Old-fashioned. Not many video games can lay claim to that – the medium has only been around for three decades or so. But Resident Evil 5 , a new, Mature-rated undead adventure from Japan, arrived with a questionable best-by date and it has not aged well in its first week of availability.
This new instalment continues a series that has sold roughly 36 million copies for Capcom, its Osaka-based developer and publisher, and spawned an army of action figures, novels and four regrettable movies starring Milla Jovovich.
The premise, which does not change much from game to game, is that a rogue pharmaceutical company has been turning its human test subjects into subhuman zombies and monsters – and your gun-toting heroes have to go in and clean up the mess.
The twist in Resident Evil 5 , for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, is that the mess is in Africa. Last year, the first trailer for the game showed its blond protagonist, Chris Redfield, wearing a uniform and confronting a mob of poor, predominantly black villagers. It earned Capcom charges of racism from some corners, but after playing through the full story (which takes 12 to 15 hours) the game turns out to be more Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom than Birth of a Nation : It can be tone deaf and cringe-worthy at times, but never maliciously so.
The subject matter gives this title's Mature rating (for ages 17 and up) real significance: Players should understand how racial stereotypes and generalizations can be (and have been) used for truly evil purposes. But Resident Evil 5 has also generated a lot of worthwhile conversations in gaming circles and, let's hope, households too, and its use of Africa as a setting lends its now-routine story of corporate malfeasance some measure of freshness. One chapter, for example, takes place at a foreign-owned oil refinery, and the lines between the companies committing the crimes and the ones financing the rescue operation become intriguingly blurred as the game goes on.
The standing issue, though, is all those clichés, from zombiefied tribal warriors with spears to the sea monsters with tentacles and glowing weak points that seem to populate every second game. In an era when many Western developers are striving for realism on every front, Capcom has stubbornly stuck to the formula: Resident Evil 5 is an old-school video game – red barrels that blow up and ammo hidden in wooden crates – and it takes its own rules seriously.
That means the combat system is largely unchanged from the last full game in the series. The third-person action, where you can see the full body of the character you are controlling, changes to a first-person view when the shooting starts. You still can't run or move while you shoot, leading to halting, often unnatural scenes, and organizing your inventory of weapons and health-restoring herbs is a central part of the experience.
The only true departure from the past comes courtesy of Redfield's always-present partner, Sheva Alomar. Sadly, the innovation is not in her depiction or any element of her character – she continues the long line of video-game heroines to be introduced with a close-up of her posterior. Instead, her presence enables the game to be played co-operatively: A friend, or stranger if you play online, can control her, and there are various puzzles that require two people, such as opening doors with dual switches. (None of the problem-solving is taxing, to say the least.)
