Resident Evil 5

Reviewed by Jonathan Stark (March 25, 2009)

I like games that make me think. When trying to break through a barricade of machine gunners and vicious packs of dogs, I want the answer not to be “use a better rifle” but to be something more involved. For instance, sending a partner along a catwalk to draw the gun fire while I sneak closer and blow out the fox holes with a close up grenade or two. Resident Evil 5 should’ve been littered with these kind of situations, but more often than not it opts for straight shoot outs. And they get old.

Reviewed by Gary Hartley (April 19, 2009)

It’s fine with me when the game starts to segue into cut scenes built right off the previous game’s frantic war against biological experiments gone wrong and hunting for brains, but it seems to go jarringly against what they tried to do with the last outing. For those of you out there who started the series at 4, prepare to be confused.

Reviewed by Rob Hamilton (April 17, 2009)

Upon opening one door on their way to the rendezvous point, they encounter their first Ganado.....I mean Majini (same thing, different ethnicity). After blasting it to hell, it doesn't take long for our heroes to find themselves in deep doo-doo, as they get chased around the town by a horde of Majini led by a hulking chap wielding an executioner's axe. The main goal here, at least for a first-time player, is simply to survive long enough for a scripted event to kick in, allowing you to escape unscathed. In other words, it's the early-game village scene from RE 4 with a few minor tweaks.

Reviewed by Zigfried (March 17, 2009)

Throughout the first chapter — while trying to escape an entire city that hated me, while hiding in dark corners and climbing walls to escape the bloodthirsty masses — Resident Evil 5 provided a heart-pounding, frightening, and thoroughly playable adventure with some disturbing real-world implications. I knew these people weren't evil, just sick... but I killed them anyway. I had to kill them to survive — they were bursting through ceilings, climbing through windows, hiding behind fences. By the end, I was shooting everyone on sight, and feeling pleasure. Heaven help me if there was an actual innocent soul wandering the streets.

Reviewed by Fiddlesticks (July 15, 2012)

These tone-downs in difficulty actually serves as more of a reason to keep playing than not, surprisingly, and you’ll come to find that even though the main quest in 5 isn’t long at all, there are still plenty of reasons to continue playing long after you’ve fired an RPG right into Wesker’s face . . . as he’s melting in a pool of lava . . . inside of a gigantic volcano . . . shouting at the top of his lungs, “CHRIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!”