While I've watched friends play Resident Evil games I have never really gave them a shot. The controls always seemed really poor and the story never interested me and everything just feels very generic. Resident Evil 5 doesn't change anything since 4 apart from adding coop which isn't fun and specially not when you're on your own.
The Resident Evil story has become so bloated and stupid I don't know anyone who would actually care about it. I mean you've got the movies doing crazy side things and then the CGI movie which had the worst script and voice acting I've ever heard. You have cheesey stupid characters that noone can relate to and it's just a mess. I can't follow whats going on with it anymore and well the Japanese culture doesn't just appeal to most of the western world.
So with that the gameplay better be good and I have to say it isn't. The controls feel very backwards and the mouse control is something Capcom still needs to work on. While everyother Western developer has gotten it right it makes me wonder why the Japanese have yet to catch on. I hate the button positions and I hate how you're running around the level everything is so static and breaks up the pace. In Batman when I need to jump I held down space and ran to the edge and he jumped. In Resident Evil 5 year need to press a button and it goes to a little cutscene type thing and then does it. Same with opening doors and climbing up ladders and I just find it so annoying. I feel very restricted in the environment because it's just so static and I wish it kept me in control of my character instead of doing it all in cutscenes.
You can't run and shoot, you can't walk and shoot and you can't even reload and walk or melee and walk about. I mean I can get over the shooting and moving but please let me move and melee/reload. It feels very weird specially having a melee weapon out (which is a disadvantage already) and then having to try melee them and wait for them to come close enough instead of me going to them. So to compensate for this the A.I is very very stupid and takes ages to get to you. They stumble around like they have really bad path finding and they then stand around you for about 30 seconds before deciding to attack. I mean on the PC specially with the Mouse which can aim alot better than the controller it just feels horrible. I don't see why they didn't evolve the game from Resident Evil 4, specially when Gears came out in 2006 and thats now the standard.
The most annoying thing of all though has to be the quick time events which on a PC shocked me. I was sitting there watching the cutscene and I don't know anyone who keeps their hands on the keyboard at all times when watching one. It ain't like a controll you have to hold because your keyboard is on a table. So this quick time event came up and it was in the dark and couldn't find the right key in time and died. I don't see what the add to the gameplay in a cutscene other than annoying you. So you have to go through the whole thing again.
The A.I friendly character who was tacked on so the game didn't get as much racist hate and to have coop in the game is really annoying too. She doesn't really help that much and just seems I'm having to babysit her all the time and that isn't fun. Not only that but she picks up everything so I have to manage my inventory all the time to get the stuff I want and to look after her cause her A.I is so bad. On top of that she takes ages to catch up, she gets stuck on things and delays you moving to the next area as you have to wait for her to get in just the right position at the door. I know coop would be so much better but forgive me if I don't wanna go through a game with cutscenes with a friend. Also the stupid GFWL service is something my friends don't want to use and the menus are arse backwards as **** so it's like a puzzle to get it working.
The only shining point about the game is the graphics and luckily the game runs amazingly well on any system. You wont have to worry about running the game unless you PC is 20 years old. Just a shame that everything else about the game is so poor. The Sound of the game is passable but you wouldn't remember it and it wont win any awards.
Playing a game like Batman really shows me how far ahead Western developers are and you just hope Capcom look and learn for Resident Evil 6 and hopefully without an annoying NPC friendly following you everywhere. I mean having two of you there really makes it far less scary than it could have been.
