Thoughts on RE5, start to finish

[Mr_Allan]

Wait, we're talking minuses here and nobody mentioned the awful screen-tearing?! It almost ruined the game for me, especially considering the obvious amount of time and effort which went into the cutscenes, just to make them barely watchable. A shame.

Generally though, pluses outweighed the minuses for me. Good game.

[RE-Hiro]

i love the game!!! fisrt, i have so much fun playing it with my Boyfriend; we play together, and we finish it in 10 hours (thru 2 days); i love the characters, specially Excella, to bad how things end with her... i also like the part when Wesker was Shirtless.. he looks so hot... hahahaha... but what i don't like is... well waht is gonna happen with RE5 after all that big ending!!!!!!! who is gonna be the new villain???

Anyway it was awesome!!!!

[Rakkoon]

i love the game!!! fisrt, i have so much fun playing it with my Boyfriend; we play together, and we finish it in 10 hours (thru 2 days); i love the characters, specially Excella, to bad how things end with her... i also like the part when Wesker was Shirtless.. he looks so hot... hahahaha... but what i don't like is... well waht is gonna happen with RE5 after all that big ending!!!!!!! who is gonna be the new villain???

Anyway it was awesome!!!!

Oh my God... I am speechless.

[rehunk88]

the water effect dident look bad to me and actully nothing in this game looked bad it was all cool this game rocks and im going to play it over and over such a good story great characters this is one of the best re games ever made ( on my list it is)

[Spera01]

In general, I do love the game, way more than RE4 definitely. However there were some things that I just did not like. Even though this is the spoilers forum, I'll tag it in a spoiler tag just in case.

Spoiler:

show spoiler

First off, lets start off with the Wesker Children... Seriously? In my own opinion, I thought this was just really lame. I don't see why Capcom couldn't have done without this. Also, maybe it's just me, but did anyone else feel like U8 just felt so out of place? I felt like that would be something I'd be fighting in like Gears of War or something, it didn't seem like something out of Resident Evil. It was a cool boss, but in my own opinion, it just didn't fit. Also, reapers as well I just hate. I find these things a bitch to fight and almost sigh in frustration every time I see one. The ending as well I thought could have been a little longer and could of showed more of what the team did after instead of flying away in the sunset. This also brings me to this; those viral videos that advertised the game were canon right? So if they really were, I think they should have showed more to the ending, cause he seemed pretty calm and almost happy like during the end scene. I honestly don't see why he'd be going like insane after this. Cause honestly lets look at it: he gets out of kijuju alive, no one really close to him dies, he finds and saves Jill, kills Wesker, and stops the Uroboros from being released around the world. If anything, I'd say this wasn't even close to what he had to deal with in the mansion incident, so why the hell is he freaking out over this?

Besides all these flaws though, I did really enjoy the game and some things I really found awesome. The lickers being back first off was just a major plus, the first time you see them in the lab was just awesome, made it feel like a lab from the older games and the lickers in general I find just fun as hell to fight, definitely my favorite enemies in the game. The boss fights as well I really enjoyed, especially the ones with popokarimu and Irving, along with the fight with Wesker where you had to turn off the lights hold him down to inject him with the shot. I found that fight so epic, especially with the music, found it to be really well done in my opinion. Also, most of the cutscenes were really well done along with the voice acting. The whole reunion between Chris and Jill, after Chris tears the device off her chest was touching. Also, the shitload of unlockables also really helps the replay value, which is always a plus.

All in all, I really enjoyed it, just a few things I do wish Capcom could of fixed, but I really did enjoy it and I'm going back now to beat it on veteran.

[rehunk88]

from start to finish = Perfect 10/10 !!!

[VENOM]

This is one of the most overrated comparisons between the two versions. Really? The PS3 copy lacks some reflections on the water's surface and all of a sudden it's a big deal?

Let's be honest here, the water looks pretty shit in both versions. Aside from that the game is gorgeous, but man, large bodies of water look pretty lame. Passable, I suppose, but lame nonetheless. That said, I emphasize "large bodies of water" because anytime it's small or shallow pools of water or streaming water it looks quite gorgeous. There's just something about the water at the port in chapter 2-1 and the water in the marshlands that looks like aluminium foil.

Spoiler:

show spoiler

However, the vast ocean and water pouring over Irving's boat during his boss battle is superb.

Exactly the both versions have bad water, but the ps3 lack even the simple details , i remember dmc4 have too low quality water, may be the framework have problems cuz the lighting and textures are great. Outher thing that i thought is odd is the shadows. They are blurry, but on the cutscenes looks great, haha end the water on the cutscenes before marshlands looks normal, well i`m not graphic whore but this is 2009 dudes we seen much better shaders in outher games. For the screen tearing is not on the ps3 but on 360 you can fix it if you set on 720p

[TheSelfishGene]

I just finished the game.

It's fun to play, but I think the series is pretty much done and dusted with me. Here are my major gripes.

Sheva's AI
I started playing on Veteran. I couldn't beat the 2 machine gun majini after hours of trying. I ended up going online, and joining a game in normal mode, just to finish to see the end of the story. Her AI was so hopeless in this part. It was very frustrating. I think the binary 'cover' and 'attack' was a bit too simple. Another mode, or just more degrees of agressiveness or defensiveness.

Weapon upgrading
From what I could tell, RE4 did this better. I can live without the merchant character. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when comparing 2 guns of the same class, the green progress bars don't line up. So that if there is a bar say 8cm long, and it's 1/4 full (2cm along). Let's say that's an ammo capacity of 10. And a gun of the same class has a 4cm bar that's 1/2 full. This is also 2cm along, but possibly not a capacity of 10?

I found it VERY frustrating trying to choose guns to use. I ended up just keeping the guns that I started upgrading first, simply because I poured the most money into them.

Inventory
Unweildly at best.

Plot
Really really poor. It's a shame how ridiculous it's become, after how simple it was in RE1, 2 and 3. Wesker was incredibly shallow. He seems to have given up his hatred directly aimed at Chris, and seemingly redirected it to a general disdain for humanity. Killing the world for shits and giggles... Even Saddler had a better plan.

For the whole second act it seems that Chris is just looking for Jill (herein refered to as MacGuffin). She didn't serve much of a purpose. She was really just a segueway onto Wesker's plans.

The plot seems especially shallow when compared to the...

Library
The ultimate cop out. There was so much information here! And yet if you think about how LITTLE was actually included in the game... Look at Excella and Wesker's relationship... All the backstory was revealed through the library file! The same as Jill's capture. While something like this was a great inclusion, I think that so much more of it could have been encorporated into the game. Or heck, even set the game somewhere else in that timeline. MacGuffin and Chris fightin' round the world!

Wesker plan
This is where The Fonz hit the apex, right above the shark's gaping maw.
So Wesker was manufactured. What of his childhood and free will? It says Wesker was responsible for the Arklay labs outbreak. But Zero wasted a whole game showing it was James Marcus? Why doesn't have have super powers until he injects Birkin's virus? Why would he be trained as a biochemist if he was to become a supersoldier?
Plot holes so big you can fit planets through them.

Controls
After playing Uncharted, the controls were just frustrating. I know they're a relic of the games past, but if the game is an action shooter, then the controls were quite inadequate. It seemed to be confused in it's genre. I really loved the tense parts early in the game, especially the Kijuju township. And the enemies there didn't really command the need for revised controls (than those in RE4).

Once the enemies get rifles, and you need to use the cover system, then I think the controls were inadequate. It just doesn't feel properly implemented. Not being able to move in cover, not being able to blind fire, when you give an item to your partner you come out of cover. Even being able to switch the camera to be over the left or right shoulder (as you can in Uncharted) would have been very helpful. Other games really blow RE5 out of the water in this department. I picture RE5 trying to catch up to all the cool kids. It's a jack-of-all-trades, master of none.


But overall, I still found the game to be fun. One of my main complaints about RE4 is the lack of enemy variety, which RE5 seemed to address. I think the game benefits from being less repetitive. The lickers were fanservice, but welcome nevertheless. As I said the tension the first time I played through the Kijiju stages is great. The bosses were quite varied, and fun to fight. On veteran they could get a bit frustrating, but only took 4 or 5 lives. No complaints about the length. 15:56'14" on my first play through.

[A-J]

@gene, about some of your wesker queries .

wesker wasn't manufacted, he was simply collected after being born naturally..

According to this plan, hundreds of children born of parents of superior intellect from all nationalities would be collected.

also, i dont think its ever mentioned that spencer wanted to turn the wesker's into an army of super soldiers. He just wants people for his vision of selected evolution. Wesker was sent to the umbrella training facility because he showed the most promise amongst the wesker children, probably because of his natural smarts.


and birkin's virus was used because it was the method with which spencer would "screen out" the wesker's. most of the wesker children died out because it didn't "click" with them, but the one's that survived and adapted probably all received wesker like super powers in return. (but in the game itself spencer mentions that out of all of them, only one survived, so there's a bit of a conflict here)

[L-e-W]

Pro's

+ Co-op is pretty entertaining, and being able to come up with strategies was helpful at times.
+Sheva's AI was tolerable, managed to save my sorry butt at some points.
+Less quick time events, and the ones that were used didn't feel TOO frustrating (save for the second part of the Wesker fight)
+Fantastic music, I loved the orchestral segments in this game.
+The game looked gorgeous
+The extra Library Files and whatnot. (Still haven't unlocked # 7 - 11 though, went through the game on normal and those are the only ones I'm missing)

Con's:

-Story felt messy. The focus on Progenitor and the Sonnentreppe flowers felt confusing, as did the whole, pointless "Project W" garbage. Uroboros wasn't given as much of an explanation or background as the other viruses in the series. Spencer's plan just felt likea rushed attempt to give some huge twist to the whole series, and I felt like the ending was just too abrupt. I didn't mind seeing Wesker get killed, but I found myself asking "That's it? They fly off, and nothing more?". For what is clearly meant to be the end of a storyline spanning almost 10 years of games and media, you'd think they would give it a bit more resolve.
All in all, the plot was a bit confusing, I'm trying to wrap my head around it.

-Bosses were usually too easy (Popokarimu, Ndesu, Irving) or just frustrating (Uroboros monsters, U-8, Excella, Wesker).

-Inventory System was too limiting. And this is coming from someone who was fine with the "10 slots or less" rule from the older games. For a game that primarily foccused on action, it just felt like the inventory system bogged things down a bit.

-The game was WAY too short, and left me feeling like they could have done more. But I suppose this was to make the co-op experience more enjoyable.

Overall, though, it was fun while it lasted, but I just feel like some thigns coudl have been handled better.

[Sina]

Plot
Really really poor. It's a shame how ridiculous it's become, after how simple it was in RE1, 2 and 3. Wesker was incredibly shallow. He seems to have given up his hatred directly aimed at Chris, and seemingly redirected it to a general disdain for humanity. Killing the world for shits and giggles... Even Saddler had a better plan.

Wuh? I thought this was the best part of the story, since it's basically explaining the reason why RE1/2/3/CV happened.

The big question has always been the motivation of Spencer and his Umbrella corp. Spencer had always been painted as a rich, twisted and evil bastard, but after Wesker's Report 2 was released it introduces the idea that Spencer was planning something very big all along with his viral research. (WR2 was released like 7 years ago btw.)

Killing the world for shits and giggles? I didn't think it was vague, but the story of what Spencer/Wesker were trying to do was pretty far from that. Their idea isn't that far fetched given the current state of the world. "War and pestilence wherever you go" Releasing a virus into the overpopulated planet that kills anyone who doesn't have perfect genes, letting only a "worthy" handful survive leaving (originally Spencer) Wesker as ruler. I think most people who look at the state of humanity and our future have thought about something like this. It's true that with our technology and medical science, natural selection doesn't really apply to humanity anymore as it did in the past, and earth is getting crowded because of it, so they're planning to enforce the ultimate form of natural selection.

I think this type of doomsday threat was a great idea for a fictional scary story, but the fact that they managed to tie it in so well with the overall story arc of the entire series is pretty amazing. Even RE4 mentioned this outcome.

Leon: "Why are you (Wesker and Krauser) trying to restore Umbrella?"
Krauser: "To bring order and balance to this insane world of ours."

Maybe I liked this direction of the RE story since I knew since playing RE1 remake that it was probably headed this way. How it was handled could've been done better, but I was mostly happy with it. My main gripe with it though is that Spencer died, since the series was always building toward a sort of ultimate confrontation with him, and just seeing his death in a flashback was kind of anti-climactic.

[Aquashark]

I just finished RE5 this morning, and I feel like I got what I expected, and had some fun.

I came in expecting very little plot, some great Wesker fight scenes, and some tense and exciting action moments.
I hoped that there would be some great revelation; some earth-shattering secret twist that would change the series as we knew it, since it had been hailed as "the end of the Umbrella chapter" of RE.

And my hope was smashed.

The series has now successfully gone through its mythology and destroyed all major antagonists. This is slightly concerning to me, as now there is very little standing between the RE series going and fighting generic "General Grande" type characters.

The characterization of characters is again becoming nearly paper-thin; the only thing that I got from Irving was that he had a rather annoying voice. He didn't even have enough screen time to make me feel anything about him as a character. It was the same for Excella... just excuses for BOWs. Just like in RE4. Is this just Capcom being lazy, or is this a sacrifice that they feel must be made now that RE is more action than survival horror?
Previously, all RE villains had a quirk - the obsessed researcher that falls prey to his own research, the mad taxidermist police chief, the trickster transvestite twin (and his coldly genius sister), the beauty-obsessed Umbrella scapegoat, and so on... our villains are losing their quirks!

The only major plot points that I gathered from this game are:

• Umbrella hierarchy was eliminated
• Project 'W' explains (haphazardly) the Wesker Virus - if Wesker was indeed the last surviving member, then Spencer's masterplan has now failed.
• There are other pharmaceutical companies out there just like Umbrella

Did any other plot holes or mysteries get tied up? They could have linked the village that Billy Coen's team slaughtered to Sheva's village, for one, with some clever timing adjustments, but no...

Everything below the spoiler cut can be taken with a grain of salt, as it is comparing RE with other media.
Spoiler:

show spoiler

I really felt that this chapter of RE deserved a sense of real closure - something that I could watch and feel very good about. Wesker's demise should have been a team effort - Jill, Barry, and Rebecca should have had a stake in it. Although the main battle has always been between Wesker and Chris, as the battle began with STARS, shouldn't it end with STARS? Having them show up for the ending would have been just for fanservice, and probably incredibly illogical, but I think it would have *felt* better (for me, at least). Watching this ending, I felt really hollow. This is not how my favorite character should have died.

I really feel that for a chapter ender, MGS4 did great things for keeping old characters in the loop and getting that sense of "series togetherness" and "closure" right. I hoped for something like this in RE5 (although not to the same "hours of cutscenes" extent).

I guess I just feel that (and I'm going to start talking about TV shows here, so watch out) RE is similar to the show "24", while MGS was similar to, say, "Lost".
With every new RE installation, the hero sets off to save the world, meeting a new cast of characters every time, missing several opportunities to link storylines together, saving the day at the end, but nothing really changes - it's sort of the same thing every time, a la Jack Bauer in "24".
MGS did some cool things with intrigue, flashbacks, conspiracy, genetic destiny, and lots of fun twists. Which is kind of like "Lost" - it has twists and turns and plot development that leads to an end.

I know for moneymaking purposes, it is better to be without an end. And if elements stay similar, less money goes into the development. It just "feels" so much better, though, when you know you're going towards something. In RE right now, I feel directionless. (On an offhand note, this is the first year I haven't watched "24", as it just started to feel too repetitive.)

However, the game is still fun, at base level. Am I perhaps asking the RE series to be more than just games, and therein encountering my fatal flaw? Hm...

[Archelon]

Gameplay:

http://www.cosplay.com/showpost.php?...&postcount=347 Part 1.

http://www.cosplay.com/showpost.php?...&postcount=348 Part 2.

http://www.cosplay.com/showpost.php?...&postcount=352 Part 3 (not originally part of the first two posts, but I had forgotten a couple things I wanted to mention, so I posted them here).

Story:

http://www.cosplay.com/showpost.php?...&postcount=394 Part 1.

http://www.cosplay.com/showpost.php?...&postcount=395 Part 2.

[Jill's Boob]

They could have linked the village that Billy Coen's team slaughtered to Sheva's village, for one, with some clever timing adjustments, but no...

That's because Billy Coen is nothing more than a one shot character with no overriding impact on the core story.

[hellrizer]

Everything was great it was more than i expected!