BONUS LEVEL - RESIDENT EVIL 5 MENU

5 evil residents is what our landlord in birmingham had!!!

i've mentioned before in my Resident Evil 7 WYPT, but the RE series got a bit grody with 5 and 6. Now properly armed with a decent computer and terrible blogging ability, i'm accurately reporting on Resident Evil 5 and all the splubsies that come with it. The big gimmick introduced in RE5 is the co-op compatability, the campaign sees our heroes Chris and Sheva loot and shoot (and punch) their way through Unspecified African Country on a mission to combat evil nasty terrorists. These evil nasty terrorists have taken over the UAC, and are brewing bioweapons by the bucketful. This has turned near all of the inhabitants into 'Ganados' style enemies from RE4, not quite the mindless zombies of titles previous but incapable of all but simple and violent actions. These are the main enemy type faced throughout the game, notable others include what i believe is simply referred to as 'Big Man' who are, well, big men, along with returning favourites zombie dogs and lickers. Because this is Resident Evil, enemies are also liable to sprout extra appendages instead of dying respectably - normally from their face with lots of extra teeth. These are sleeper strong enemies hidden within regular ones, and it's cool, i like it. There are also some miniboss-style enemies, the Chainsaw Man makes a return from RE4 and has a ludicrously big healthbar, and the weird giant cockroach people are really annoying. AND THERE ARE CROCODILES!!! We don't stop at mini, we go more! In the next paragraph!

There are several bosses to be fightened, of varying quality. Most edge towards mildly infuriating. The worst culprits are as follows. Uroboros (1st fight i think?) drove me to near insanity, it just would not die no matter what i did. You get given a recharging flamethrower for this specific fight, and it's the only hope you have of breaking down its massive healthbar and regeneration. After spending a not insignificant amount of time wondering why it wasn't actually doing anything i was forced to take to internet forums and see whether i was doing something wrong, and found out that the flamethrower doesn't actually work if your game is running at more than 30ps. After this discovery i beat it first time. It's a shame because it's got a few cool gimmicks for a boss fight, playing around the flamethrower is cool and there are gas canisters around the arena you can tip over onto the floor and get the boss to slide over, where they become incorporated into its body and you can shoot them for big damage. The next contender for frustration is (spoilers btw) against Albert Wesker, the first time you fight him. He's redpilled to the max and matrix dodges any shots you fire at him, so your only hope to hit him is hiding around corners and blasting him in the face. On its own this gimmick isn't too bad, it switches up gameplay a bit and forces more tactical decisions, but it's complicated by the additional presence of a secondary enemy, a mind-controlled Jill Valentine. Again this isn't even a bad thing, it switches things up again but Jill's AI was so unpredictable it was hard to formulate any real plot. Sometimes she'd stick to Wesker like glue and mr president any attacks, sometimes she'd just disappear somewhere for most of the fight, and sometimes she and your partner AI would be stuck grappling each other in a corner. The 'can't shoot Wesker' gimmick works a lot better the next time you fight him, due to the absence of Jill and a better arena. This time the area is much more open, but there are floodlights you can destroy to plunge certain areas into darkness and create pockets of concealment. There's also a ROCKET LAUNCHER, if you stick Wesker with this you're free to kick him in the ribs while he recovers. It holds one rocket at a time, and there are more hidden around the arena for you to scavenge. At certain times Wesker will also grab a missile and throw it at you, and you've got a brief window to shoot it while its in his hand to get an extra chance for some rib kicking. And because it's an open arena you can see Wesker terminator running when he sees you and that's funny.

Funny, that's a good word. RE5 is a schlocky schlockfest, and it's incredibly entertaining if you're into that sort of thing, which i am. Wesker is a supremely entertaining antagonist for this purpose, his character design, animations and voice are all perfect for this. At one point during a fight he says: 'Your future HINGES upon this fight!' while kicking Chris Redfield through a door and i choose to believe that is intentional. It's like playing every single early 2000's action movie ever made, down to the setting (complete with white saviour complex!(that's right i'm WOKE cry about it)), dialogue and characters. And gameplay. That's an important bit. But it will always be funny how Chris' punches being stronger than gunfire are consistent among Resident Evil games. Speaking of Chris' punches...

If you know RE5 for anything, it might just be boulder punching. The final fight of the game takes place in an active volcano, and at one point Chris needs to bridge a gap across a river of lava. Nearby is quite a large boulder, conveniently placed near this inconvenient river. After the action prompts to push the boulder are unsuccessful, Chris resorts to his guns and punches the misbehaving boulder to create an improvised bridge. For some this may be the final straw, unable to take the game seriously, but i spit in the face of realism (this is a series where knives can stop chainsaws) and say that i love the boulder punching. It's obviously silly and campy, but that's part of the enjoyment. Well most of it actually. Even the series itself has joked about this, in RE8 Heisenberg says (referring to Chris after he blows up his factory) 'I'm going to murder that boulder-punching asshole!' Unfortunately that's the only good thing about the final fight. It's against a mutated Wesker, and in this form he loses all his matrixisms of the previous fights, and instead just walks quite slowly while flailing his mutant arms. The bossfight is a simple and quite boring sequence of walking away from Wesker and then turning to shoot him in his Weak Spot (TM), the only other attack he does is a painfully easy to dodge whirlwind of his mutant bits, and it even shifts his Weak Spot (TM) to his front to make it much easier to bring him to his knees and kick him in the ribs. It's always a shame when the final boss falls flat, but that's exactly what happens here.

Speaking of things being a letdown at the end, a conclusion. Resident Evil 5 is alright. While my personal love of campy stuff means i enjoyed my time with RE5, i can easily see how someone else would hate it, especially when compared to other titles in the Resident Evil series. It's cursed with following RE4, which outperforms it in almost every aspect. i respect the contribution it has made to the wider Resident Evil storyline and i enjoyed my time with it, but other games in the series are just quite a lot better.

7 minutes. 7 minutes is all i can spare to play with you.