Virus's and Parasites Oh My!!!! Make sure to use protection while playing this game.
RE4 changed all that with better views and somewhat better controls and although they changed from Virus to Parasite I still thought the monster sucked but I just had a better time than any previous RE game. It had some nice distractions to with treasure collecting and weapon upgrading that kept you coming back for more even after beating the game.
So I was only like 1/5 in RE games so I didnt have much hype over RE5. I knew it would have pretty much the same combat but didnt know much else about it.
Well I think it is the best RE game I have played to date. Im not giving it a 10 because i think the game is perfect, far from it. But I think this will be a legendary and classic game that will stand the test of time.
The story is cool and as you play through the game you learn about the immedeate storyline but you also unlock thing in this "Library" section of the menu screen and they go into great detail about the entire history of RE games and some of the specific characters and if you haven't played through all the stories that alone is a great feature.
The controls are basically the same as RE4. Over the shoulder aiming using a laser light, a knife. You do have more melee attacks than before but they are situational. You go through the entire game with a partner and you can sorta tag team people with melee attacks to.
Not only do you have an AI partner through most of the game who acts like a pack mule/auto turrent a friend can also take control of the partner and the game becomes splitscreen co-op. This alone puts RE above and beyond every previous version. You dont even have to go online to do it which is the best part. Yay for offline love. The second player uses their own profile and has to customize their own crap and unlock their own upgrades. You could buy and upgrade weapons for them but you would have to carry it into battle and then transfer it which you may or may not have room for.
You only get 9 inventory slots to hold weapons, ammo, and armor. 4 of the slots correspond to the 4 directional buttons so that you can easily swap weapons or gear in the middle of battle. But overall you will probably run around with all your weapons on one person and use the other person as a pack mule.
In RE4 there was treasure in chests and in monsters and hidden in walls and objects and you could combine them and sell them for tons of money. For some reason they took out the ability to combine treasure but there is still tons of loot to find in RE5 and its very much needed to upgrade your weapons.
When you finish a stage you get graded on your accuracy, kill count, deaths, and time for an overall rating. Your overall rating determines how many points you get. You use these points to unlock 3d models of all the monsters and people in the game, also to unlock infinite ammo for each weapon you fully upgrade(once you beat the game), and additional character costumes. Hidden through-out "most" of the stages are BSAA(the organization you now work for) emblems. This was also in RE4 and that mysterious vendor guy gave you map or something which made them show up on your radar to help you out. Well I havent gotten nothing to help find them in RE5 but some of the 3d models and costumes in the game can only be unlocked after you find a certain amount of emblems (30 in all). When you goto stage select you can see how many medals each stage has and how many you have collected. A bad thing in my opinion is that even after you shoot a medal while going through a stage it will show back up when you go through again. They should have permanently disappeared so you wouldnt have to remember if that was one you hit before or not.
Once you finish the game you also unlock this Mercenary Mode. You will eventually get to choose from like 10 characters to play as in this mode but you only start with the two main characters. Anyways you start with basic gear and you play on some of the stages you have already gone through(which have to be unlocked beyond the first one by getting high scores i think). The goal is to rack up huge points before time runs out by killing infected. killing peoeple quickly gives a combo bonus, and performing certain kills gives you bonus time. I totally suck at this mode. Maybe if I learned how to get nice time extensions and easily build up combo's I would enjoy it more but i think the mode sucks as it is right now.
If they would have removed the time limit and just made it a survival mode where you just keep fighting until you eventually die or a kill count mode where you keep going until you reach a certain number of kills and maybe get graded by how long it takes you this mini-game would have been MUCH BETTER. You can play this mini-game in splitscreen cop-op also.
There are a couple of things I wish were different. I wish the mercenary mode had been more of an endless wave of enemies mode, After you beat the game you get to play as Sheva your partner whenever you want but her over the shoulder view is to the left because she is always on the right side of the screen and aiming with her is a huge pain in the butt because Chri's huge butt is always in the way and her laser lights are screwed up and dont point in the right direction. Unlocking infinite ammo for your weapons is also incredibly tedious and by the time you do 2-3 three you will be sick to death of playing the game and not even want to use them.
Overall though this is the best time I have had with a Resident Evil game so I would have to highly recommend that if you liked RE4 then you should BUY RE5. If you didnt like the way RE4 turned out then you probably wont like RE5 either because its basically RE4 only with splitscreen co-op(also has online co-op).