Resident Evil 5 Demo Downloaded by Everybody. Controls Still Suck.

You play a tight shirt wearing, muscle bound special forces trained manly man who is angry at God for creating black people. You will fight a ridiculously huge squid monster, a Sackboy with a chainsaw, and in the process you will pick up a hot multicultural girlfriend who will fight beside you and always find a way to get surrounded by zombies. This is Resident Evil 5, hyped by many, hated by some. In the new generation of consoles, Resident Evil feels outdated; the game may look very shiny, but it controls like shit. When asked about the controls, Resident Evil 5′s producer Jun Takeuchi said;

I can’t really say that it is important for a Resident Evil game that you have that restriction on the player. What I can say is that it was important for the game that we were trying to make in Resident Evil 5 to place the player in that situation of fear, and to have them feel the tension of not being able to move as freely. That was certainly an important part of the game design and the feeling that we were trying to create in the game.

The whole argument for this game having complicated control scheme makes no sense. One of the scariest moments in video game history was the dogs jumping through the window in the original Resident Evil. This had nothing to do with the controls, it was scary because of the placement of the camera and the setting, which is key to any survival horror game. A game can have generic controls and still scare the crap out of you; Left 4 Dead has the most basic controls, and I still get chills when I hear a witch nearby.

Resident Evil 5 should not have to create tension artificially by restricting your movements, specially when Dead Space and Fatal Frame create the same type of atmosphere with better controls, it does not reach the standards that has been set for the Survival Horror genre. This game tries to be realistic, which is great in theory, but does not make a game enjoyable. Because in reality, zombies (or infected multicultural individuals) would not slowly walk towards me and suddenly burst into a run when I try to walk away. In reality, I would not need to carefully aim my gun when the zombies are five feet away from me, I would blindly shoot and hope for the best.

I realize that not every First Person Shooter should be like Call of Duty, and every Third Person Action game should not be like Gears of War. Every game should try to be a unique experience, it should not feel like a chore instead of being fun. Tell me Capcom, why should I have to press three buttons to turn around? Or press two buttons to equip a knife? How the hell did you run out of buttons?

After playing a portion of the demo, I was not impressed. Resident Evil 5 may be a great game for the fans of the series, but it is not interesting to newcomers. I don’t want to waste my time learning which buttons to press to move which part of my limb, and even though Co-op sounds interesting, the PlayStation Network could not connect me to another person, which I took as a sign from God and instantly deleted the demo; I enjoy Left 4 Dead more anyway.

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