It DOES make all the difference.  Also, Shoe, would you say that it's not a significant difference being able to actually aim exactly where your shots are fired?  In the earlier Resident Evil games, you only had to kind of vaguely aim your character in the direction that something was and then you could either aim your gun up or down.  Having to actually make sure you're hitting what you're shooting at seems like a pretty big change to me.

Yeah, you're both right.

I guess i was just mentioning what i said as a silly Technicality.

To be honest, while I haven't seen RE5 in action outside of TV spots, considering what I was reading prior to the game's release when people where playing the demo, I think the final game has gotten off a little easy when it comes to the scores seen in reviews. I'm sure it's a good game but I think the hype has overshadowed what people will eventually think about the game in the years to come.

Probably. I've played up to chapter 2-3 with a friend, and while it's a hell of a lot of fun it just feels like RE4 all over again with co-op, different main characters and a stronger focus on action. While it's fun, the co-op is disappointingly like Gears of War (reviving your partner when they're killed with a simple touch of a button? Really?), and where RE4 kept things fresh and exciting I feel like we're just blowing shit up and trading ammo in every area without any real purpose or drive.

And then there's that first real tense area near the beginning (right after that dude gets his dome chopped off) where there's tons of Majini and we were getting absolutely slaughtered. I said, hold on, let's just see if we can survive, just like RE4, and we just ran around until the church bell... er, the helicopter came and blew a ton of shit up. And then there was that early boss battle that felt like fighting Verdugo (albeit with a different element - fire instead of ice).

I'm looking forward to playing more and finishing it up, but the excitement is mostly based on playing a very RE4-ish game with a friend - not enjoying a fresh, fun experience. Personally speaking, I won't be craving RE5 down the line like I still do with RE4 (started up my 8th playthrough yesterday). At least Sheva has a nice tush.

Ah.. La cambana..

*drops his hand-sickle to the soil*

I only recently started playing, and I'm at chapter 2-1 now, and already it's starting to annoy me.
I'm playing by myself out of principles, and it is definitely nowhere near as good as RE4.

Prime Blue over on the vgmdb forums just noticed that Capcom.co.jp has posted a Main Theme Without Vocals version song up on the website as a free download.

http://www.capcom.co.jp/bio5/ut_pjt_present.html

Special Contents: Biohazard 5 ~Theme Song~ Vocal Less Ver.

Edit: Well maybe it's nothing special afterall, previously I hadn't listened to the OST or the Selection Track so I wasn't sure if this was included elsewhere.
It sounds mostly the same as Opening -Chris's Arrival-, and oddly it still does have vocals...

I agree that the main RE5 game is not as good as RE4, but I'm having a lot of fun with Mercenaries.  Last night, I managed to crack the top 100 in the Village stage (on the PS3; 97th overall, 7th in the US).  I had 106 kills...and a 106 combo, which ended up giving me a little over 175,000 points.  I still can't imagine how some of those Japanese players manage to TRIPLE that score, though.

Dude, you're talking about people that could play through the original RE with just the knife.

I finally finished RE5 yesterday.  I think RE5 is more like a good action movie than a good game.  It's not that it's bad or anything, but it's just so uninspired.  The best parts were the non-linear part where you have the boat and the part exploring the temple and putting the gems in the idols' mouths.  If RE4 didn't exist, I'd probably like this game a lot more, but RE4 does exist, and it's better in just about every way.  I guess Capcom deserves some praise for all the effort it put into making the entire game work as co-op on or offline, but I wish more effort had been put into the level design and enemy placements.  For a game that was in development for almost four years, I expect more.  Oh well.

I think my biggest gripe about the game was it's pacing. RE4 was a very gradual affair, you start off in a village, this extends to finding a castle, from the castle, you're led to an island, where the game ends. Lots of time is spent fleshing these areas out, and they are enormous. The game felt really long because of it. RE5 just felt like such a short game that was plagued by pacing issues. Not enough time was spent in the areas that I liked.

I've stopped viewing the revised control scheme and the reworked inventory system as heavy faults. I found the new controls to be much to my liking shortly after I tried playing with RE4 style controls, and the inventory system was a necessity for making the game function as co-op (which is another matter to examine entirely). And you gotta admit, being able to switch weapons on the fly like that with the D-pad was a very welcome addition. Did anyone else find it fun to have to micromanage your inventory with limited space, like the earlier RE games were? I thought it was a pleasant throwback, even though I'd be far happier to see the return of the attache case, should they ever choose to follow that kind of game design again.

They take video games WAY too seriously in that country.

Too much of a good thing, if you ask me.

It WAS a short game, much shorter than RE4.
I didn't think it had real pacing issues personally, but the fact remains that it's just a lot shorter.

I have no beef with the control scheme either. It worked then, and it works now. What annoyed me more is that the camera is so damn close to your back that you can never see enemies coming up from behind you.

No.

That's fine if you're playing a slow-paced Survival Horror game, but it's an awfully stupid idea for a frantic action game where the action goes on whilst you have your inventory open.
Many was the time I had to heal, found a herb, couldn't pick it up, had to mess about with Sheva's inventory to create space, only to find the herb had already vanished.
FUN TIMES.

Which leads to me one of the major gripes I had with RE5: WHY CAN'T I USE AN HERB WITHOUT PUTTING IT IN MY INVENTORY FIRST!?
I'm positive some of the older games allowed you to use herbs on the fly (RE Cubed, for one, and I think RE4 as well) and the option is very sorely missed here.

Secondly: Sheva gets in the goddamned way. I couldn't tell you how many times I died or suffered severe injury just because I was trying to dodge something but couldn't move because Sheva was RIGHT behind me. Stupid b***h. Seriously, the AI has SEVERE problems.

That said, I find myself coming back for more. I've already finished the game on Easy (to get that Infinite Rocket Launcher) and Normal, and I've reached the Final Boss Fight on Veteran, and I am contemplating playing through again on Professional (the fact that infinite ammo can be carried over across different difficulty levels makes it much easier this time, contrary to RE4), but I'm definitely not looking forward to some of the later boss battles.

Maybe Capcom will fix this little oversight in next year's STARS Edition..

Just finished this. Yeah, I'm late as usual.

While I really liked it in the beginning, RE5 quickly grew stale. Like most people have pointed out, it feels like a lackluster rehash of RE4. I can't point to some really decisive fault, but at the same time, the overall impression of the game experience feels pretty bland, like it never really got off the ground.

One thing that surprised me positively was the co-op. I heard many terrible things about it, but, most of the time, I thought they pulled it off very well. I almost never had any problems with Sheva dying on me or acting too stupid or anything like that.

The story... just sucked. Even by RE standards. I can't even remember half of it, it was so stock and unengaging that I had to struggle to keep awake during the cutscenes. They didn't even try with this one. In fact, while the "story" was probably the shoddiest element, most parts of the RE5 package suffer from the same "forgettable blandness" that characterized it. Trying to think back to my gameplay experience, I hardly remember anything but the action: running around, shooting, running around, shooting... and repeat, ad nauseam. Most of the time, the story was so lukewarmly fabricated that I often found myself thinking while running and shooting through the latest shanty town/factory/laboratory/underground cave: "What was my objective? What was I supposed to do, what am I doing in this location at all?" Often, it didn't matter, you just had to run and shoot some more to make it to the next chapter. But, uh... at least the graphics were very pretty.

While RE4 was a straight-up action-game and not really "horror" in any sense, at least it managed to vary the tempo of the narrative and build up some suspense here and there. RE5 doesn't even try, its basically the same thing over and over again with not even the slightest "atmosphere" or build-up to speak of. Seriously, people calling this a "horror game" need to go and get their heads examined: its nothing of the kind. If it didn't come with the RE moniker slapped on top of it, I'd never have picked it up.

The lack of atmosphere would be excusable (not really, but let's be nice) if they had managed to trump RE4 in the action department. Then they'd have a damn fine game and could, if they were honest, argue along the lines of "OK, we know we threw the horror elements of the series overboard a long time ago, but hey, we're taking it in a new direction and going for even more intense action now!" However, as everyone and their dog has already pointed out, the action was a lot better in RE4. Not necessarily on a technical level, but it was much more carefully planned and skillfully crafted. RE4 was a dark, adrenaline-pumping ride that just kept on outdoing and one-uping itself to the very end, you remember it so vividly because the situations you found yourself in were ingeniously thought-out and put together. RE5 shares it's predecessor's greatness only in the most superficial sense: it has the same tight and responsive controls and aims to create the same kind of frantic flow, but it doesn't come anywhere near RE4 when the bottom lines are drawn. Its just much more lazily put together.

Derivative remark 1: About the alleged "racism" that caused such debate before it's release... I don't want to stick my hand in that hornet's nest, and I didn't find it more or less "racist" than other comparable games. One related thing that annoyed me, though, is how nonchalantly they handled the game's setting. We're told Sheva is a "native of Africa", but they don't narrow it down any more than that (Africa is pretty big, you know?). We don't even know where in Africa the events are supposed to be taking place, like the whole continent is basically the same... It makes one recall one of Dubya's classic "bush-isms" when he said something along the lines of "Africa is a nation that has suffered much!" (I personally told myself we were in Uganda and that the enemies we killed were the infamous Ugandan National Taskforce Against Homosexuality - made the unendurably trite story much better!) Its a shame that its handled so simplistically, it would have given the setting a lot more depth, but instead we're thrust into "generic African shanty-town set #368". But I guess it can't be helped, this fact is consistent with rest of the narrative, which seems to have been written by a 3-year-old.

Derivative remark 2: I'm not that familiar with these new-fangled consoles, but tell me, is it usual nowadays to award players trophies just for clearing a stage? I mean, aren't trophies meant as a reward for achieving something difficult or unusual in a game, not for managing to do what you were supposed to do anyway even if you just played the game casually and badly? So stupid... "Look at me, ma! I cleared stage 1-2 an they done gone gave me a trofy!" Gamers these days... *shakes walking stick*

I'm not sure on the exact regulations, but I believe devs are obligated to put a certain minimum amount of Trophies/Achievements in a game that come from just playing it normally.
In some games it's very few (Blue Dragon) and in others it's all 1000 points basically (Enchanted Arms)

My problems with RE5 are related to it's co-op play more than anything else. I disliked having someone else around and felt it distracted from the atmosphere. I never truly felt vulnerable and isolated like I did in previous RE games (4 included) with someone tailing me for most of the game. The inventory system was a mess, too. Why does body armor that I'm actively utilizing take up an inventory slot? Why does a herb take up exactly the same space as a high-powered sniper rifle?

It wasn't a terrible game, but after the masterful 4, it felt like a letdown.

Sorry to pick up on an old point but I have seen a use for those achievements that come from merely playing a game. I've seen one person hilariously called out on another board when they were bullshitting about some part of a game their achievements showed they hadn't reached yet. It was amusing.

That's what I thought I'd feel as well before I started the game. But, in my opinion, the co-op aspect turned out to be one of the game's better features, for two reasons. First off, I think they actually implemented it very smoothly (could have been a lot worse). And second, the point about "distracting from the atmosphere" is really moot, since RE5 isn't a horror game, nor has it any real "atmosphere" to speak of (most of the settings and situations are just bland) that might have been enjoyed if you only had one character. Since it was a full-out action game, I actually think the co-op setup added a lot. And poor old I, being only average when it comes to 3D action, got my ass saved by Sheva quite a few times.

Haha! You wouldn't happen to have the link on hand?