resident evil 5 - 7/10
so much fun in co-op! so horribly racist all the time!
controversially, i think that this game is a complete riot. i had so much dumb fun with my dear friend in playing this game in a voice chat full of others, who also very much enjoyed the time. much laughter was had, many a fun memory made. however, crucially to my enjoyment, it wasn't all fun and games and laughter; no, to punctuate the stupidity, there was genuine challenge present at several points of the game, with frequent teamwork and resource sharing becoming paramount to our survival. as well as this, whilst, yes, it may be absurd to lump this into resident evil canon at large for the most part, there are genuinely cool and interesting ideas posited here. yes, of course it's stupid that umbrella just so happened to have travelled to the heart of an 'african' (more meso-american inspired?) temple to begin their experiments on the flowers, much less to have built their whole lab down there, that being the least of the absurdity, but those few excentricities only highlight the good ideas all the more. for example, i think it's a really cool idea to have the biomass required for the transformation in the fight against excella be constituent of all of the people we killed in the level getting up to her; that is such a genuinely interesting and smart spin on what had just effectively become an accepted standard in resident evil, and there are several sprinkles of that ilk.
following our playthrough, me and my friend also fawned over the early materials for this game; what it could have been, and what at a time, it was.
could have done without the racism though! dont wanna sweep that under the rug. that shit sucks ass and downright bewildered us, and outright made one of our friends watching us play, who was blind to the game, gasp in shock. at best miscalculated.
i genuinely hold the belief that if there is any resident evil game that absolutely demands a remake, it's this game getting first billing, so it can explore the original ideas that it had, now that it will be open to a larger budget and more time with a more experienced team. until then, though, i can revisit this game every now and again... and truly, i can't say i can complain. it's really quite a nice time! not the dizzying heights of 4 or 2, yes, but still quite stellar indeed.
