In Resident Evil 5 (2009), the player assumes the role of Chris Redfield from Resident Evil 1 and Code:Veronica. Since Code Veronica:, he's joined a government anti-terrorist group specializing in the neutralization of biological weapons, specifically flesh-mutating zombifying viruses like the T-Virus, The G-Virus, The Progenitor Virus and The Veronica Virus. Investigating reports of Bio-terrorism in Africa, Chris has to navigate various African villages and research facilities belonging to shady omnicorporeal pharmaceutical organization Umbrella, who were last seen casuing a full-scale zombie epidemic in Raccoon City, leading to its eventual obliteration.


Resident Evil 5 is one of the flashiest, sexiest and prettiest shooters to come out in the last few years. Throw in even greater graphical potential for high-powered video cards and quad-core processors and the game looks absolutely beautiful, with superb texture rendering and character models, and amazingly realistic animation throughout, aesthetically, the game simply cannot be beat!

Resident Evil 5 is crap.

"Kill zombies, get money, buy bigger guns." is essentially the philosophy of Resident Evil 5 and it really doesn't go much further than that. Although the environments are pretty and the actual third person shooter elements are visceral and engaging, they're only really distracting momentarily. The story is lacklustre, and the boss-battles are ill-designed and over-elaborate, which is very frustrating at times. It just doesn't feel like a game, and playing through, it quickly occurred to me that unlike any other game of the series, this would be just as much fun to watch as it is to play.

Apart from the uncomfortable African Sun there is absolutely nothing here that we haven't seen in Resident Evil 4. The only difference is that this title takes itself far too seriously. There's a two-player mode which is a lot of fun though, in which the game can be played co-operatively, although unless you're playing online, the split-screen is damn annoying, as are the 4 or 5 different commands which characters can bark at each other, which grate after about 20 minutes. Lazy.

It's a very mediocre PC port. Although there's not the ridiculous problems with finding corresponding buttons in Resident Evil 5, the inventory and shop screens could really have done with an overhaul, and they didn't get it at all, making things just that little bit more irksome. The game is also quite demanding in terms of system requirements, requiring quite a powerful rig to handle in high resolution.

It's not a terrible game. It's just not particularly new or interesting. It doesn't bring much to the table, the inventory screen is awkward and clunky to use, and was my most frequent cause of death on my first playthrough, and the controls are pretty sucky overall. New additions to the storyline are really, really contrived and I really wish they hadn't bothered. Files are rarely found scattered around research facilities and the like, (a hallmark of the franchise) and when they are, they're about 32 pages long and reveal absolutely nothing. It's flattering to call this game Resident Evil 5, when Resident Evil 4.3 would have been much more appropriate. Recommended if you like Gears of War and that kind of shooter, but this is not for Resident Evil fans. Frankly, it's a bit of a slap in the face. No wonder the next Resident Evil game they're making is going to be a complete reboot...