Resident Evil 5

RE4 was a staggering reboot for the ailing franchise; it discarded Res Evil's traditionally clunky controls and scaled back the puzzles in favour of rapid-fire action against far faster and more aggressive enemies than ever before, all wrapped up in amazingly detailed visuals. More than just being the pinnacle of the RE franchise, many people consider RE4 as being among a small handful of the best titles created for the last generation. RE5 has a handful of problems, and is nowhere near in the same league as RE4 in terms of all-time classics, but it does provide a suitably similar mix of exciting action, along with some utterly gorgeous visuals.

Two-player co-op can be played either online, over system link or split-screen. It's great to see Capcom supporting such a wide range of options for the co-op mode. While the general exploration and blasting of monsters plays out very similarly to RE4, the environments have been expanded a little, with many more split paths to give each player enough elbow room to fight. There are some great moments where one player can stun an enemy with a headshot, while the other rushes in and smashes them with a melee attack. It's even possible to link melee attacks together, so one player's punch will send an enemy stumbling back, then the other player's kick knocks them to the ground.

RE5 also adds a minor improvement to the movement controls. RE4's quasi twin-stick movement has been upgraded to today's standard twin-stick 'turning while walking' control system. For some odd reason though, turning with the right stick is disable when you're running. As you'd expect though, your feet are still nailed to the floor while shooting, to retain the usual Res Evil tension. As you've probably gathered, RE5 mirrors the gameplay of RE4 very closely, but this can be both a blessing and a curse. As in RE4 you'll spend the bulk of your time dispatching monsters and scouring the environments for ammo and treasure. You still collect treasure from corpses, cupboards, crates and by shooting it off walls. You still spend it on upgrading the same damage, reload speed and capacity characteristics of a very similar range of pistols, shotguns and machineguns. You're still forced to waste a lot of cash upgrading early weapons, only to have to sell them back for a fraction of the price when the better weapons are unlocked.

In lots of ways it's a good thing that RE5 sticks closely to RE4's brilliant template, but in other ways it's a shame it's progressed so little. A lot has happened in the games industry over the past four years and RE5 does feel dated as a result. It sure doesn't look dated, because the graphics look incredible, but it feels old. Other than the co-op mode and a couple of very minor tweaks here and there, the gameplay is identical to 2005's RE4.