Resident Evil 5 is a product of its time. It is also a product of Resident Evil 4's time. The generation-defining strength of the latter pushed against the contemporary ideas of the former, creating a surplus of vaguely Resident Evil content masquerading around in 2009's milieu of cooperative action games. Depending on your expectations, Resident Evil 5 either remains a blissfully cooperative version of Resident Evil 4 or a harbinger of the monstrosity that became Resident Evil 6.
In its time, expectations could not have been higher for Resident Evil 5. Four years before its release, Resident Evil 4 defined the third-person shooter after Capcom bet Resident Evil could make as much room for action as it could survival-horror. It was the antidote to the generation’s malaise of miserable action games, inventing a new control scheme and complimenting it with a lingering, game-spanning sense of dread. While Resident Evil (and Capcom) had lost Shinji Mikami by the time Resident Evil 5 debuted in 2007, its African setting and Black Hawk Down-inspired set-pieces suggested the series was heading in an exciting new direction. Resident Evil 5 appeared to be doubling-down on Resident Evil 4’s best ideas and putting all of them in a brand new place.
The introduction of cooperative play immediately became Resident Evil 5’s most divisive feature. Series regular and newly christened BSAA agent Chris Redfield was paired with a newcomer, and a Kijuju local operative, Sheva Alomar. While the partnership only lasted one game—Sheva was never heard from again after Resident Evil 5—her inclusion set the course for the next eight years. Core Resident Evil was now a cooperative experience. If you didn’t have a friend available, a coarse and perfunctory AI companion would try to stand in for a live human being. In 2009 I played through Resident Evil 5 with one of my good friends and had a blast. Later, I mopped up trophies with an AI Sheva and was constantly irritated. Resident Evil 5, depending on how the player experienced it, could have a drastically different reception of the same content.
Forced co-op was a huge trend in 2009. Gears of War, itself citing Resident Evil 4 as a primary influence, dominated the back half of the decade. EA’s Army of Two series (a product so cynically of its time that I couldn’t remember if it actually happened) was somehow on its way to three unique entries. The viability of online console gaming and the still-fresh hardware technology demanded players connect in shared spaces. Resident Evil 5 was happy to oblige. Maybe Resident Evil didn’t have to be this way, but Capcom placed a huge bet that it was the most viable path to race the series forward. Resident Evil 2 found its identity in the zapping system. Resident Evil 3 in Jill’s relationship with its titular Nemesis. Resident Evil 5 was going to be the cooperative Resident Evil.
The execution of cooperative play included elements both expected and unpredictable. Resident Evil 5 was rife with progress gates, like doors that required two people to open or a partner to boost one player up a ladder. Pick-ups like ammunition and health-restoring green herbs now had to be shared between two people. A handful of sequences separated the players and divided their duties between shared objectives. Sequences we think of as normal in 2019 were experimental and somewhat surprising in 2009. Rationing resources between two people was intended to create levels of dread and scarcity, checking off the survival part of Resident Evil’s trademark horror.
The remainder felt like an amplified version of Resident Evil 4. Chris and Sheva poke around winding, explicitly designed outdoor and indoor environments knifing barrels and boxes in pursuit of cash and ammo. Majini, Resident Evil 5’s version of zombies, are to be shot once or twice in the knees and then stomped or roundhouse’d or super punched in order to conserve precious bullets. Las Plagas mutations complicate those actions. Screen-filling bosses push Resident Evil 5’s cheese to a maximum and its set-piece action cinema aspirations overboard. Resident Evil 5’s plays the winding Umbrella conspiracy completely straight and dives headfirst into nonsense and minutia. It stalks depth but doesn’t actually achieve it, although its finale is somewhat satisfying as a then-conclusion to a major arc of the series.
Playing Resident Evil 5 on Switch in 2019 met and defined some of my personal expectations. The first time I was introduced to Sheva, I saw her ass before I saw her face. The next time, the camera focused on her breasts before anything else. Coupled with Resident Evil 5’s latent racism and banal tone, any attempt at telling a coherent or reputable story immediately went out the window. I’m sure it’s still fun and goofy to watch a roided-out Chris repeatedly punch a very large rock but I couldn’t imagine making it that far, especially with an AI partner, without rolling my eyes out of 2019.
So I kind of wrote Resident Evil 5 off. But I kept playing because I’m reviewing a videogame and that’s what you do. Once I stopped worrying about rationing ammo for the duration of Resident Evil 5, once I made the difficulty as easy as possible, once I just bought whatever at the between-chapters shop, once I stopped giving a shit about AI Sheva burning through all of my resources and failing to heal me, I kind of had a blast! Resident Evil 5’s brand of stop ‘n pop shooting and clever level design still have enough juice to facilitate the traditional definition of a Good Time. I may not agree with all of Resident Evil 5’s choices, but the strength of its basic execution of an action game, while not as impressive as they were in 2009, are still enjoyable in 2019.
The Switch port of Resident Evil 5 retains all of the content from the original Resident Evil 5 Gold release and the 2016 Xbox One and PlayStation 4 reissues. Both the Lost in Nightmares and Desperate Escape downloadable episodes are included (and I reviewed both in two horrible pieces of writing in 2010). The competitive Mercenaries mode is also available and the split-screen option for the core game is gracefully included. Performance wise, Resident Evil 5 is a touch more blurry than I remember, but the frame-rate held up well enough. At $30, the standalone version of Resident Evil 5 is $10 more than it was at its PlayStation 4 or Xbox One debut three years ago, but it remains an absolute mountain of content.
Resident Evil 5 is a product of its time. It is also a product of Resident Evil 4’s time. The generation-defining strength of the latter pushed against the contemporary ideas of the former, creating a surplus of vaguely Resident Evil content masquerading around in 2009’s milieu of cooperative action games. Depending on your expectations, Resident Evil 5 either remains a blissfully cooperative version of Resident Evil 4 or a harbinger of the monstrosity that became Resident Evil 6.
