What I liked:
- Co-op
- Varied Locations & Enemies
- Campy Story
- Well-paced
What I didn’t like:
- Lack of Franchise Staples
- Buggy Bosses
- QTEs!!!
- Third-Person cover shooter!?
- Easy & Tensionless
- Sheeva
My Score:
C
Zitat:
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Quick Summary
Resident Evil(RE) 5 is a further departure from the survival horror that made the series famous. RE 5 went a few steps back by forgoing the flawless level design with meaningful exploration, tense encounters, and item-based puzzles for a linear action shooter with some over-the-top moments. What it loses, it replaces with its one saving grace: co-op.
Classic Camp
If you’ve played any Resident Evil games for their stories, you already know what to expect in terms of cheesy writing that almost feels, at this point, created by a teenager. Their games have never evolved beyond telling you the basics to get you to do something tied to gameplay, like go here, this guy is evil and this object is important later. The voice acting has improved and is no longer fully terrible, but now it’s in the middle ground of “serious VA with cringe writing” to deliver a different kind of fun.
Its main antagonist Albert Wesker is upgraded to a supervillain, that can dodge like Neo, this does offer some of the coolest cutscenes. He is stupid yet suave, with a dozen times when he should kill you, but just monologues and Chris does it too. The game has a lot of cutscenes and you should expect to laugh along because it makes no sense unless you think about it backwards. Such as: why are we fighting a spider boss, how did that happen to Jill, and why are we on a boat killing Squidward, as nothing is set up and stuff just happens. which makes it hard to care and even follow along.
You do what feels like world-hopping despite staying only in Africa. The bosses, when not bugged out, are fun set pieces like fighting a squid-human hybrid or using a space laser to kill a zombie tower of Sauron, even though trivial in terms of challenge.
Who is Sheeva?
You play as Chris and with somebody named Sheeva, who is not even worth talking about as she is such an unremarkable character. They could have (and in the DLC, they do) made Jill more integrated into the game. She is butchered in the main campaign, and the explanation why, is beyond stupid and the reason we have this one-off character. Chris’s personality is cemented as being the chad who is likable and not yet stupid in later games. The story is hilarious at times, has fun moments, and is well-paced, but it serves one other purpose beyond laughing at it. It offers fun scenarios while your partner is getting chainsawed, stabbed, smashed, burned, or eaten and you ignore it, to knife a barrel for ammo.
Wait, there’s Co-op?
First, I have never played RE 5 solo, so I can’t comment on that aspect, as I don’t think it’s good enough as a single-player game, and wouldn’t recommend it from that perspective. The thing that makes RE 5 worth a try, is that you now get to bring a friend and not in the usual tag-along that you might be used to, but actual co-op centric design in a few core aspects of varied level execution.
A good co-op game offers interaction with its gameplay systems between players beyond the basics of reviving. RE 5 does this in a couple of ways. Ammo pickups are static, meaning you have to divide and figure out who gets what ammo type, which means you decide what special weapons each will have, with an emphasis that the pistol can be used by both. Premium ammo for the magnum and grenade launcher are rare pickups and saved for big moments where you can the mag dump to help in tough encounters, like a room full of lickers and boss fights.
Outside of missions, you can store anything you pick up, buy weapons (after finishing the mission), or ammo with the gold you pick up through the levels, of which you both have separate balances to buy what you need. You can only buy anything before a chapter starts, or when you die. So there is some planning ahead as inventory is small and not upgradable, sadly. Thankfully, the same grenades stack, but healing items do not.
You can combo together melee attacks on zombies, and there was a rare instance of using a lamp in a dark tunnel while your partner fights enemies. It’s memorable because it’s the only real instance of tension and well-defined co-op gameplay that ends rather quickly. It also feels the closest to the survival-horror roots the series is known for.
It’s Basically RE 4 but Worse
Common enemies are mixed up similar to RE 4, with tribal zombies with gear to prevent one-shots, explosive-wielding ones, and the return of the chainsaw guys with nothing really new added to the formula to really challenge you with the addition of a second player.
Most of the action is fun at times, as it’s very similar to RE 4’s style gameplay, which is made worse here when it brings back the gun-toting zombies, the game quickly turns into a janky and pace-breaking cover shooter. You can always tell when it’s going to happen(chest-high walls and luckily mostly in the latter half) and dread it as they are just zombies with guns, which doesn’t offer anything new or creative. Unlike, the RPG and crossbow zombies, which allow shooting their projectiles on them or mid-air to offer some meaningful engagement. Even the new mini-gun enemies don’t offer anything special beyond hiding in cover and waiting for a window, aka wack-a-mole.
Glaring Issues
There are so many issues with the game so prevalent that there are guides online to fix them. For example, an enemy failing to drop a key needed to progress requires a specific pattern from you to fix Almost every boss either freezes for a minute or never dies until restarting or randomly after six tries. The worst example is the final boss, as you shoot his weak spot enough, he then transitions to the next phase, but if you happen to shoot him too much he will not do this and be stuck forever in the current phase and must be restarted. We thought he was either really tanky or it was a run out of ammo situation, but nope he just bugged out multiple times.
Time @ 18:12: https://youtu.be/srRlRC09cxE?t=1092
The amount of QTEs in the game is exponential compared to RE4. There are many scenes, and general gameplay sections that are glorified button pressing simulators: you have a running section that is a QTE, instead of you know, running. The most memorable scenes don’t have them. We can have action scenes and passively watch without getting bored. They end up getting you killed more often, rather than making things interesting
Final Thoughts
You have fans that love or don’t mind the direction that RE5 and its follow-up took. I am not one of them. It’s no longer the same, other than using the brand to try to reach a bigger pure action audience while forgetting what the franchise is about. It went from a carefully crafted exploration of wonderful levels with interesting puzzles, backtracking, and engaging progression to a purely linear bland action game that is saved only by the fact that you can play it with a friend. Without co-op, this game would not be recommended. I would also not classify any of the “puzzles” in the base game as such, because they are instead testing to see if you have a functioning brain.
Overall, if you want a fun co-op game with a Resident Evil flair and that friend doesn’t mind a stupid story that’s easy to riff, you will have some fun. If you want to dare it alone, I can’t help you decide that. I can direct you to the rest of the franchise for solo play.
Die furchterregende Horrorserie kehrt in High-Definition-Qualität zurück. Das bisher schockierendste Abenteuer spielt Jahre nach den Geschehnissen des ersten Teils. Als Chris Redfield, ein ehemaliges Mitglied der Einheit S.T.A.R.S, wirst du zum Agenten der Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (B.S.A.A.) und erkundest eine gefährliche Wüstenkolonie in Afrika. Dort wurde ein neuer Virus freigesetzt, der Körper und Geist seiner Wirte in etwas erschreckend Unmenschliches verwandelt, das absolut tödlich ist. 
Resident Evil 5 ist der erste Teil der Reihe, der einen Online-Modus für das gemeinsame Spielen bietet. Du kannst Ziele mit einem Partner zusammen angreifen, ihr könnt euch gegenseitig beim Weg durch die Umgebungen und bei Rätseln helfen, die man alleine nicht bewältigen kann. Resident Evil ist jetzt noch beängstigender, denn dich erwartet eine Vielzahl von Feinden mit erweiterter KI, die dir ein grausames Ende bereiten wollen. 
