Resident Evil 5 is without doubt, one of the most anticipated titles of 2009. Developers/publishers Capcom first announced RE5 on July 20, 2005 at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), not long after the release of critically acclaimed and commercially successful Resident Evil 4. RE4 is considered by many as the best Resident Evil title ever made (and one of the greatest GameCube titles of all time), and as a result, a tremendous amount of hype continues to be built up for the launch of RE5, with the game due sometime early next month (March 5, in Japan, March 13 in the US, so we can expect it around that time in India).
Evolution
Resident Evil debuted on the Sony Playstation in 1996. Saying that it invented the 3D zombie-shooter genre would be giving it credit that should rightfully be reserved for Infogrames’ Alone in the Dark series. Come to think of it, RE and AiTD have a lot in common, both thematically and from a gameplay perspective. The first Resident Evil was a critical and commercial success, resulting in 13 games being produced and released on mainstream consoles and some six-odd games on portable formats. Most of the RE games have been successful commercially as well as critically. Japanese developers/publishers Capcom have always ensured that all RE games are launched first on Japanese consoles from the likes of Sega, Nintendo and Sony, but this time around, Microsoft seems to have hijacked RE5 from the Japanese. In fact, RE5 will be the first Resident Evil game to appear on an Xbox console.
Zombies!
The Resident Evil series has always been synonymous with zombies, or more particularly, gunning down, or getting killed by, slow moving zombies. The website gamevideos.com has a fantastic montage showing the evolution of the game’s main enemies, from the first RE, which came out on the Playstation in 1996, to the controversial black African zombies in the latest iteration. A few things have remained constant, however, and that’s the fact that they’re slow, menacing, and will attack you in hordes. Scarcity of ammunition and overwhelming zombie presence will also remain a fixture. Developers Capcom have assured us that the AI in RE5 will be next-gen, but then again, have you ever heard of an “intelligent” zombie? Didn’t think so — but intelligent Zombie AI is not about outwitting the crap out of a player, it is more on the lines of not running into a wall or yelling differently when being shot in different places and picking up weapons from the game’s environment with the sole purpose of hacking away the player’s limbs.
A passive medium
For some reason, film producers reckoned that audiences would enjoy a small group of people shooting the crap out of slow-moving zombies. And boy, did they reckon right! The Resident Evil series has also been adapted into officially licensed films — three of them live-action, two of them CG/animated, with one live-action film (yet to be announced) possibly in the works. There have been several novels based on the RE/Biohazard (the series' name in Japan) as well. Most notably by author S D Perry.
The existing live-action films have been written and directed by Paul W S Anderson, who is famous for adapting video games into films and for scenes involving gratuitous violence. He has made films based on video games like Mortal Kombat, Dead or Alive and Aliens vs. Predator (though originally a film franchise), as well as Laurence Fishburne starrer Event Horizon, and more recently, Death Race. Apparently George Romero (of Dawn of the Dead fame) was hired to pen the script for the original film, but his script was rejected because it strayed from the themes and story of the video game series, and the producers eventually went with Anderson's for his past experience in adapting video games into films. The films have been commercially successful, and have also received the stamp of approval from film critics as well as fans of the video game franchise.
Controversy
The release of RE5 has been marred by controversy — of racism in particular. The first videos of the game showed a white protagonist shooting his way through dozens of black zombies in an African village. Subsequent game footage has shown that players can step into the shoes of Sheva Alomar, an African agent who helps the game’s main protagonist, Chris Redfield. Concerns over the game’s “racism” have since died down, but I suppose they were preposterous in the first place. I mean, wouldn’t you expect to be shooting at Arab enemies in Call of Duty 4, or at North Korean soldiers in Crysis?! C’mon! It’s about the degree of believability that game developers want to add to a game’s setting. I don’t see why art needs to be defended.
Moving on now to a different kind of controversy — the Resident Evil 5 demo. The Internet is full of articles by games journalists and independent bloggers about how rubbish the game’s demo is. I’ve personally not had the opportunity to play it, but a lot of people are quite upset with it.
A friend of mine who has played it on the 360 even described it as “the worst demo I’ve ever played”. It apparently has a very steep learning curve, showcases none of the game’s key features, and if you were to die, you’d have to run through all the menus, cutscenes and even the tutorial before you can start playing it again. And of course, the biggest complaint was the fact that you couldn’t shoot when you were walking back.
The Internet is cruel, indeed, because this kind of negative publicity is not required so close to the game’s release. Hopefully Capcom will sort out the issues in the final release, even if sales might not be adversely affected because of the virtual “masterpiece” status of Resident Evil 4.
— videep@gmail.com