To put it simply Resident Evil 5 is Resident Evil 4, plus...or lite depending on perspective. This is by no means a bad thing, RE4 was hailed back in the day, won numerous awards and was a fanbase-shattering game, taking away horror and focusing on the action. An over the shoulder camera replaced the traditional camera angles making it easier to see what the hell you were doing, the knife was functioned on a button for quick use and in combat you could now aim your weapons instead of firing blankly at enemies, crazy I know. Zombies where replaced by parasite infested humans that could use weapons, organise attacks and swear at you in Spanish.
Resident Evil 5 keeps all this, well aside from the Spanish that’s now Swahili, but adds Sheva. That’s right not content in the failure that was RE0 they’re doing another co-op game. This does add a whole new realm of co-op play online so if you’re having a problem with a level call up one of your friends and you can get some much needed help because you’re not going to get a lot from the AI. While better than most AIs Sheva still manages to annoy with wasting ammo, getting killed and her ability to waste your health items. At first you won’t notice it but after the first chapter when you’re running low on handgun ammo and Sheva has a mini-gun with over 100 ammo yet still insists on using a handgun to fight off a man twice her size swinging an axe you have to wonder. Also never, ever give her a grenade she seems to think they’re fashion accessories and will never use them. That said she does follow you pretty closely, helps you out when you need it and will allow you to pick up items first meaning you won’t curse her too much during play as she’ll be the one propping you up for the 10th time you’ve been “dying”.
 Another one bites the dust
Making full use of the double-team method Chris and Sheva can help each other out and perform many special actions that almost always require you to split up by Chris throwing her up ladders, throwing her across gaps and throwing switches. If you get grabbed by an enemy you can attempt to shake it off or stand their screaming for Sheva to help you out, a roundhouse kick later and you’re free to keep shooting. Almost dead? Can barely move? Scream out her name and she’ll come running to inject your with something and you’ll be able to keep on going making your health seem almost infinite provided Sheva can get to you in time, this works both ways of course and she’s not built like a tank so will need some looking after. Most of the time she’ll manage to say alive but against the tougher enemies she won’t have a chance and there are times you wish you tell her to hide in a corner so you can handle the tougher guys. In fact most of the problems with the AI come from the lack of commands a simple wait or hold ground command would have done a lot. As it stands you’ve got attack (run at enemies using your most powerful weapon) or cover (stand behind you, fire less and only use the pistol).
More variation from RE4 comes in the form of the inventory and upgrading system. Each character has a total of nine slots and no weapon takes up more than one slot (meaning you could carry a magnum, shotgun, grenade launcher, AK-47 and have room for some ammo if you really wish) instead of carrying around a large briefcase and carefully arranging your equipment. I think it works better and you can trade with your teammate quite simply making Sheva into a nice pack-mule for items you might need later but can’t be bothered to carry, think of it as revenge of men carrying the shopping all of the time.
The merchant character has been completely dropped and instead you’ll have the chance to upgrade your weapons, buy items and remove items and put it in a separate cache when you don’t need it anymore but don’t wont to sell it. You get to do this whenever you start a new section of a chapter or when you die, in a patronising tone the game is basically saying maybe you could complete the level if you had better equipment, maybe it’ll make up for the fact you suck. You make money by ransacking the local villages and stealing their treasures, what makes this worse is that there is a sub-plot about Americans coming in a exploiting these people and taking everything of value while you’re stealing their priceless artefacts to buy weapons to shot them in the head.
The storyline is better than RE4’s save the Princess, erm, President’s daughter story and they seem to have had somebody pay attention to script making it a lot more bearable and surprisingly the voices aren’t too bad however it’s still a RE game so you’re bound to get some laughs out of it.
All in all if you liked RE4 you’re almost sure to like this game, if you didn’t you probably won’t. The game tries quite hard to give you a whole new game by adding in co-op but it’s more of the same just giving you less health and a recovery system that allows you to keep playing (at least in earlier sections) without ever worrying about health items provided Sheva’s near. The game is hardly ground-breaking but it a very good play for those that are fed up with fighting Russians, locusts and ghosts.
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