If you’re going to play Resident Evil 5 solo, I wouldn’t even bother.
With a friend, playing co-op, RE5 is a pretty good game. By yourself, it’s a chore.
There have been many times in the course of the game, playing solo, when I’ve died to yet another instant-kill attack or nigh-unstoppable enemy, thrown up my hands, said “f— it”, and turned off the console.
A big part of the problem is that the game is entirely tuned for a co-op experience, unlike Resident Evil 4, which was all about one man versus the world (and the world’s strategically placed weak points, invitingly open to a well-timed pistol shot).
Resident Evil 5 assumes you have the firepower of two people working in concert. The AI Sheva is both totally compentent and no replacement for a human.
She doesn’t adapt her tactics to the situation. She’s always either using her absolute strongest weapon or her weakest weapon, depending on what setting you have her on. When a fight would be best approached with both partners splitting up, she’s right there by your side. I get no satisfaction from saving her from a lunging monster, and feel no gratitude when she does the same.
Co-op is different. Calling out targets to your buddy is fun. Punching a zombie off of them is satisfying. Co-op is ALWAYS fun, no matter what game it is, and I can’t fault Capcom for designing the game around the experience.
Unfortunately, the much-hated inventory system is a necessary consequence of the co-op design. Two players means you can’t have one person pause to diddle with their inventory without potentially irritating the other. To that end, the briefcase system of RE4 has gone out the window in favor of the nine inventory slots per character
The problem is, the nine slots fill up too fast, and a full inventory severely hamstrings your play.
Let’s say you’re fighting a boss. You run out of ammo for your current gun. There’s a box of ammo on the ground. Oops, you can’t grab it because you picked up a grenade and it’s taking up the slot that your ammo was using. (Chris and Sheva can’t just pick ammo up off the ground and jam it into their gun, that would be too easy. It has to go in the inventory first.)
Can you give something to your partner? You call them over. Nope, they’re full too. If they’re in range, you can swap for some ammo they might have, but only if both inventories are full. If Sheva has room, you have to give her something first, THEN ask for it.
Maybe it would be better to drop something from your inventory permanantly? You don’t really need the grenades, but they might come in handy later. There’s a red herb, but no green herb to combine it with. What to do, what to do…
And this is all so you can pick bullets up off the ground and continue shooting the enormous mutated abomination that’s swiping at you with its claws or tentacles or whatever. It happens constantly, and it winds up being way more of an action-killer than actually pausing the game would have been.
The whole experience feels like “Resident Evil 4, but not quite as good.” Where’s all the cool, weird, fun touches? Where’s the gypsy merchant who was apparently gearing up for World War III? What happened to socketing treasure with gems to make them more valuable than the sum of their parts? WHere’s the crazy exclusive weapon upgrades? What about the ambient crows that mysteriously dropped treasure if you managed to shoot one? Where are the fish?
In the final estimation, it’s a pretty good game, but it’s not a great game the way Resident Evil 4 was. I’m going to finish the 15-hour story mode with my roommates, and then I doubt I’ll ever pick it up again.
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