Well, a quick interim review on Resident Evil 5 is in order:

In my case, this was probably one of the most anticipated games, that I had been waiting for. So having actually pre-ordered the game, and having played it for a few sessions now, I ll put my thoughts on the subject together.

Overall rating: 3/5

While the play-action and the choice of weaponry is excellent, the game is missing a couple of key elements: humour, and visual contrast. The lack of visual contrast is something that I have especially noticed on the X-Box, and I wonder if it has to do with the rendering engine. But the basic issue is one in which a number of nice and vivid colours make up a composition, and where the value of the colours are very close together, making it hard to distinguish shapes. From an arts point of view, in terms of realistic painting, the value error is a basic and fundamental mistake. However, let’s not be too hard on the game’s creators, and learning to apply realistic value is also probably the hardest aspect of painting.

On the humour end, we are missing the type of humour that in Res Evil 4 was injected by the likes of Ashley and the Trader (“Stranger, stranger, not that’s a weapon…” as he used to say). I m afraid Resident Evil 5 is, in contrast quite a cut-and-dry affair of mechanical fine-control involving a controller-pad.

There are also few save points, which is quite a disappointment, when one is short on time, or prefers to put in shorter gaming sessions.

On the plus side, the choice of weaponry is very good. The characters are well-designed, and especially the Zombies are very convincing. Both of the main protagonists come with the usual CG amenities, which in the case of Chris translates into large muscled arms, and in the case Sheva into the well defined CG bum, that was first made famous by Lara Croft.