Resident Evil 5 Demo Impressions

Before I get to commenting on the actual content of the demo itself, I must speak about the ridiculousness of the RE5 Demo's availability. As in: it is not available. Not readily anyway.

No, much like the Ninja Gaiden 2 Demo debacle, the RE5 demo version is only available in Japan. Japan; Land of three Xbox 360 lifetimes sales do date. Not the US, which made Resident Evil the phenomenon it is today. Ok, so no problem... I will simply log into my fake Japanese Xbox Live account that I made just for this situation!

No dice. The demo is only available to Xbox Live Gold members. As my Japanese Live account is Silver, I am S.O.L....

But I am not down yet! I just purchased Gears of War 2, which came with a code for 48 hours of free Xbox Live Gold! I enter the code and...

Nothing. Code denied. What next? Wait! When my original Xbox 360 RRODed on me, I was sent a code for a free month of Xbox Live Gold! I enter that code and...

SUCCESS! My Japanese Xbox Live account is now Gold for a month! Now, off through the Xbox's menus to begin download!

There it is! I click the art, and I am taken to the screen to download. Cost: Free, Press 'A' to download. I press 'A' and...

"Content not available in your area."

I fool around with changing my region and what not, but no luck. After wasting a free month of Xbox Live and spending a couple hours messing around, no RE5 Demo for me through "legit" channels.

Off to The Pirate Bay, and moments later, I have the demo downloaded and burnt to a CD. I pop it in the 360, and I am off to Africa to waste zombies. The odd thing about this is, apparently it is not against their terms of service to run demos this way. So why would they go through all of this trouble to make it difficult to get in the first place? Oh well. Thanks for nothing Capcom & Microsoft!

All right... so the actual demo itself. There are two playable areas: Public Assembly and Shanty Town, playable solo, Co-op Online, or Co-op Local.

The game looks gorgeous. The world is full of detail. There is ample clutter filling the scene and the texture fidelity is excellent. The main characters look really good; Redfield looks like he has been in the gym since his last RE outing, and Sheva's model and textures are great. Animations are believable and do not look keyframey. Special effects are very well done. Explosions are awesome, (very similar to those found in Lost Planet.) Noticeable, though not overdone, lens flares and bloom add extra polish and realism. The overall lighting and coloring is very reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid 4: fairly high contrast with greenish and yellowish filtering muting the colors. Oh, and extra props for the really cool virus/biological themed menu screens. They look great.

Now, on to the issues.

First things first: When will developers realize that ESCORT MISSIONS SUCK? Unfortunately, the entire demo is an escort mission. While you play Chris, Sheva is controlled by AI. So while you may be doing fine with the zombie evading and shooting, Sheva will frequently end up getting her head sawed off, causing you to lose the game. I really hope that the whole game is not like this, but I fear the worst as the game looks to be co-op. If expect that if you don't have a flesh and blood partner for co-op play, Sheva will be still be present, though AI controlled. Big mistake Capcom.

Next, the controls. While it appears that Capcom has attempted to improve the controls, they do not quite nail it. Sure, the left stick now strafes when pushed left and right just as it would with any modern shooter, but only when walking. As soon as you go into a run, left and right cause your player to turn. Switching schemes mid stream like that ends up being quite confusing. It caused my needless death several times.

Speaking of walking and running, do not expect to be shooting at any point during those two activities. While on the subject, do not expect to be reloading either. No shooting or reloading while running I would understand, but to not be able to fine tune one's aim with a little translation feels overly restrictive and unfair. Being able to slowly back up while reloading would have saved me several deaths. Heck, I would be happy if they even halved walking speed when trying to shoot and reload. Dead Space did shooting much better.

Also unfair is the inventory sysetm. Pressing 'Y' brings up the inventory menu. In a radical change for the series, going into inventory does NOT stop the action; you can be maimed and killed by enemies while your character is frozen in place. Again, Dead Space did it better by allowing the player to walk around and manipulate the inventory simultaneously.

Another inventory issue is that with the addition of Sheva, you will have to manage resources between yourself and your AI escortee. Options for distributing items is limited. Splitting ammo is not an option. When I wanted to divvy up bullets 50/50, I found that it was all or nothing. Save for the one clip that could be loaded into our guns, one of us was going without extra ammo. Lame.

Along with escort missions, one of my biggest game design gripes is vertical aiming. Vertical aiming sucks. Wouldn't you know it, there is an aerial enemy type that likes to rush you, requiring vertical aiming. Sadly, this enemy type is a fodder type enemy, so I expect we will be seeing it frequently in the final release. Bad choice.

Perhaps my recent love affair with Dead Space has colored my perception of what a survival horror experience could be, but I am really missing the strategic dismemberment of that title when playing the RE5 demo. Most notable is the headshot issue; headshots seem to have been neutered from RE4. Decapitation by headshot is now unpredictable, and seems to only happen randomly to stop a zombie. Unsatisfying. Not worth the chance that I miss the enemy's head. Instead, I found myself just filling the torso with lead.

One last complaint: Race. Unfortunately, we live in an age that is the result of rampant political correctness left unchecked. When the first RE5 media hit the web, a handful of voices cried out at the supposedly racist overtones of the game, seeing as the main character happens to be caucasian and his enemies were negroid. Despite the fact that the game takes place in a region of Africa largely populated by people of negroid descent, Capcom got scared and bowed to the pressure. The game suffers for it as a result. The immersive qualities of the game are broken when one sees asians, caucasians, latinos, and what appears to be zombie saddam hussiens equally mixed in with the legions of regionally accurate undead.

That all said, none of these issues are truly game breaking, even when taken on the whole. Sure, I will buy RE5, play it, and probable end up liking it quite a bit, but I can't see myself falling in love with it based on what I have seen thus far. I can not help but think that the title is a little behind the times. The industry has moved on. Games like Dead Space and Gears of War2 have perfected and redefined what it means to be a 3rd person shooter, survival horror or not. Hopefully Capcom takes note and has time to address these problems before release.