Ok im 3 chapters in and my initial thoughts are that Resident Evil 5 feels different very different.

Concntrating on polishing RE 4′s combat further, RE5 has forgone item carrying stratergy, puzzle solving, baroque/industrial flavour and yellow herbs in favour of a more run and gun approach that personally, i feel, make it lose some of what made RE in the first place.

But realistically what could capcom do with the franchise.?? Dead rising is another take on the zombie apocalypse theme are there are plenty zombie light gun games on the Wii. So, racist controversy aside, i really like the setting, plenty of scope for some nice set pieces with globalisation bioterrrorism and power conflict in the area making for interesting themes. The core gunplay and combat is great, the 30 second snapshot of how a game should be fun is spot on and the mass zombie battles and boss fights are still exciting as ever. It just a shame some of the ideas are recycled so much from past set pieces in the series or dont quite offer anything new compared to other action/shooter games.

5 Things id change:-

The switch to real time menu organisation has it’s flaws. While fine for preparing and using objects during quiet moments it really is ridiculously difficult to tend to your character in tense crowd control moments and frentic bossfights, this would be fine if the game was designed to give you a chance to prepare even on your first run through. However one instance of its failings was apprent on the scorpion/bat boss where periodically i had to collect and equip a particular weapon to weaken it, switching into menu while my character stood idley by. Every time i was close to equiping, the boss, who is much more mobile with singleminded AI hellbent on knocking a third off my life, would drive me to shear frustration.

OTT bosses – It was great when it was just obese snakes or spiders, and all the humanoid tyrant variations were memorable, but the mutated horrors in this RE are straight out of  a anime horror illustator’s O level scrap book (i’m looking at you bat-scorpion)

More plot exposition through the game world.  Ok so the story in Resident Evils are not exactly shakespere but the way these accidents were unravelled by hacking into computers and looking through notes and files left in the zombies wake, added to the sense of exploration and build towards the final climatic scenes throughout past titles in the series. However these occurances are now rare and brief, perhaps to deliberately focus on gunplay.

Change the control method – if your going to go more action than survival horror, Capcom, go all the way. Make the lead characters react like trained combatants, not make me feel like a tank with legs. 180′ing to face a boss then shooting running past it then 180′ing again and shooting etc meakes me feel like charlie chaplin rather than a member of stars. There will be ways to make firefights tense while empowering the characters a little more. And this would make more sense with the announcement of the controversial downloadable mutiplayer mode.
I enjoy the ammo saving, context sensitive combat, from Resi 4 (Leon suplex ftw) so how about trading true multidirectional controls and more agile abilities like a sidestep or roll when you are brawling if you dont have a gun equipt, the drawback being you’re a more vunerable from large groups, or its harder to get the stun without a firearm??

Bring back the typewriter!