Thursday, March 26, 2009

Zombies CAN ride dirt bikes!

Man I love me some zombies. For Christmas I was given a how to survive zombie attacks set of flash cards and after reading, I felt pretty assured I knew what was what. In leading up to the days of Resident Evil 5, Damman argued with me that the game had no zombies, as I hysterically screamed about dirt bike riding zombies from the trailer. Well since my play through, applying my flash card knowledge, I do have to say this is not a “zombie” game, and it is also not a typical Resident Evil game. A lot of purists have been in an uproar over this; I, well, I have enjoyed the product and I’ll be so kind as to tell you why.


RE5 pretty much abandons survival horror like an unwanted child at the mall. No mention of it, no remorse for it, the game just went a different way. This is a shooter… where you can’t actually shoot while you move. Let us call it a “Stand Still Shooter with Inventory Management.” I think that does nicely. I ate this up. I loved the story, I loved the enemies, I thought the levels were varied and unique. Puzzles pleasurable and simple. The variety of weapons ridiculous (more later) and the cooperative experience joyous.

For me, co-op has become the new drug. Damman has become my new video game BFF as we have sought out new ways to constantly annoy each other while achieving a common goal. RE5 provides another way for one person to be all brain, and another to use hap-hazard brawn. (take a guess who is who.) The inventory management allowing you to trade items with your partner creates a fun interplay between who takes what on a given level and what strategies you want to use for a given boss.

The dialog, as Damman explains, is typical RE, very cheesy. Hell by the end of the game, my very first RE experience, I could guess a line before they said it. As I eluded to before, however, the story was fun. It may do a horrible job of trying to explain the history of RE, but as a stand-alone, it won me over.

The replay value for this title is immense. The un-lockable weapons, costumes, special items and game modes make for a unique kind of treasure hunt. I went back through after my first run through and hunted for all the emblems, treasure and missed goodies from before, searching for the kind of completion of a game I rarely desire. Some may call this achievement whoring, some may be disinterested in it. The blank fact is my game clock was about 11 hours to beat it, and I’ve logged another 6 just hunting for things now. Entertainment value is entertainment value folks.

End of the day, this isn’t really RE5 as much as it is RE-a new way to play. It was hella fun, I am going to play some more, a lot more, and I hope to horde all of your magnum ammo in game sometime if you ever play with me too.

Score: 4 out of 5 “Damn it Jason, you blew me up again!”s

Deviant art image stolen from haruningster

2 comments:

Slick said...

Not RE related, but zombie related as you started out...

Nazi Zombies in CoDWaW is just about one of the most fun games EVER. Especially if you have a crew of your 3 finest friends defending with you.

Jason said...

Yea, there is a very similar variant in halo3 that WaW pretty much ripped off, but crazy fun all the same.