Resident Evil 5
Hands-on with single-player and co-op.
Africa may prove difficult territory for Resident Evil 5, and not just because of Umbrella Corp meddling. The E3 2007 teaser struck an unpleasantly colonial chord by suggesting that - crikey! - you'll certainly be shooting a lot of black people this time around, and the media has been quick to voice its unease. The developers may consider the new setting just another change of location following RE4's European holiday, but the trailer's problem was that its depiction of a white man fighting off a depraved black mob was "imagery with a history", in the words of Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, particularly as there was no wider context available for those not versed in the series' back-story.
Capcom's solution is simple: a lot more context and a few little tweaks. Not only has it unveiled a black co-star, it's gathered up a fresh mob of such racial diversity that it's as if Redfield's being attacked by a mid-nineties Gap ad. Whether it's possibly even more problematic to suggest that shooting a black person is alright so long as you're black yourself, or whether, in fact, videogames reaching Africa actually represents some kind of equality in the first place, are knots each player will have to untie for themselves. This isn't a debate that's going to go away, but we may owe it to Capcom to try the completed game before passing judgement.
And now we've had a chance to play a bit of Resident Evil 5 (running on 360 hardware), some of the worst fears can be put aside. Capcom has taken pains to show that the infected are, ultimately, victims - they may run at you with a variety of gardening implements, but they're surrounded by locations that put their behaviour into context: everywhere you look in the game's crumbling streets, there are signs of their previous lives, and the events that changed them. So while we didn't feel as uncomfortable shooting our way through two levels of RE5 as we did watching the 2007 trailer, another question remains: how does it actually play?

Weapon selection is handled by the D-pad, a shame when you're playing on the 360.
Well, it plays a lot like RE4. Crowd control remains the order of the day, and it's still all about finding a good space, using it to your advantage, and knowing when it's time to move. Ammo is easy to come by, enemies attack en masse, and the movement and controls are essentially unchanged from the reboot offered in the previous game.
Story details are still scarce: it's Africa, everyone's going loopy, and sometimes-huge winged bugs erupt from their mouths. This may be the birthplace of the T-Virus, and there's also a lot of chatter about something called Majini, which sounds like some kind of downmarket Ovaltine rival, but may be, according to Google, a kind of shape-shifting African spirit who lures people to their death. (But, then, it was Google who told us all those sweet, sweet lies about a new Back to the Future movie, so we're not sure we trust it anymore.) Whatever the cause, cue the return of RE1's Chris Redfield (who's always looked like he should be doing the links on CBBC rather than shooting people through the brain), bring on the hordes, and let splatter commence.
The first area we played through was Shanty Town. A maze of crumbling, scorched masonry, burnt-out buses, and general post-riot disarray, take out the palm trees and it could be a scene from Gears of War. It's familiar, then, but still beautifully done: this is a convincingly dilapidated world of corrugated iron and cast-offs. Environments are full of human details, like a filthy sink clinging to the cracked plaster of a wall, or an ancient rug hung over a banister. Very little feels off the rack, and much of the map appears to be judiciously destructible.

The levels were filled with stacks of Demo Melons - a sure sign that somebody's showing off in-game physics.
We start by working our way through narrow streets, fighting huge buzzing fly-like monsters who burst from the mouths of corpses and have nasty lunge attacks. We're being channelled, but there's a pleasing amount of freedom to deviate from the path along the way, each side-route providing a short cut or an unexpected item.
And, crucially, we're not alone, either. Fighting alongside Redfield is Sheva, a typically Capcom beauty who provides AI partnership in single-player (and our demo), while also doubling as the friend-slot in online co-op.
Her design document may have simply read, "Let's make her hot," but her AI soon gets its chance to shine too. Out of the narrows, we've found ourselves on the top floor of an abandoned tenement; the task now is to boost Sheva across to the opposite building to fight her own way down and open a locked gate from the far side.
The game switches pace, Redfield providing sniper cover as Sheva guns through a sudden crush of infected. The sniper rifle's enjoyably weighty (the pistol and shotgun we tried later were equally entertaining), but what's more surprising is how well Sheva tackles things. She may be a bit too handy with headshots to be entirely credible, but the way she creates space for herself and keeps the crowd at bay is refreshingly lifelike. She's also capable of changing tactics when the situation demands it, holding people off with gunfire or moving in close for knife attacks when she sees an opening. At one point, she even decided to dive through a window and surprise enemies by doubling-back on them - a convincing display of combat intelligence, particularly since she opted not to on a second play-through.
Reunited at street level again, we're back into narrow corridor territory and facing off against a maniac with a turban and chainsaw (miraculously, not as offensive as it sounds). Mr Chainsaw is a one-hit killer. We know this because he did it to us on several occasions - the spray of blood as he sank the blades into our neck matched brilliantly by the suddenly lolling tongue and slack body of Chris as he slumps to the ground. The battle is contrived - there are suddenly a lot of exploding barrels nearby - but the sheer walls of the corridors, and the twisty layout of the map makes it extremely effective. It's time to back up, take aim, and hope we don't run out of space.
At moments like this, Sheva takes a back seat, happier to support you with ammo and health jabs rather than tackle the mini-boss directly. Although she's great in combat, she struggles with providing support in other situations: later, in a section of the second level where we have to move furniture to barricade ourselves in, she jumps at the chance to take people out by sniping through the windows, but isn't able to help with the pushing and shoving. Disconcertingly, in slow moments, she has a habit of moving as close to Redfield as she can and staring, with cow-like devotion, right into his face. We know he's a dreamboat and all, but hopefully this won't be her MO in the finished game.
This aside, there's not that much chemistry between the two leads yet, and certainly no sign of the tender, aching love affair that blossomed between Dom and Marcus in Gears. There's plenty of time for this to change, however: we've seen very little of the game, and the code isn't anywhere near finished, but at the moment, when she isn't in the thick of battle, Sheva can be a bit of a plank.

The healing spray (not shown here - we're so good to you) triggers an animation that suggests Redfield's stopped mid-battle to sort his hair out.
It's hard to judge how the friendly squabble of co-op will affect the oppressive tone of Resident Evil. The second demo area, however, seems to suggest the game has no problems on this front, even with company in tow. Meeting Place is a pressure-cooker set-piece that manages to overwhelm and terrify in the space of about four minutes. It starts as we move through a corrugated-iron alleyway towards a small shack. There's a party gathered outside to see a beheading, which is always nice, and the racially diverse crowd are eager for blood. We're spotted, and then have to barricade our stronghold, blocking doors and windows, and fighting off attackers until the executioner himself blasts in through a wall. Then it's off into the shanties beyond to try and take him down.
As you might expect, each stage of this is heavily scripted: first the crowd arrives at the shack, then they get in through the ceiling, and then finally the executioner bursts in. What's promising is that although the scripting creates the same set-piece each time, the way it then unfolds can be radically different from one play-through to the next. We replayed the barricade sequence at least five times, and saw notable variances in when the infected chose to attack, how they reacted to gunfire, and whether they opted to swarm in all at once, or approach from multiple angles. Their reactions are often ghoulishly intelligent: when we accidentally triggered an exploding barrel early, one poor loser walked straight into the flames, and then the rest took stock before working out a new path around them. Equally, if a door's been barricaded and the infected come under fire trying to bust through, they'll head for the windows instead. Taken as a whole, the entire sequence may be a set-piece right out of the previous game, but the AI advances makes for a wealth of new strategies - and RE4's AI was hardly backwards.

There are a lot of clones in the crowds. We saw one man again and again, his tailored shorts and flip-flops at odds with the flaming crossbow in his hands.
And even though the hulking executioner appeared to be following a set path at times, there were ample ways to tackle him, too. After a few attempts to finish him off in the streets, which generally ended with us falling victim to his axe attacks or buried alive under crumbled masonry, we finally fled to the rooftops and, like the cowards we are, used the environment against him. Once again, things were slightly controlled - the game allows you to jump to certain rooftops but not others, for example - but there was a variety of different approaches available, from chipping away at him from a distance, to luring him towards electrical generators and giving him a nasty zapping.
Most of RE5 remains under wraps at the moment: there's no word yet on how the weapons purchasing and upgrading will work, no details on which flavours of co-op will be available, and the long-hinted-at cover system hasn't been revealed, if it even exists. But given the relatively distant March 2009 release date, the game's already looking sharp: the AI seems smart, and the levels we saw were filled with details and strategic options. If you were hoping for sweeping changes, then you're likely to be disappointed: this is a series that clung tenaciously to a control scheme long after it was out of date, and is hardly likely to throw everything out again now it's got one that works. Instead, this opts to refine RE4's revolution, and, if the game isn't quite as good as scaring you in the hard African daylight as it was in the misty half-darkness of previous titles, it's still able to bring on a visceral thrill as the crowd gets closer.
This is about full-on panic rather than sudden shocks, then, and that may be a wise choice: you can find yourself panicking again and again, but you can only be scared by a cheap trick once.
Resident Evil 5 is due out on PS3 and Xbox 360 on 13th March 2009 in Europe.
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Comments (61) Latest comment 4 years ago
Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!
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+1 I couldn't help but be disappointed it looks like just a lick of paint but same game, not a bad thing but I was so hoping they would go back to what made Resi great.
4 was a good arcade shooter but it wasn't resi
/ goes back to playing Resi 1-3
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I think it's racist to kill white people.
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Laugh at such people and move on.
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its not racist at all either. Its just the developers terrible, terrible knowledge of any culture or society outside of japan..
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Where's the merchant(s) damnit?!
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thanks for the offer
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though, I think sarcasm is the highest form of wit, I wasn't either.....
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prejudice against real zombies if you ask me...
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yeah, I suppose they are zombies in the literal sense of the word but, call me an old romantic, I just like my zombies to be properly dead...
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Look, when this game is reported as racist with little thought or mention of the context of the action, its just sloppy journalism and should rightly be called out.
Context is important, but the fact remains that the violence depicted in this game is eerily similar, or at least ostensibley resembles, real historical events.
I wonder if those saying 'OMG, they are just zombies' would be as comfortable with an analogy of the situation. Suppose a story where there is an outbreak in Israel of some nasty virus which requires all Israelis to be rounded up and quarantened in mass detention camps and the bodies of those dying in the camps had to be cremated on an industrial scale to contain the virus. Well, within the context of the story it has nothing to do with the holocaust but the resemblence is striking and I would say such a story would be in bad taste.
within the context of the story RE5 is not racist but that does not exonerate it from perhaps being ill-judged concept because it is just so close to the bone of real historical events.
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you have to accept that Europe has a history of enslaving, exploiting and oppressing many Africans. Most of this is historical granted, but many Africans are still living with the legacy and consequences of this colonial past. Apathied was only a few years ago in South Africa after all.
Because of this, I think there is some validity to the complaint that a game featuring a white person indiscriminately mowing down of hordes of black people in an African setting is a little unsettling.
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Could you back this up with anything?
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I know most of Africa's problems are internal and down to corrupt despotic regimes. I happen to think decolonialisation created the conditions and the political vacums that were filled by such regimes but this does not absolve Africans from their own responibility. After all the slave trade wouldnt have been possible without the complicity of other Africans. It doesnt need to be mentioned that other post colonial societies have managed to establish liberal democracies and propser blah blah blah.
Pardon the pun, but I understand its not a black or white issue. I am not some ubber lefty with a guilt complex who blames everything on 'whitey' and who thinks anything 'ethnic' is inherently good. I also do not deny history and I just happen to understand why this game has casued the contraversey and some might consider it insensitive.
on a different note;
I think the fact that this game has received a lot of criticism whereas all the games featuring the mass killing of Arabs is rarely mentioned says a lot about medias bias. Racism/tribalism is human nature after all and veryone is blind to their own prejudices.
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Some black people are racist, I agree.
Racism and double standards are encouraged in the name of equality and multiculturalism by some misguied lefties. I agree.
picking out a few black people and anecdotes and then extrapolating them to represent all black people is racist. Doy ou agree?
whats this got to do with Resident Evil again?
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'game where european colonists went to africa, slaughtered every man woman and child who resisted'
This game looks very similar to that, its not, for reasons already mentioned, but it looks a bit like that to anyone who does not know the back story.
Its just a little too close to the truth for some, and I happen to share some concerns over it.
In regard to the Arab thing. Yes, I do think games like Soldier of Fortune, that new Fifty Cent game, and even COD4 to an extent are a little morally dubious to defend. They are not exactly a very naunced depidction of the current conflict are they.
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Any way, why are all you people still up, havnt you got jobs to go to in the morning?
I am in Australia, whats your excuse?
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I guess there is nothing massively wrong with the games in themselves, I still play them. Its just there is a pernicious trend in the media at the moment of demonising all Muslims. Now I dislike Islam and I think Arab culuture is backward and reactionary. But not all Muslims are Arab, and not all are Islamists. I just see these games within the wider culture (books, newspapers, movies, news, etc) demonising Muslims and with the current demographic predictions of Muslims in Europe I worry about the civil unrest this could eventually lead to. I think the troubles in Rotterdam and Paris is just a taste of things to come. Call me extreme but some of this stuff about Muslims in the Express/Mail echos the Nazi antisemetic propoganda films of the 1930's.
Now I am going off on a tangent I know. But its within this context that I dislike the whole 'Rag Head killing, USMC oooh rah' trend in games. I prefer escapism in my games, not a representation of what I can see on the news every night.
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The Islamist threat to Europe is mainly a demographic one, not a terrorist one. The media's Muslim bashing is allowing the minority Islamists to represent the majority of Muslims. This is framing the issue within a clash of civilisations type Muslim vs Non Muslim paradigm, thus turning moderates to rally behind the Islamists. Whereas in reality the problem is a Muslim vs Islamist issue and should be treated as suich rather than villifying all muslims as if they were one homogenous group.
Thats my analysis of the situation any way. I think I just realised I was on the wrong forum. I should be on the Guardian Comment is Free.
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+ a million. Thanks for taking the time (y)
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100 White men chase down and attempt to lynch one black man:
Q: Who is racist in this situation? A: The white men.
100 Black men chase down and attempt to lynch one white man:
Q: Who is racist in this situation? A: Still the white man apparently.
That is all.
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RE4 is my favourite game since Super Mario World, so if I am getting a high-res version of that, then I will be over the moon.
I cannot wait until March 13th!
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In regards to the whole spanish thing- I guess there is still a sensitivity (or over-sensitivity, depending on your opinion) to the whole enslaving the black race thing, apartheid, segregation yada yada.
I'm all about being sensitive but it does go too far sometimes..... still it is interesting to see how skewed people's idea of what racism is.
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Ah, as long as the game gets released I don't really give a monkeys, to be honest..
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Wheres mungolikebeans gone? His comments had me laughing and smiling throughout this whole thing! I for one am just really looking forward to this and I dont even have a next gen console yet! I agree that the ability to strafe is the one thing needed in the gameplay but to be honest, I wont be that disappointed if its just RE4 in another location. I'll be gutted if the pirate "Ahhh.......I'll buy it at a high price" merchant isnt in it though. I didnt even realise you could shoot him in RE4 until my mate pointed it out right before I finished the game!
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Suppose you just replaced black people in this game with jews, and placed it in Israel instead of Africa. That's it, not the holocaust-scenario Rodney talked about. Would that be okay with you guys? I personally think there would be an outcry.
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For someone who claims not to give a damn about colour, you've spent the vast majority of this thread talking about.....colour (or how the black community plays the race card. That's very smart of you, using a minority to generalize an entire community. Does that mean all white people are racist because the BNP are?)
You actually started the discussion of race here, and you've maintained it throughtout (taking away discussion of the game itself). Heck, your posts makes up almost 50% of all posts here.
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its fecking ridiculous and if you want to look that far into things you may as well live under a rock cause you're gonna get offended every fecking minute of your life
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a bad thing. Still.
Btw:
"I might not be as big as you, but I can still hold my own."
"Don't worry, I've worked with a woman before"
The Cheese Is Back.
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Imagine the dialogue though: "I hope this is not Chris's blood... in Taunton!" or "you nearly became a Jill sandwich... in Taunton!" and so on.
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I just don't think the capcom team ever even considered the fact that people might get offended by having the game set in a country where games are not generally set. I lived in Spain for a few years and I can't remember ever seeing a village that remotely resembled anything in resi 4. But, saying that, its true that if people do get offended by some part of a game before release its understandable to have the game altered.
I wasn't being a c**t, btw, with what I said but it may have sounded slightly facitious. Theres just nothing that offends me much, personally..
about the game though...it looks a alot like resi 4 with better graphics and more open areas. which is a good thing, in my book.
I didn't really expect anything different as theres no way they could make it too different without alienating everyone who like dthe last one and really, what else could you do? make it a rts or something?
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My point was, this game isnt racist but looks very much like what a racist game might look like, and that is even to someone who is familiar with the storyline. The resemblence is just perhaps a little too close to a sensitive subject. I will try and be more concise next time.
too often gamers dont seem to be very tolerant of what they see as outside criticism of their precious hobby. Most times outside criticism is based on ignorance, but occasionally they have a point.
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maybe the subjects are not so different after all
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I probably could have worded it better. I just posting at work when I have a moment.
My point was, a game scenario that even resembled the holocaust (even if the Jews were all zombies) would be considered in bad taste.
I suppose I should let it go and talk about the game. I really enjoyed RE4 (never played 2 or 3) but I wouldnt mind a little more of the survival horror I remember from RE all those years ago. without the stilited dialogue and door opening loading screens of course.
Graphics look great
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Chris: "no, its because you're a flesh-eating zombie"
*BANG*
Remember kids, its only morally right to kill white people.
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PC BRIGADE
CAN'T EVEN SAY 'BLACK BOARD' ANY MORE
ETC.
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I wonder if this is the first game that will look better on the ps3...
but hey who cares...
lets see how this looks once its out
march 09... dang that is not around the corner :/
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If RE6 is set in China and the zombies are all Chinese, think we'll get the same reaction?