Resident Evil 5

 

Have been playing Resident Evil 5 for some time now (on amateur of course, I'm so bad at action games overall), Another game I bought some years ago and didn't come round to until now. So I finished it and it was all right. Now, to be clear I've only played Resident Evil 4 and Revelations before this so I'm not that old-school with the series so the more action oriented gameplay don't bother me. Actually I find it rather enjoyable how you can move around all directions and when it comes to Revelations also like to be able to move and shoot compared to standing still. I might agree that it's not much horror left, but it might also be to me being more desensitized compared to days of yore when I couldn't even finish the first dungeon in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time due to being to scary for me. Being 27 might make it easier. I finished it anyway and story wise it was fulfilling. I also got the gold edition so I had two extra missions, one being what happened to Jill and Chris before the events of the game and then what happened to Jill and Captain Stone before they rescued Chris. Spoilers might be in place, but the game is almost 6 years old so I don't bother that much. Fun thing I noticed was that the beginning for the Chris and Jill episode was hinted at in Revelations and tied it together (Revelations came out later as a side story, but since I played that game before this it was kinda fun).

Story wise Chris Redfield has been sent by the BSAA to partake in an operation against a Bio-terrorist named Irving so he meets up with their African branch and start killing zombies. I might not have to be all to careful with ammo compared to before. Who's the bad guy really? Well not Irving, but rather Albert Wesker, the main villain of most of the series who also has Jill Valentine under his control. Plan is to wipe out most of the worlds population with this super virus and establish himself as good for those still alive afterwards. The back-story chapter doesn't explain anything about this, but the flashback in the main game tells you that he is some kind of geneticly engineered child, a super human so he sees fit to rule as his creator (Spencer, the CEO of Umbrella) who he deems to weak of old age so he gets killed of off-screen. How do you finish Wesker? Well, you overdose him with a serum he uses to keep himself stable and then fights him in the middle of an active Volcano until you drop him in the lava and fires a rocket at him. Talk about action climax. And that's the best comparison, a silly action movie.

Now, this game had some controversies when it was released, mostly that it supposedly was racist. And in one way yes, there is a lot of Africans portrayed in rather animalistic ways, but then again it is a virus that makes them so, created by a European/American company that uses the natives for their own goals of world domination, exploiting the nature and destroying old tribes and temples. The only options I would see was to probably whitewash it away with all Africans that aren't white, but it doesn't sound right at all. Cause we are in Africa (no country named so we are only on the specified continent of Africa), you expect the victims to be of some color and in a way that is even more racist if we go all apartheid on them in video games set in Africa. Besides it was made by Japanese, isn't that even more of "white man's burden" when we in the west tells them what they can and not can portray in fiction?

The other thing with this game is the co-op mode where you can have a friend join or your forced to play with the AI. Not that bad, but they waste the ammo I'm carefully saving up. Luckily you can always replay the 1 1/2 chapters to gather ammo and money to upgrade your weapon to make it somewhat easier. Back to the co-op, it works, but this is probably the main reason the games doesn't scare me as much, you are almost never alone. A bit more stressful maybe since you must keep an eye on the AI's health and ammo, but if you finish it once you can get unlimited ammo which at least takes care of that. If I only had someone to play with. Tried with my sister, but the first zombie made her want to quite and the horde of zombies at the end of chapter one was enough for her. Maybe if my youngest sister was here, she played at least the rail-gun Resident Evil games for Wii.