So some of the imagery and narrative in the swamp area had me a little uncomfortable, I definitely think that could have been handled better.

Besides all of that it was fun to play with a good friend, but anything is fun with that friend.

Some stuff is cool, some stuff isn't, and most stuff isn't as good as other REs I've played or other action games I've played.

Despite all of that, with a friend, it's a decent time with some moderately low lows, and moderately moderate highs. Wesker is great!

So 3 stars feels right for all of that (most points come from the co-op), but some things involving race made me uncomfortable. And now here thinking its not really appropriate to "deduct points for racism".

It's not really exactly my place to say if its racist or not, and I'm not an expert. I did some research into the creation of the game and the sentiment at the time (not that past sentiment justifies things.) I think there could be an argument that nothing negative was intended, but the "tribal" related stuff seemed to go a bit far for me, even if not intentional.

There is a note that can be read in the swamp area that says that the infected in this area started to wear ceremonial clothing and dress like their ancestors after being infected. A couple of certain enemies do a war cry.

You could say there's narrative consistency between RE4 zombies embracing their ancestry and dressing as monks and wielding medieval weapons, and the zombies in RE5 embracing their ancestry. It just seems to me there should be more care taken when portraying African societies with its history of "dark continent" and adjacent attacks.

Maybe Capcom was trying to do something similar to RE4 with embracing ancestry, maybe they meant to be respectful and put a lot of thought into it, and maybe their Japanese perspective changed how they saw things drastically.

Also plenty of people, including apparently the main person behind the outcry in 09 pre-release, don't think it's racist at all

So I don't know.