Post edited 11:35 pm – January 19, 2009 by Lioncourt

Aw man I'm counting the days to RE5, I was actually having a discussion with some friends about it, and someone brought up the fact that to date, RE5 simply looked like more of the same with better graphics and bigger explosions, at which point I exclaimed, "That's exactly what I want!". The promise of co-op really is the icing on this white-knuckle thrill ride of a cake. I wonder if the mysterious stranger will return to expose his arsenal to me again?

Although I must confess I'm wishing that Capcom would drop that traitor/cyborg/vampire/superspy/hair gel enthusiast Albert Wesker, I'm half expecting him to challenge Chris to some anti-gravity, advent children stylee fisticuffs…

…actually on second thought, go Wesker!

James said:

Ya know I really liked that mysterious stranger always wanting to sell me stuff. But part of me still wishes it was like the old Resident Evil games where you have to hunt down ammo and weapons. And where ammo was so scarce that you had to choose whether to run or gun every time you saw a baddie. I guess I am just a purist at heart.

I know what you mean, taking away the scarcity of the ammo really changed the focus of the game and arguably took away a lot of the fear. I suppose that they try to balance that with the tension of mass battles, which is effective in it's own way, but doesn't carry the same sense of dread.

I wonder, as awesome as it's going to be, do you reckon the tension will still be present during co-op?

Bring back Barry!

I'm definitely looking forward to Resident Evil 5.  It honestly looks graphically amazing and scary.  Co-op, however I'm sort of on the fence with that one.  I can remember just a little while ago when Resident Evil Outbreak and Resident Evil Outbreak File #2 came out for the PS2 and they contained no text or microphone support.  Now while this made meeting up with your team of four people incredibly difficult, it also made the game pretty frightening.  This was an element I remember the developers wanted to keep, because they felt that microphone chat would tone down the horror.  Even though I think it'll definitely do just that in Resident Evil 5, I think co-op chat will enhance the gameplay and give it more playability, which is a huge plus  Coming out right around the time of Street Fighter IV, I don't know if I'll be able to bite on a 60 dollar price tag, but we'll see.

Well I just played the demo, thought it was pretty decent.  In all honesty, I think having a co-op partner takes away from the horror experience.  It's lame that the computer can shoot things that you don't see right away, and that you need to babysit the computer because if she dies, you die.  The graphics are definitely my favorite part of the game.  The landscapes and people, even the motion of the game just flows incredibly smoothly.  The enemies are pretty scary, and very agile, which is awesome.  My biggest pet peeve however, is the menu screen, why is there no pause and equip screen?  That's lame to have to select things in a menu while people are killing you. 

Anyways, enough of my rants.  Those of you who've played the demo, watcha think?

Yeah, I suppose the menu does sort of add to the game.  In all honesty, I think they probably did that so that when you play online co-op it doesnt cause the whole game to pause for your partner as well.  And damn, did you find those big executioners just really hard to get away from?  I swear I dodged them left and right, and than the hammer just comes down and kills me.

So it's out now.  What do you guys think of the finished product? 

I grabbed it at Toys'R'Us since it came with a free 20 dollar gift certificate.  I really like it so far and it still has those amazing RE4 cinematics where you have to hit a button in order to dodge or do something.  The graphics are freaking intense on an HDTV, and are still pretty solid on normal TVs too.  It seems like a 10 hour game or so, since I was playing for about three hours and got to Chapter 2 of the 6 or so chapters.  The story is actually pretty cool, and I'm getting used to the menu system now.  I didn't know you could hot-key your inventory by using the D-pad, which is incredibly helpful.