T w e n t y S i d e d
Last week Chris and I began our Co-op trip through Resident Evil 5. It went about as well as you’d expect…
And now our drinking game begins to take shape. Take a drink whenever…
- Sheva enters the frame via a Miranda shot.
- Anytime Chris or Sheva say “partners” to each other.
- Every time Chris impotently points his gun at a dangerous suspect while they do as they please.
Actually, I’d like to amend #3, since it’s kind of ambiguous. As stated, this just results in a single drink in every cutscene with a bad guy. But the point of this rule is to draw attention to how powerless he is, and how all of his enemies seem to be aware that he’s never going to shoot them. So let’s change #3 to “drink every time Chris asks a question that is ignored or mocked by the suspect.”
Just a reminder that these drinking games are designed to kill the viewer.
Now let’s talk about this gameplay…
We found the shotgun and Chris asked me if I wanted it. I thought this was a choice given to us by the game designer, allowing us to choose what weapons are the most fun or useful in our playstyle. But no, the game designer was essentially saying:
“Do you want to play the game as I intended, or do you want to play it wrong?”
Apparently the designer thinks that Chris should get the manly shotgun and little Sheva should get the SMG. I didn’t get that memo, and so I took the shotgun for myself.
At several points in the level, there are areas that only Sheva can reach. Chris lifts her up, and she then reaches some high ground where she can collect some key items or cover Chris while he does something. And these Sheva-only areas always had SMG and rifle ammo. Meanwhile, Chris would take the low road and find shotgun ammo.
Now, during these streams I made a lot of jokes about stealing all the bullets and items for myself. (I make the same kind of jokes with Paul when we play Deep Rock Galactic. And I made the same jokes 10 years ago in Left 4 Dead. I don’t know. I guess I just love the joke of “Ha ha I’m a selfish and unhelpful teammate except of course I’m not really but maybe I am secretly you’ll never know.”) But in reality, I actually do want my teammate to have the stuff they need so they can continue to carry me.
So this turns into an enormous pain in the ass. I can’t just pitch the bullets off the roof for Chris to grab. And I can’t carry his bullets because everyone’s inventory is ALWAYS FULL. So if I wanted to give him SMG bullets that only I can reach, then I need to:
- Climb down from where I am.
- Trade my stack of shotgun shells for his stack of SMG bullets.
- Get him to boost me back up to the high ground.
- Pick up the bullets, which will now stack with the bullets I’m carrying.
- Climb back down to Chris.
- Swap bullets with him again to get my shotgun shells back.
So then I got up to the roof and I found three boxes of SMG bullets and a box of rifle bullets. Meanwhile, he found some shotgun shells on the ground. I realized it was going to take multiple trips up and down to sort out this inventory nonsense. And then once we were done, I learned that the shotgun bullets he’d found had vanished because they sat on the ground too long and eventually disappeared like Pac-Man fruit.
Now, I realize that seeing me react poorly to this game is a big part of why people watch. But this is one point where I wasn’t performatively outraged, I was actually, genuinely annoyed and pissed off. This inventory sorting is a huge killjoy. But hey, “immersion”, right? The game is all about making hard choices and balancing your need for healing and your need for ammo? That’s the “survival” part of the game, right? It’s like a simulation!
But no! Fuck you and your immersion. Bullets evaporate because I say so!
The shotgun was the one thing I had going for me. Knocking dudes down with that big boom was my one source of joy, and the game worked so hard to make everything a tedious pain in the ass to punish me for having that little bit of fun. And then after our big bullet-switch-o-rama I discovered that the game had poofed shotgun shells out of existence, and I was just done with this obnoxious game designer and his ridiculous griefing engine. I was now out of the ammo I’d sacrificed so much time to acquire. I was being punished for wanting a weapon that it wasn’t even letting me use!
Everyone loved the briefcase in Resident Evil 4, so for the sequel they replaced it with something that was more cumbersome, less fun, and made even less sense. This 3×3 inventory grid is the interface equivalent of a rock in your shoe: It’s constantly annoying, even when it’s not actively hurting you.
Anyway. I don’t know what we’re going to do. Maybe I’ll relent and let Chris have the goddamn shotgun like the designer clearly intends, or maybe I’ll fight the game designer all the way, trying to have my fun where I can get it. Tune to the Twitch channel in tonight at 7pm Eastern time to see how it goes. I hope to see you there!
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I caught a little of last week’s stream. Don’t think I’ll be tuning in tonight. It’s not you guys though. It’s the game. I’ve never had much interest in the Resident Evil series and it doesn’t look like RE V will be the game to change that. So far it seems drab, dull, and ever so brown. The levels aren’t interesting to look at and for an action game there seems to be an awful lot of non-action. As a player of games myself, I understand Chris’s compulsive need to smash barrels, but, as a viewer, barrel-smashing is way, way down the list of things I want to see.
Unfortunately it’s also kind of a necessity for a clean save, otherwise you really will be running out of ammunition quickly. It’s also a matter of finding money and treasures in order to upgrade your weapons so you continue to use less ammunition as you progress through. I understand it’s not the most exciting content, but at the very least I’ll see if we can get more banter or something going, or to use that slow time to try and talk design stuff so it can be more entertaining.
That said, I also understand if the base game being of no interest is still enough to warrant a skip. No harm done in that regard. Glad you checked in for as long as you did!
Yeah. What makes a game with resource scarcity tense to play tends to also make it boring to watch.
But why is barrel-smashing part of RE5? I don’t recall that being present in other titles. There was the odd destructible, sure, but mostly as part of puzzles.
It was a huge thing in RE4. Money, herbs, bullets, eggs, snakes… barrels have it all, man.
I’m still disappointed that we never met the Ganado who was packing snakes into boxes. I bet he has an interesting story.
It’ll make sense when we take on the giant gorilla.
What you’re doing is no different than what I do when I play RPGs. I don’t blame you for doing it. As I said, it’s the game. Horror isn’t my genre and Resident Evil isn’t my series.
I will note, however, that Resident Evil V, or at least the parts of it that I saw, does not appear to be even slightly scary. Sure, the enemies have tentacles for heads sometimes and, sure, there was some sort of oozing worm-monster. But, what can I say, I felt nothing. Call it a failure of presentation. Occasionally monstrous enemies aside, Resident Evil V looks like just another third person shooter from the Brown Ages.
The Resident Evil games aren’t really horror, despite the fact that sometimes they’re promoted as such. Early entries (and remakes) qualify as B-horror, which likens them to old creature features, and while generally referred to as “survival horror” they stray more on the “survival” part of it. The 4-6 entries in the series are largely action focused, with 5 and 6 in particular being more action schlock than anything else, though they still retain some survival elements (mostly based on their deliberately obtuse control scheme and inventory management).
In short, if you’re avoiding this series because you don’t happen to like the gameplay, then that’s reasonable, but if you do it because you don’t like horror, that’s not something you’re going to find here anyway.
How to put this?
On the one hand, I don’t enjoy horror games. On the other hand, I don’t respect games that aim for horror and miss.
If you’re claiming that Resident Evil 5 isn’t horror and was never meant to be horror, then, well, I’m not going to argue with you. But it is nevertheless chock-full of horror tropes, and the fact that it uses those tropes to no particular effect confounds me. If zombies in your game are going to look, move, and arm themselves like people, then what’s the point of making them zombies rather than people? I suppose that the notional presence of horror does allow for a certain amount of creativity when it comes to set-pieces and bosses, but apart from the worm-monster that wasn’t really evident in the footage that I saw. The impression that I get is that the horror tropes are vestigial, holdovers from earlier games in the series, and I can’t help but find them underwhelming.
Well, I mean, yeah, that is exactly the case. Which is why they abandoned this direction after 6. I’m not excusing it, I’m just commenting that horror isn’t something you’d find here.
I love horror, and I’d agree with this criticism. I feel sorta the same way about wasting monsters as you, but maybe from a different angle*. I feel like RE5 wastes these “zombies” not by making them too human, but by not doing anything with the idea of a too-human “zombie”.
RE4 used this type of enemy to different, better effect. Their inhuman-ness was revealed in gradual stages that made it more about the body horror of the parasite, and the psychological horror of the idea that the infected were still the same people as they had been before: the parasite had warped their personalities to make them angry and violent rather than just wiping or replacing the brain.
In RE5 though there’s no development or buildup. No showing or telling. They’re just tool-using zombies with no deeper thought or purpose behind their implementation. Exactly as conceptually flat as the zombies of a Call of Duty spinoff, only with even less cosmetic zombie horror, as you note. There was some conversation in the later part of the stream about this: how RE5 is just replaying what it thinks were the bullet points of RE4 without context or understanding.
RE7 remembered though! The Baker house isn’t just reminiscent of the village from RE4: the Baker clan has their living minds warped by the mold in a way that’s extremely reminiscent of what RE4 implies happened to the ganados (even though the nature of the infection is completely different). RE7 shows what feels like a fleshed-out, close-up version of the story told by the end credits illustrations in RE4.
*I do get where you’re coming from though. I feel the same way about things like vampires that don’t actually need to drink human blood to live, or the whole “space is an ocean” trope in general. Why even bother with such elements if you’re just going to remove the very things that make them usefully distinct?
I think part of the issue is how horror is classified, period. How many films classified as horror feel more like a Fictional Snuff film, otherwise known as Torture Porn? How many slashers are focused on gory kills rather than sheer terror? It’s a weird genre and I think what classifies as horrifying is different for every person. I’ve stated my favorite horror films are the original Alien and The Thing, but I’m not sure I have ever felt scared watching either one. Films that are able to effectively get in my head and disturb me or cause me genuine unease tend to be films I avoid because I don’t want those feelings.
It’s somewhat of an amusement park “do you like roller coasters?” thing, and for each person, it will be different. I think the only time I’ve truly felt something is appropriately horror was when I would read some Lovecraft, where it would be broad daylight in a well lit room and yet I’m suddenly feeling as if something about the world is off. There are also select moments from games that have achieved this, though the spell is immediately broken upon death or upon seeing the monster. Resident Evil Village has the notorious Beneviento House which accomplished this greatly, and admittedly, despite knowing the secret to the magician’s trick in so many ways, it still makes me nervous.
On the whole, though, I’d say my preference is for action-horror, with the emphasis on action, which is where I would classify both Resident Evil and Dead Space. This can be to the franchise detriment (see not only RE5 and 6, but the closing portion of RE7 which is just… kind of tedious), but overall is what allows me to find satisfaction when done right.
With RE5, it’s effectively where all not-torture-porn horror had gone in that era, where it was basically an action movie with body horror that you didn’t have time to think enough about to be disturbed by because spectacle is happening. If you’re willing to accept it for what it is, you can have fun, and it’s why I’ve probably played this game with friends more often than I’ve played other Resident Evil games. At the same time, Shamus and I are having a really rough time trying to talk about the game’s positives because, even though it’s fun, it comparatively falls short in such obvious ways. It’s really hard to be nice to this game when it begs those comparisons.
Survival Horror as a gaming genre seems to be more about how clumsy the controls are than its use of horror tropes. XCOM has plenty of horror tropes, but it mostly feels like a strategy game. A zombie shooter where your character is easy to control is basically an action game.
Well, I vote for you guys frustrating yourselves by playing the game wrong. :)
I think the reason Chris is getting all the shotgun ammo is because in Single Player he’s the only playable character (at least in the initial difficulty available when starting a new game; I don’t remember if you can play as Sheva after you beat the game). As part of a single-player series, the designers knew that a lot of people would be playing solo, and since most players find shotguns the most fun, they probably assumed that Chris would be using the shotgun.
Other than that, I really liked the stream! I remember really liking this part of the game back when I played it, and seeing you guys go through it while bantering is a lot of fun :D
I think it might be less that and more the designers are jerks though. RE4 has a system where the ammo yiu find is based in the weapons you have. There’s no reason not to use that now there is an added consideration as to why the player might not have the expected weapon.
No Diecast this week?
Might be because Shamus was down with something. Maybe it’s gotten to his throat and he can’t speak? In any case, I’m relieved that he posted today, because that means it’s probably nothing too serious…
Didn’t Paul just have his eighteenth child or something? Wouldn’t be surprised if he was too busy to cast pods.
I would love an episode of the DieCast where there are no videogames, and they just talk about dad-stuff for an hour.
We’re gonna need a way to differentiate me from Chris Redfield in your posts because this could get awfully confusing.
It’s actually extremely easy to differentiate – one of you is a daring secret agent with impeccable aim and huge biceps, and the other is called Redfield!
Could be worse. You could be playing Sheva.
That would be the best to have an episode where both only refer to each other as ‘Chris’.
Refer to gameChris as Roger. I watched two streamers do a bit where Sheva yelled “Chris” and he responded with “roger” (as in: confirmation) for like a minute and since then every time I hear “Chris” in her voice I can’t help but think about it.
I mean: Roger Craig Smith was playing him in this game? So the “bit” was possibly a subtle pun?
You know, everyone touts how this game is much more fun co-op than solo, but I never realized how miserable the experience must be if you’re playing for the first time and you don’t want to use the “assigned” weapons (and can’t use your companion as an inventory mule). I only played co-op once, by having a friend join in in the middle of the adventure. By then I was already on a third playthrough or so and I had all the weapons unlocked, a few of them with infinite ammo, and my companion had his own loadout, independent from mine, so we had none of these issues.
And I get the “disappearing ammo” from a gameplay perspective, but it absolutely doesn’t mesh with the game’s attempts at realism. You know what else doesn’t? The vendor. In RE4 you had a guy show up occasionally and sell you stuff. It was silly, but it made sense within the world. Here, the “vendor” is a screen that shows up whenever you finish a chapter. Even if all you do is usually go through a door suddenly in the middle of that transition you’re able to sell a bunch of jewelry and buy a bunch of weapons. To and from whom? How? In practice, in the game’s world this translates into you walking through a magic door that gives you extra weapons and relieves your inventory.
And I’ve ranted about this before in my stupidly long critique/mockery of this game, but why the hell do you have to put your bulletproof/melee shields in your pockets? I was looking forward to buying those because I stupidly believed they’d actually come with extra pockets to stash a couple more things, but no. These things are actually counterproductive until you manage to unlock infinite ammo.
This reminds me how weird I find it that this franchise offers “overpowered weapon with infinite ammo” as unlocks. It’s basically telling you “hey, wouldn’t this game be more fun if we completely negated one of our core mechanics”?
I recall playing RE4 with the “Chicago typewriter” and I just sat there and hosed everything down from then on. Even those wierd guys near the end where you’re supposed to use the thermal scope and sniper rifle to find the little hidden parasites aren’t a challenge if you can just hose down their limbs.
It certainly made me feel more powerful, but also made the game feel challenge free.
Yeah, I guess the point is to give you more of a power fantasy, but it does trivialize combat to the point where it becomes boring. Plus, it generally happens once you’ve proven you don’t need it. I certainly prefer it when you’re given more interesting weapons rather than just more powerful ones. The RE3 remake, for instance, includes as one of its unlocks a knife that can set enemies on fire. Sure, it’s a powerful weapon, but also it’s melee only, so there’s always an extra risk while using it.
On the other hand, getting it as an unlockable that you can only get after playing the game at least once is more interesting than, say, the cheat codes that older games like Duke Nukem 3D used to have that could trivialize the whole thing from the very start.
I forget what the unlock conditions for the Chicago Typewriter were, but I didn’t think you could get it during your first run through of RE4.
I loved it for the New Game+ mode though and it remains one of my standard-bearers for positive NG+ experiences. I tend not to like NG+ modes – I’d rather 100% my first run – but having the second go-around be dramatically different really increases the likelihood I will see it through. And in RE4’s case I remember loving the experience of sauntering through the weird village I crept through the first time and mowing down the enemies I used to hide from.
In regards to those rewards, they actually make more sense after Resident Evil 4, as in Resident Evil 4 you can’t bring them back into Professional mode. They help if your challenge is to speedrun the game or something after you’ve beaten it a few times, but otherwise, it does just trivialize the experience. In RE5 and RE Village, those upgrades carry over to higher difficulties. In Village specifically, the Village of Shadows (highest) difficulty is designed with the idea that you’ve gone through at least once and will be bringing upgraded weapons with you. It works there because, though enemies will take fewer hits due to the upgraded weapons, they’re still doing a lot more damage. So it really does increase survivability while maintaining a challenge. On the other hand, if you lacked upgraded weapons, everything would just be a damage sponge.
And having played Metroid Prime on its hardest difficulty, doubling enemy health and damage just makes a game more tedious and frustrating rather than an actual challenge. So carrying those upgrades over into higher difficulties is something I’ve come to really like in RE5 and RE Village.
Also, Penny Arcade pretty much nailed the weirdness of the RE4 vendor back in the day.
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/01/14/big-savings-in-every-department
Makes me think of all the games where the literal survival of the world is riding on you, and everyone knows it, yet vendors are still not only selling you stuff instead of giving it, they’re trying to gouge you.
Like, hey, if I don’t personally destroy the sun-eating doomship of Baron Von Waxenstache by fuck-thirty PM, there won’t even be a you to spend any of that money, so what exactly are you holding out for? You gonna sit there as the gamma ray blast peels your skin off, thinking “yes, not letting this rocket launcher go was a good decision; I am very proud of my bargaining willpower, and shall certainly have a successful future!”
Eh, I just consider videogame vendors to be the equivalent of real life scalpers. Moreso in the general “fuck you, got mine” mentality than in the specific mechanics of their acquisitions logistics.
Reminds me of Tales of Symphonia. “Oh wait, YOU’RE the Chosen? But I just gave away the super important plot coupon to the LAST person who claimed to be the Chosen!”
What I’m saying is, you’ve got to vet these things, and having overwhelming amounts of cash is a good vet for protagonists.
There’s no better evidence that you’re helping the good guys than receiving fistfuls of stolen goods.
I actually had a huge problem with the shops between levels. Especially in some of the later levels. I actually laughed out loud in one of the last levels where you’re at some kind of factory (I think?). The first level is the upper floors, and the second level is deep within the secret compound under the factory, miles underground behind enemy lines, the two of you are absolutely on your own in this dangerous and hostile environment… Except for the shop that appears midway through! Like, WTF? Did we just randomly come across a bunch of supplies between the two levels, and decide to leave some money behind just so Umbrella doesn’t think that we’re dicks? I mean, we’ll kill everyone in sight and put a complete stop to your evil operation, but even we have standards!
Doesn’t this game also let you buy wear armor…that then takes up inventory space? So you’re storing your armor in your armor? That always amused me.
…from a distance, of course. If I were playing the game, on the other hand, I’d hate it.
If I had to guess, I’d say that’s probably meant to represent the armor counting towards your total carry weight, but that’s borked too, since this type of inventory visually communicates in terms of volume rather than weight. And even then it’s complete nonsense by virtue of a tiny vial taking up as much space as a sniper rifle.
It fails on both the abstraction level and the gameplay level. Only possible reason I can think of for the 3×3 inventory in this game is if they started with something more like the RE4 system, but figured out too late that the game economy was too generous, and they decided to fix it by… redesigning the inventory, instead of just changing some numbers in the loot drop lists?
IDK. It doesn’t seem to make sense no matter what.
In regards to the vendor, they actually did have a merchant style character planned for the game. There’s an incomplete model that’s basically all placeholder texture, save for the eyes. However, they likely ditched the vendor because they assumed it’d work better between levels. I… am not sure they’re entirely wrong? Having played a lot of co-op games with vendor stations (Dead Space 3 especially), it’s too frequent that you have a friend or you yourself are spending several minutes at the station while your friend is already done, or you yourself are done, and just sit there waiting until you’re both ready to move on. Even though the same can technically still happen in RE5, that it’s between levels feels to me like there’s less pressure to get a move on. The music is soothing and you can just chill and chat, whereas when you’re in the level proper you’re just standing there while your friend stands there, and you wait, and you wait, and you wait…
I guess it’s not so different when friends play, but if you’re playing with a stranger online I can see it becoming more frustrating and it’d benefit more from having your own inventory screen to manage between levels (which, even when the game session ends, you are free to modify in the menu).
It’s impressive how intuitive the use of the Laser sight as an additional player communication tool is, which makes it all the more baffling that it only shows your own if you’re using a controller. (1:10:50) It’s not as obvious here, but if the controller/mouse use was reversed, not having that tool for “Over here”/”This way” would make things noticeably harder, despite the fact that to the controller player, you could be completely unaware of the situation.
There’s a #1 in the title of the post chief, which coincidentally was also the number of last week’s first post about RE5.
Can’t wait to get around to these!
Whoops.
Yeah, this thing where I post last week’s vid while getting ready to record the gameplay we’ll post next week is giving me a bad case of “off by one” errors. I kinda feel like the guy from the pre-taped call-in show.
Now you need to fix the first one being ‘part 1’ and the second one being ‘#2’. :)
Don’t worry. Part “C” next week will fix all of those issues.
Please. It’s Episode C.
Next week, on Venti Faced Story!
I thought it was going to be Installment III?
Shamus, you probably recognize that guy’s voice as War from Darksiders. Both characters are voiced by Liam O’Brien. He’s done a lot of voice work (also High King Titarion from Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning), and is probably best known as one of the members of Critical Role.
Ah! I was right! He had that slight tinge of “everything sounds super duper grave” to his voice that is everything that is War.
I dunno if Shamus would recognize it well but Darksiders is one of my favorite games. Thanks for confirming!
How human are RE zombies, exactly? I was surprised that they can talk, though now I vaguely remember that RE4 was like that too. Also, was megaphone guy from the execution cutscene a zombie, too? He seemed more lucid than the rest of the bunch.
Depends which zombies you’re talking about. There’s something like ten different varieties of human-based monsters through the entire series, all of varying levels of intelligence, autonomy and undeadness.
Well, RE4 and 5 specifically, I guess.
RE4-5 enemies, the “Ganados” or “Majini” (note, they are not zombies, as they are not “undead”) are basically slightly regressed, very aggressive but still lucid humans. From an intelligence standpoint hey’re capable of functioning like normal people, talking, understanding the use of tools and weapons and able to hold a conversation between each other, but their tribal mentality means they will consider anyone who’s not part of the group an enemy.
But the games make it clear that while the faculties and intelligence of the Ganados are still there, their personalities are erased. They all behave the exact same way and have no personal goals or desires of their own, as their brains are under the inescapable control of a parasite.
NB. “Sheva enters the frame via a Miranda shot.” links to https://www.shamusyoung.com/?p=28980
Which for me at least ends up on the front page of https://www.shamusyoung.com/ with the parameter not doing anything.
Versus https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=28980 which discusses camera angles on Miranda.
Weird, it works fine for me.
Same behavior for me Matt`. (Chrome on Debian, if it helps.)
Wow. This is a weird one. I can’t even figure out HOW it’s going wrong.
* What browser are you using?
* Are you reading on the site, or via RSS?
Same thing here. I’m using Chrome on W10, on the site.
Reading on the site (though I get here via RSS, if that makes a difference?), Chrome Version 98.0.4758.80 on Debian 10*. Just checked in Firefox 78.14.0esr and it’s the same behavior.
*I know I know, Debian 11 came out back in August, but it was only a month before moving internationally so I didn’t have the time and didn’t want to take chances, and I only just got my computer back a few weeks ago so I haven’t gotten around to upgrading yet. (My advice on moving during a pandemic? Try to avoid it.)
It works for me in Firefox and Edge on Windows 10.
I poked around in view-source a bit, and the Miranda-link is written the same way as the link on the “previous article” button. Does the button work for you? If so, then it’s getting really weird.
If you mean the “previous article” link in this article, then yes, it works for me in Chrome. :)
You could also just switch to Chris and take the shotgun with you?
Sure. But that’s the point. The game offers you your choice of characters. And offers you the choice of weapons for each character. And it then clearly demonstrates there’s a “correct” and “incorrect” weapon for each character.
Sure the players can switch characters to play the game “right.” But it’s still dumb the game allows you to choose “wrong.” Either make both weapon assignment choices playable, or don’t offer the gorram choice.
Right. And, okay, yes, in the real world it would make more sense for Chris to use the shotgun than Sheva, because, all other things being equal, he will be better able to handle the recoil due to having more mass. But do you know what else is true in the real world? You can toss ammunition from one person to another, and it doesn’t magically disappear if you leave it sitting for too long.
If you’re going to inconvenience the player in the name of realism, also include realistic things that will make playing the game more convenient.
I actually addressed this a bit in last night’s stream, but it’s actually not designed much around who is intended to have which weapon. In RE4 there’s an algorithm based on which guns you add to your inventory, and while there will be bullets for all sorts dropped throughout, the weapons you have will somehow modify the RNG to determine what drops how frequently. It’s strange and I don’t know the specifics, but it’s possible to basically never pick up any other gun and find mostly handgun ammo from dead foes.
RE5 adds a twist to try and encourage players working together to trade ammunition. It’s nonsensical and even silly, but basically the RNG gives the ammo of your friend so that you can “work together” to help each other with ammunition.
So if I grabbed the shotgun and Shamus grabbed the SMG, the situation would still occur, but in reverse.
Additionally, I expect they anticipated the players would each have a variety of weapons of each class, so that Shamus would eventually pick up an SMG as well. We’re not playing in this manner, and so instead Shamus gets a ton of ammo that he doesn’t need while I’m starting to pick up a decent mixture (or just money, lots and lots of money).
Solution: swap weapons every 15 minutes! (Or however long it takes for one/both of you to burn through the ammo you have.)
Okay, I can see that idea on paper but has nobody actually tested this? Even if the testers didn’t find it utterly miserable like Shamus does is it not obvious this does not actually add to the game? To be clear, sure, I get that there usually are some bells and whistles that are not 100% about optimizing gameplay but playing inventory swap for 5 minutes every section seems like something that doesn’t contribute to the atmosphere or pacing and actively sabotages gameplay. Like, we could have a minigame every now and then where one characters gets an itch in that spot on their back they cannot reach and the other player needs to do a button mash to scratch it but just because it requires co-op doesn’t make it a good idea! And if this is essentially a twist on the RE4 weighted drops than how can it not be obvious that taking the system that is meant to dynamically provide the player with the tools that they need and making it do the opposite is a bad idea?!
It’s a small thing, but I like how the “toss Sheva up to the second story” move only works at ladders, but if you watch the actual move, they don’t use the ladder at all.
So this is certainly a game.
Stop me if this scenario sounds familiar: An experimental shooter comes out where the mechanics are really different from other games. Inventory management, positioning, indirect options, and outright fleeing is necessary to survive. Game gets critically and commercially panned because of people approaching it with an unmalleable mindset of playing it as a normal shooter and that approach doesn’t fit. You happen to love it, but no other game like it has been released in about 15 years since.
To me that’s Resident Evil 5. To others that might be System Shock, Descent, SWAT4, Morrowind, what have you.
RE5’s particular janky mishmash of tank-controls, arcade shooting, inventory management, and some sprinkles of God Hand clicks in all the right places for me. I can’t wrap my head around strategy games, but your typical Doom is too simple to maintain my interest, but RE5’s light tactical elements of managing a small inventory, thinking about positioning, placing mines, throwing grenades, and checking in with your one partner fits the amount of thinking I can do while also satisfying the want to blow up zombie heads with a shotgun. I really can’t get this game anywhere else, so I come back to it about once a year or so, trying to rope people into it.
The inventory space was shrunk because RE4 would pause while you were managing it, RE5 will not. In return you can reload your guns in real-time much faster than the reload animations can, and you can open it at nearly any time, enabling you to reload your gun while you’re kicking zombies in the face. Items disappearing is something of a balance point: Picking up items puts you into an invincible pickup animation, and flooding the floor with items would defeat the point of having a limited inventory in the first place. In the situation where you’re split up and find stuff your partner would like, you’re just going to have to make a quick call on which item is more important.
I do think you were done wrong by being given control of Sheva (although it makes some sense for Chris to play as Chris). If you play alone, she’s only unlockable after one playthrough, so any section she has to solo is designed to be harder than Chris’ sections.
I certainly have no idea what you’re talking about. RE5 was a critical darling and it’s literally the best selling game in the franchise. Most negative reactions about the game have come from hindsight years after, especially after RE6 took all of its issues and ramped them up to 11, and even more after RE7 and the RE2 remake showed that a more serious tone fit the series much better.
And even then very few of those complaints have been about the gameplay, save for the general ones the entire series gets (like the tank controls).
I feel like an asterisk is needed for RE5’s sales numbers because it looks technically true, but only due to remasters and rereleases on other platforms. So it’s continued to have a long tail, but that means it has the advantage of years compared to RE7 and RE2 Remake. And, looking at Capcom’s official list of best sellers, those two games have surpassed what RE5 and RE6 achieved on their consoles of release. In the long run, the recent RE titles will likely overcome RE5 in terms of units sold.
(It’d be easier to tell if they didn’t separate each individual sku, though…)
However, I remember the release of RE5 well and I remember a lot of complaints about it. It’s sort of that “I hate this game” (continues to play it anyway) situations for a lot of folks.