realize that this is the case before playing.

It’s also important to know that this is very much a game designed with co-op in mind and will probably be the most fun if played that way. A lot of the bosses require you and your partner Sheva to coordinate your strategy. For instance one player needs to distract a boss while the other shoots the weak spot on its back. This sort of strategizing is much harder and at times almost impossible when playing solo - I found the boss fight with the flamethrower to be incredibly frustrating for this reason.

That said, solo play works pretty well - significantly more so than I was expecting. Your AI companion is actually pretty smart and good at the game and I encountered only one instance where Sheva’s AI fucked up and caused her to do something really stupid or annoying. The AI companion is also generally good at handling most of the segments of the game where you and your partner are forced to do two different things to defeat a boss or solve a puzzle. There are only a couple instances where this isn’t the case, which are frustrating, but again this happened far less than I was expecting. I still would have preferred playing this game solo or with a mostly inactive companion like Ashley from RE 4 but Sheva is overall well implemented, which is rarely the case for an AI companion as central to gameplay as she is. It’s abundantly clear that the designers wanted to make this an experience where solo play as well as co-op would be excellent. This definitely doesn’t feel like a co-op experience where the option to play solo was lazily tacked on and plainly not the intended way to play the game. Both solo and co-op feel equally valid for RE5. The only thing I really felt was missing about the AI partner in this game was the ability for the player to give them more specific commands. This game definitely could have used the option to tell your AI companion which weapon to use or to ping an enemy for them to concentrate fire on or tell them how much to conserve ammo or healing items in their inventory. Games with AI companions have been giving players these options for decades and I have no idea why they weren’t present here. On the bright side like I said before Sheva is programmed to act like a player that’s legitimately good at RE5 so letting her do her own thing doesn’t cause any major issues - just ocasional annoyances and the need for the player to find work arounds to get her to use a specific weapon in her inventory.

Honestly don’t know who I’d recommend this to. I feel very conflicted about this game. It does a few things really well and I certainly had fun with it but it has some pretty massive flaws, and loses a lot of what made previous Resident Evil games - 4 especially - so charming and unique. RE 5 feels pretty bland and forgettable at times. I can definitely understand all of this compelling quite a few people to never bother trying this one out.

Really interested to see if Capcom tries to remake this game and improve on its flaws. Gameplay, atmosphere, character, and writing can all definitely be improved, but I can’t see how they could possibly fix the issues this game has with racism and lack of respect for its setting and subject matter, which is sort of baked into a lot of the core plot and mechanics of the game.