This is late due to Dark Souls, Spider-Man EoT and Batman: AC. Those reviews to follow. Promise :D
I love the Resident Evil series. From it's off beat humor, to it's ridiculous but still contained story. I mean c'mon, a virus that acts like a skin disease and then, AND THEN! You turn into a zombie. Would the wonders of head and shoulders never cease. See, even the gamecube remake still had that far out style when it came to dialogue; but it had atmosphere and style. It still stayed that way for 2, 3 and even the horrendous side stories that Capcom has washed itself free of.
I'M LOOKING AT YOU RESIDENT EVIL GAIDEN!
Course, the title is a give away at how the series has never taken itself seriously. Resident Evil? There's nothing evil about what's going on, Umbrella fudged up, that's all. The zombies as well as the other creatures are animalistic, we don't yell at dogs for being hunters. My god! He's sniffing! THE EEEEEVVVVIIIILLLLL!! Yeah uh huh, no way. It states that the subjects are becoming basic and animalistic, that isn't evil. See, I always prefered the actual name, the original japanese name. It's simply: Biohazard. Yes, that's it; it refers to what is happening in the game with one word AND IT MAKES SENSE.
NOW! I'm done talking about the inital back story and why the engrish name sucks so let's move onto my favorite introduction of the series. Biohazard 4. Seee, Biohazard 2 always had a special place in my manly heart; it had a better story, better emotion and better characters than the first game. Leon and Claire had more flair and personality than Chris and Jill, which is a shame because I love Jill. Chris. . . . we'll get to him.
So I was excited to hear that Biohazard 4 would have Leon in the lead and start the mythos fresh. Which is good, because not only is Leon my favorite lead male charcter of the franchise but there's only so much Wesker Zombie bull I can stomach. maybe the rest of you can, but I have a strict diet of fresh, exciting, pony and Olivia Wilde. So when I heard they weren't zombies anymore, at least not in the flesh eating way, I was estatic. The game didn't disapoint. It had reworked mechanics, with an over the shoulder view, you can actually arm; rather than having muscle jerks that made you either aim straight up or straight down. Ah yes, the important gun training of aiming perfectly horizontal. It saved my life in the gulf.
It was this game that gave birth to games like Dead Space, course the only thing missing was the aim and move but DS did add that but this was years before. You know what though? This game after so many years still holds up. It's still fun and fresh and it doesn't take itself so seriously, with Leon bitching out a midget. It has charm and a fun rewarding upgrade system that doesn't hold you back from going balls out. It's also 15 plus hours, I know people on the leader boards have complete this game in under an hour, but seriously; there are only so many ways people can snap.
It's voice acting is good and tight, playing a long with the charm. It's a cheesy b movie and that's how Biohazard started, that's it's roots. It's cheesy but that's it's charm. It's light hearted which is great contrast to everything happening around you. It's gross and creepy, there are hardly pop out scares; it's more so about atmosphere and how unnatural everything is. The 'people' are more in the sense of classic voodoo zombies, in which it was either normal people or corpses brought to life through magic as loyal servants. It's so out of place, that it's effective. Then to lighten the mood, the characters say something eye rolling cheesy and that's great. It shows that this game has confidence. I have to give props to Shinji Mikami, he's looking to make a game that follows the route of entertaining rather than being a drab course of repetitivness that most games fall into. It's entertaining from beginning to end, the mechanics are still solid to this day and prove to still rival most third person shooters. Course, they don't have a cover system mechanic which is godly because most third person shooters turn into a Gears rip off unless they put more focus on something other than that (l <3 You Uncharted).
Biohazad 4 is straight up fun and it deserves every penny, it's still stands true to today and brought a fresh spin on the long lasting horror survival series that was solely needed. It brought in characters easily memorable, From Leon and Ada, to Luis and even Ashley who wasn;t as annoying as I remember. It's cheesy charm shall stand the test of time.
Biohzard 4 gets 10 right hands coming off out of 10.
Now for Biohazard 5 take everything from 4, downgrade the upgrade system, add a broken AI companion, faster mechanics that don't really help, a cover system because the t-plagas have guns in the last half and add a lame symbalistic story about partners and try to keep a serious face when it boils down to "I need to help my partner. . . . .as opposed to the rest of Africa." Seriously, that's the vibe I got. Fuck the world as long as I got a hot sidekick. Our protagonist ladies and gentlemen! Remember when I said we'd get to Chris? Well, bust out the steroids and settle down children cause here he is. A bland, single focused excuse for a character. He had more personality in RE 1 UND Code Veronica, but here? they try to set up this survivors guilt story that doesn' go anywhere. Tied to his partner Sheva, NOW she has no story to follow so she's bareble. Too bad her AI is shit, I want ammo? Nope, she steals it from me. I want those healing Herbs? Nope, she five fingered discount those mo fo's. Capcom claimed non racism BUT Sheva is stealing everything from me, the eff Capcom?! Let's not even get started on the spear throwing tribesmen that show up later.
Like I stated, everything here is a watered down version of Biohazard 4. The mechnics are the same, they just smooth out the movement. You can;t aim and shoot and Dead Space was released a YEAR EARLIER! I would forgive it if it was before DS but noooooooo, a year later we get Biohazard 4.1. We even get a cover mechanic because Capcom thought it would be best to try and make the series a Gears rip off, with the 'zombies' picking up ak-47's and shooting at you. I wanted puzzles, yes 4 boosted a lot of action but there were a lot of slow down times where you had to solve puzzles, back track and solve more puzzles then clear a room like a boss. Here, it's just press A to shoot and barrel roll through that wall to advance. The mechanics are polished but not upgraded, the inventory is 9 squares that you can't expand. You're stuck with the same 9 squares and they fill up quite quickly. And unlike 4, the body armor you unlock later take up a space of you inventory. WHAT?! That shouldn't happen, like at all.
The story tries too hard to take itself seriously, the characters are bland and have no clear motives. I know Wesker was obssessed with beating Death but he never had world domination motives. Chris is only there for Jill and Sheva keeps repeating "We're partners" like she has verbal diarreha. They tried to copy the film franchise and they failed. The 3DS game, Revelations, is going back to horror survival and that's what the series is. 4 brought in more action but you still had to react to survive. 5 was just straight up action, even the El Gigante makes an apperence in 5 but all you do is hide in a humvee and shoot your mini guns at it's dick. No flipping around, stunning it and then climbing up on it to show who's the boss. All the intrigue is gone, all the puzzles are gone; in favor for a straight up action game. Even Chris went from normal looking to Gears looking.
Biohazard 5 gets 1 racial image out of 10.
Shinji Mikami left Capcom shortly after completeing 4, so I don;t expect a very good sequel to 4 for a very long time. Revelations looks promising but it was made by the same team responsable for 5 so we'll see.
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