RE5: Played and finished, at least the main campaign. Since I got it in the package, will probably do the two DLC episodes just to get full money's worth of said package, etc.
The game ended up better than I expected. Part of this is not so much the anti-hype around as much as the demo is a very bad impression of the game. The earlier parts of the game are some of the worst stuff, because it throws in you a cramped area with too many enemies, one of whom is a boss and there's little way to actually effectively kill him. I know the Demo hands you a few weapons like a shotgun that the game doesn't have, but still, you're limited on ammo, healing, etc., and said boss can easily murder you, and you're still getting use to the controls.
The other part is the first chain saw enemy, aka an enemy with instant death who you need to take advantage of terrain to kill appropriately.
True, RE4 had moments like this, but game felt more balanced around them. The early enemy swarm? More open area, don't have a partner to worry about, had more time to actually get use to the controls, and there were more houses to run into and force said enemies into genuine chokepoints.
The other thing the demo had though was forced control scheme that was serious ass. First thing I did when I turned the game on was went to options and saw if I could change them. Thankfully, you can, and there's even a control scheme that mirrors RE4 (Or is "close enough" anyway), and that alone makes the game far smoother. It's also Control Scheme #1, yet the game defaults to control scheme #4...I think it's best we don't ask!
These things aside, game is playable and fun at times. Still notably worse than RE4, for a few reasons.
First off, inventory system. I pretty much agree with all the complaints; 18 spaces for 2 characters is not enough. Having to change on the fly wasn't as bad as I expected but yeah, times you want to experiment stuff, but you genuinely do not have the space too, so you just have to commit to two or three weapon types (in my case, I had Chris with Handgun, Magnum, and Shotgun. Sheva I handed Machine Guns, Rifle and Grenade Gun. I regret the latter because she NEVER USED IT and had a lot of useless ammo sitting around ._.). This also means the actual variety of areas is shot down. RE4, due to it's more lenient inventory, allowed for areas like Sniper Battles as an obvious example, or just lent to more interesting options for taking down opponents.
Next off, buddy system. This felt like a forced implementation for Co-op. I'll grant that Sheva is never really annoying as a character, but there are times where they force you to split up and do things that felt tedious, and then times where you're doing well then oh crap, buddy got hurt, run back to save them! It wasn't really an element that helped.
Game is also notably shorter. Which is a bad thing since the plot definitely tries to do a lot more. RE4 just played itself up as a B-movie or a satire...it's hard to say which, but the basic idea was "Leon vs. Not!Spain" and just rolled with it here. RE5 was clearly trying to build some finale between Chris and Wesker, and did it in about 10 hours instead of 20. This leads to plot points being introduced, then resolved in the next plot scene. Take the MASKED WOMAN for example. She shows up for one scene...then appears another scene and then you're finally like "ok, whose that." Next scene? Reveals who she is...and the same scene resolves the entire conflict with that character...this is also the first scene where Wesker and Chris interact. Look, I don't expect AMAZING PLOT from Resident Evil but this is vaguely insulting pacing.
Lastly, game has too many boss fights. RE4 showed that the system just doesn't lend itself well to boss fights, so the fact that it had so few came off as "ok, let's do something a little different" and worked in it's favor. RE5 has double the bosses, they're not better handled on average, and still highlight the game's system doesn't compliment them. It doesn't help that with the inventory issues, they had to rely on pure gimmick items that pop up only for that area.
It's still an alright game, but yeah, notable step down from RE4. The game has enough of what made RE4 good and a dramatic improvement over the earlier games (enough to make me actually stomach playing it, instead of throwing up at it!), but missed a lot of key things that made RE4 really shine. 6/10 game I guess overall?
