Yeah I know it’s been out forever
RE5 Thoughts / Mini-review:
Classic example of good game design gone horribly wrong. Take the inventory of the older RE games, cut down on the variety of weapons, but keep the focus on combat. Be slightly more sparing with ammunition, and introduce co-op. In addition, streamline the saving system to only allow for one save, and introduce checkpoints and suchlike to make it more modern. Sounds like a great idea, right?
Wrong.
The game is pretty good, up until the final chapter. The requisite final fight with Wesker is very hard… until you figure out that his attacks can be dodged with a button press or a slow backwards walk. In addition, your attacks don’t hurt him… unless you hit him while he is stunned, and perform a dial-a-combo ripped from Killer Instinct, or put together a ridiculous multi-part item, and then trigger this cutscene, and then shoot this thingy… all JUST SO, otherwise it fails.
After you finally manage to ‘kill’ him a manner reminiscent of Vamp from MGS4, an irritating cutscene and a series of quicktime events ensue… that end with you crashlanding in a volcano. Even worse, you must now fight Wesker AGAIN, but this time he’s doing his best impression of Nemesis, insta-kill attacks and all.
Of course, this is the moment that the game lets itself go. There are no cues. NONE. You are dropped in this volcano, half-dead, out of ammo, and told to kill a boss which, in every RE game, would be said to have the hallmarks of being invulnerable. So you move ahead as fast as possible, doing quicktime events as fast as possible… and die. Horribly. Over, and over, and over again. Why?
Because this one fight breaks all the rules that the game has hammered into you for the past 4 hours: You have to shoot an obviously invulnerable boss. You have to delay as long as possible. You have to shoot tiny, obscure locations. You have to ignore EVERY gameplay instinct you’ve been using, and craft entirely new ones from nothing, in 30 seconds, or die.
Did I mention that there is NO ammunition at all in this level, unlike every other boss arena? Did I also mention that it’s entirely possible to waste all your ammo on the previous Wesker fight… and have nothing at all for this fight?
Did I also mention that the autosave happens as you land in the volcano?
Oops.
That’s right, there is NO WAY TO GO BACK, except by restarting the chapter. That takes you back almost an hour, and you keep your current equipment. That means that you still have no ammo, for what is one of the toughest sections in the game.
If somebody figured all this out on their first runthrough, I’ll admit to being astonished. I’ll then ask if you’re related to the people who designed this, and if you watched someone else play through it first, because there is NO WAY you figured it out on your own.
Me, I just farmed for the upgraded infinite Magnum, and went to town on Wesker’s ugly face with it. It worked, eventually. I still feel like I cheated, and worse, the game MADE ME DO IT.
