Howdy folks, it’s time for another addition of Tee Time With Doctor Cyborg, in which I put someone’s critical heart surgery on hold to squeeze in a round of golf, but, while golfing, talk to you (my people) about something that I have done recently. In this case “Resident Evil 5”, the newest addition to the Resident Evil series. So pour yourselves a straight shot of Everclear (one shot of Everclear! chase by licking whatever surface you happen to be standing on. Be careful I’ve heard this can make you go blind) and come along! Fore!

Resident Evil 5 was released a few weeks ago, but I am just putting up a review now because up until now I have been busy playing it. This is actually the first game I’ve purchased that was released for the Playstation 3, and I must say I think it was worth it. Which isn’t a lie, but right out of the gates I will also say I didn’t like it as much as I liked Resident Evil 4.
Just like RE4 this is a third person shooter and just like RE4 this game has a crappy story. I don’t think the series will ever recover from moving away from classic zombies. Not that I think the story in any of the games were any good, it’s just they had a creepier feel when they were about zombies, and the games just don’t seem scary anymore without it.
What I like more then RE4 about this one is the fact that it is two player, making it easier to play over and over again, which is saying a lot because I played through RE4 five times in the first month. The problem is the Co-op play makes the game much easier, and even less scary. Not that you still can’t play it alone, it’s just it doesn’t seem as fun to play it alone because it is annoying and frustrating when the computer does silly shit with your partner and gets you killed or wastes all the good ammo, whatever, it isn’t as fun alone.
The partner recovery system is what I think I like the least about this game. How it works is every time you are in danger AKA almost dead. It sends you into partner recovery mode, where you can’t do anything except walk slowly. If your partner can’t get to you in time then you die. Although if you are standing next to each other it is pretty much impossible to die.
EAGLE!!!!!!!

So that is my biggest gripe, that it is so much harder to die, although since they did this system it seems you are more reckless and enemies do more damage, so you spend a lot more time near death then in other games.
Now I will regale you about my biggest complaint in RE4, something I call instant deaths, in which during a cut-scene they will tell you a button to press, and if you don’t press it fast enough you will automatically die. These are so fucking annoying, and they don’t add anything to the game at all. I was hoping that they saw the error in there ways with the instant deaths, but they are still in RE5 although I think they toned them down a bit from where they were, they are still slightly annoying.

On the plus side, the creatures in this game are a tad more frightening, and the game looks much better in general. Although they toned down the gore in my opinion, and they made the blood so bright that it feels faker then ever before.
Once again I want to stress the point that the story is god awful, It isn’t worth watching, and there are even some levels that add story that you can’t skip, so you are forced to mute the television at times.
One thing that got old fast about this game was the weapons. For two people and how much they expect you to play for all the additional content, some of the guns that you get are quite boring, and I wish they had a wider selection. Also just like in RE4 they should have had special upgrades for each of the weapons, which sadly in this game they do not.
On the extreme plus side there is tons of additional content. Not all of it is worth unlocking, but it’s the thought that counts. Right?
Well it turns out I like focusing on the negative aspects of a game, this review is no different. People that have read this far will say this isn’t a review but a tangent, or else it sounds like venting. I don’t care.

Therefore the thing I was let down about most recently was the unlocking of the harder difficulty, ‘Professional’.

I usually like getting good at a game and then play it on the hard setting, RE4 had a really good hard mode. RE5’s is ridiculous. Even wearing special protective clothing everything that hits you in the game is a one hit kill, and so where as that does sound more challenging, I can’t tell that anything else is different. Essentially how it works is that you stay really close to your partner and shoot things waiting for your partner to die so you can heal them immediately, if you both happen to get killed at the same time you continue, and start again from step one. With very few exceptions you do this for about 8 hours and you have then beat the game on professional. I didn’t think it was that fun, but in their defense they successfully duped me into playing through it anyway, so kudos to them.

To sum it all up. Resident Evil 5 is really fun, but lacking some of the elements from the earlier RE games that made them stand out. It’s really easy to immerse yourself into because it’s so easy to recover from mistakes. If you liked RE4 I think you will like this one, I just don’t think it is quite as good. As always the story and characters in this game are lame. Play only if you think it’s fun to kill things that resemble zombies.
3 1/2 out of five stars.

This is Doctor Cyborg signing off from the eighteenth green. I have just defeated Tiger Woods at a heated round of laser golf during a lightning storm.

I did it.