wound up playing about 2/3 of resident evil 5 tonight until i completed it, just to clear my slate for metroid dread.
it's shocking that resident evil 5 is
a bad game. at the time it released, the reputation surrounding it was that of something which didn't reach the heights of resident evil 4, but was still following solidly in its footsteps. resident evil 6 is probably the best thing for its legacy, because the consensus surrounding re6 being a low point for the main franchise kept re5 as better by comparison.
1. it's
ugly. the lack of colors, plus the shiny characters, and the bloom lighting make it feel like a nightmare and not in the way the developers intended. it's games like this where i really, really hate the chase for the high-end visual and photorealism. because as much as you think you're nailing it in the modern day, it won't look good a decade later, and what they had to sacrifice to get it there was not worth it.
2. fucking
what:
3. re4 was this tongue-in-cheek b-movie. leon kennedy is off to save the president's daughter and is making wise-cracks the entire time. re5 is this angsty up-its-own-ass lore-heavy plot with chris redfield trying to save the world from albert wesker. maybe longtime resident evil fans really liked it. some parts come off as goofy in a way that i can't tell if it's supposed to be funny or not, like chris punching that boulder.
4. the level design and enemy encounters suck. the game is mostly running from room to room and clearing out people until late in the game where there are some light puzzles introduced. the game feels like it's trying to do re4, but bigger, and as a result, feels like re4, but smaller. re4 worked in part because it was
such a departure from what came before. re5 constantly reminded me of a better game. even inventory management was hampered by this. re4 had these in-game moments in which you could find someone to sell you stuff. it was part of the atmosphere. in re5, it's just there at the end of a chapter. and item management isn't practically its own minigame - it's a constant annoyance in juggling weapons and ammo and health by how many things fit in your grid(s).
top-to-bottom it's a mostly miserable experience, and i can't believe that re6 is somehow worse. it's similarly hard to believe how re7 managed to course-correct so well afterwards. and now i'm afraid of village because it seems to be what re5 was to re4, but to re7.
but hey, metroid dread is tomorrow, so that's a future concern.
