Resident Evil 5 (2009)

Man, I suck at this game lmao been so long since I last played. The remakes really spoiled me rotten

And now that my english is somewhat good, its feels weird to finally understand what the characters are saying.

I must say tho, starting this right after playing the remakes (RE2, 3 and 4) I never realized just how flat the guns both sound and play. Especially compared with RE4, where you feel they are powerful.

I imagine it wouldn't be all that bad had I played the OG RE4 instead...

Finished on January 2, 2020

The main story started off slow and then became really fun. Seems like it would be a great co-op game although I wonder why they didn't stay with the RE4 formula. The story was over the top and very silly, peak 2000's with the visuals being grey and washed-out greens.

The one con are the Wesker fights are god awful, too many QTE's!

The DLC was overall pretty poor. Lost in Nightmares was dull and dragged on. Desperate Escape was more fun but overall silly. Didn't bother to do too much Mercenaries. Enjoyed my time with it and moving on.

Beat on Veteran with an overall "A" rating. I usually got "S" rating on accuracy (except when they gave me an infinite ammo weapon) and enemies killed. Got "C" for time every level, except for the driving turret sequence, and deaths varied greatly. I mostly died from failing quick times events.

I immediately found the controls of this game to be less obnoxious than 4 due to the simple addition of strafing. I did not like how this game throws you almost immediately into the fire with a huge fight that is very stacked against you. I used the knife as much as possible early on. I also did the quick time melee attacks, but I found I mostly missed them because I was spamming the knife and was not prepared to press x. Just like in 4 I found it extremely obnoxious to not be able to move with the knife at ready, though at least having Sheva to help and stun enemies made it far less risky to go melee.

After I found the first shotgun and mp5 I sold my pistol and gave Sheva all pistol ammo. I fully upgraded the damage on those 2 weapons and upgraded capacity when they were out. The game became much better when I discovered you could restart after any checkpoint to adjust inventory and upgrade weapons; I especially liked the reserve inventory stash. Sheva’s pistol got a few capacity upgrades, but I never improved her damage or got her a new weapon. There were some VERY tight situations where I honestly did not believe I would make it through due to lack of ammo. I used the hunting rifle but did not upgrade it because I knew I did not want to keep it. Fully upgraded damage on the dragunov and loved that gun. I also fully upgraded the damage on the revolver magnum. I bought quite a few first aid sprays and let Sheva handle all of the healing.

I loved the shock baton and bought that as soon as I seen it. I probably used it a bit too much because there were times where I just ran into melee with multiple enemies and ended up taking quite a bit of damage. I did not like the hard bullet sponge enemies that could easily kill me: especially the chainsaw and insect enemies with their one hit kills. I hated the quick time events but I will admit that this game does them better than most. Some of the quick time events add to the tension but I feel there should have been a dedicated dodge button instead. The good ones were built into boss fights and I especially liked the ones where you use turrets to kill the boss and use the quick time event to avoid damage when you otherwise would not be able to dodge (and most games force you to get off the turret in order to have a hope at avoiding damage).

I overall greatly enjoyed the game and was impressed with the variety of game mechanics at play during some of the boss fights. I did do quite a bit of swearing at Sheva for being retarded, but overall not too bad. One of the most annoying parts of the game (other than QTEs) was the fight where I had to hide for 7 minutes, and Sheva kept trying to run out of the room, so I had to keep telling her to come here. I had to use the magnum a bit where they had to separate on a lift and a bunch of lickers come out; I first sent Sheva up there but that was a bad idea so I went up. I also struggled with the last battle before the final boss; wow way to take out all the stops game. Had to break out the grenade launcher for the first time and use a lot of the ammo I had been hoarding for it. I found the part where you are on a spinning platform to be incredibly difficult; aiming in this game is hard enough when you are standing still! I also found 2 of the bosses (including the final boss) to be very annoying because they seem to be designed for coop and not an AI partner. I did play one round of mercenaries but that is not very interesting.

I did not buy the expansion stories.