| paleface [sys=PS3; cat=Adventure; reg=NA] |
| | | I think I played through this game at least three times from start to finish, plus I played the sort of deathmatch-vs-AI "Mercenaries" mode until I finished with the top rank with all characters in the original game, plus some more from the add-on DLC until I ran out of steam. Oh and of course I played through the two DLC add-on missions both solo and co-op.
So I liked this game quite a bit. It feels very similar to Resident Evil 4 (see entry 783), which I didn't mind, since I liked that game. The main difference with 5--aside from the sharper graphics, which are very nice, and being set in Africa--is the inclusion of co-op; in fact, if you aren't playing through the main story mode with a friend, the computer will play your partner, for a sort of AI co-op.
Co-op with a friend is fun; co-op with the computer...has its moments, I suppose, but also times of frustration when they get themselves into trouble or waste all your ammo or something; still, they were less annoying than I'd feared, and by limiting the weapons I gave them, and giving them all the health items, they sort of became my little auto-healers, which worked out all right.
The main thing lost with co-op, though, is a sense of being alone in a scary place; you've always got this other person running around beside you now, and the feel becomes much more of a regular action game, which is all right, I suppose.
The story is of course the usual bad guy trying to take over the world with zombie virus sort of thing, which is silly, but they do the best with it they can be expected to, pretty much.
It's the zombie-shooting action where the game really shines, and it does it well, again in its very limiting can't-move-while-aiming-and-shooting style. There isn't a huge variety to the zombies you face, and some of them are rather boring, like the sorta generic soldier zombies near the end that could really be regular enemies in any shooting game, but the variety of locations is decent (even if you do have to go through for instance a pretty generic lab area, and a big cargo ship at the end that is surprisingly similar to the one at the end of Grand Theft Auto IV--see entry 1222), and the bosses in particular are fairly spectacular.
There are a few bits where you stop doing the regular over-the-shoulder-third-person moving and shooting, and just have to press a button or direction to get through a scripted action sequence, Dragon's Lair style. These generally aren't all that fun, but fortunately there aren't that many of them.
So all in all, a very engaging, well-executed game. It feels like an action game much more than it does a horror/survival game, which aren't so much my things anyway, although I wouldn't have minded a bit more on the dark/creepy/suspenseful side of things, and, if you insist on pinning me down on it, I suppose I'd rather they'd focused on a single-person adventure rather than the co-op style. Still, I suppose one of the reasons I played through it multiple times was to try playing with the different characters; not only are there the two main characters, Chris and Sheva, but you also unlock different versions of them; Sheva with her bow was probably my favorite--there aren't too many games out there where you can go through an entire adventure of knocking off zombies with spectacular arcing arrow head-shots. |
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