Resident Evil 5 – PlayStation 3 demo review

Resident Evil……..5… That familiar opening quickly reminded me the very first Resident Evil or Bio Hazard. After waiting for a week after the Xbox 360 users got their hands on the demo, we PS3 users finally got to try out this long awaited and hyped up survival horror game which is scheduled to be released on March 13th for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

I got a chance to play one of the two levels included in the demo, Shanty Town (the other one is Public Assembly) and I’m sure we have seen a lot of trailers from these two levels from GameTrailers.com. This level is pretty simple, you explore buildings along the way and you don’t have to wait long before you encounter your very first zombie from RE5, or rather a group of zombies. Just like Resident Evil 4, you play this game through a locked third person view, meaning you cannot rotate and see your face. One thing I really need to get used to and I really dislike is the fact that you cannot move while you are in the middle of a gun fight. I know the developers have made the zombies move really slow to compensate for that but this really makes the game unrealistic. If the style is more towards the Dead Space style then I think this game is perfect, even if that means they have to reprogram the AIs to move in a more realistic way.

That is pretty much my only rant for this game. The characters, the zombies, the buildings (both inside and out) and the lighting are very detailed. The game runs on 720p max for those wondering if it will run on full 1080p HD.

Now for the game play, again beside the controls, I really love the online/offline co-op features. Even the demo offers the Shanty Town online co-op or split screen on a single PS3. After dying from the infamous chainsaw dude’s bloody chainsaw I decided to try out the online co-op. The experience was simply different, in a VERY positive way. Although my human partner could have been a little smarter when I kept on requesting for the rifle ammo which he doesn’t need at all and he kept on giving me handgun ammo. The fact that you can give your inventory to your co-op partner as well as using healing item on each other makes the game even more enjoyable because now the two are really playing as a team. So finally he figured out I needed RIFLE ammo and we proceeded to fight the chainsaw dude, I knew without the rifle ammos we pretty much wouldn’t stand a chance. In the end, the rifle ammo saved the day and chainsaw dude was no more.

Resident Evil 5 is definitely a must-buy for those hardcore survival horror fans, the online and offline co-op features make this game worth the 59.99 we will be paying for. But given Killzone 2 is coming out 2 weeks before Resident Evil 5, I think I might have to pass for now, at least until the end of this year or unless Killzone 2 turns out to be a disaster which I highly doubt. This shouldn’t be a problem for Xbox 360 users though unless they happen to have the PS3 as well!