Allow me to start off this review for RE:5 by saying  this....

"Dear Campcom, Fuck off with this partner bullish."

For those of you who are TL;DR impaired allow me to say that everything I'm about to say in this review could be easily  summed up in that statement. Moving on...

Resident Evil 5 is the seventh installment in the survival  horror series Resident Evil. It was developed and published  by Capcom. This is usually the part where I tell you about  the publisher and the developer but if you don't know who  MF'ing Capcom is then crawl out from the rock you've been  living under since BIRTH.

Resident Evil. The game is a direct sequel to the Resident  Evil series. Resident Evil 5 proceeds from where Resident  Evil 4 left off. The two playable characters are Chris  Redfield and Sheva Alomar. The game takes place roughly ten  years after the events of the original Resident Evil.

During the game's events, he is a member of a group known as Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA), and sent  to investigate a terrorist threat of Umbrella's weapons in  an African desert area in Kijuju, that serves as the game's  setting.

The antagonists of the game includes Chris Redfield's  nemesis Albert Wesker, and Excella Gionne, a relative of the founder of the Tricell Pharmaceutical Company who operates  the company's African branch. Ozwell E. Spencer, the founder of Umbrella Corp. and a key figure in the background story  of the series since the original Resident Evil, is also  included in a flashback.

Now that I've set the story for you and you've probably by  now realized that this is just like the last Resident Evil  game, lemme throw a wrench in the works and tell you that  Capcom is going with the time tested method of "Co-Op Sells  More Games" theory. But just like with all theories it  always sounds great on paper...hell Communism sounds GREAT  on paper but it doesnt function when you throw in the idea  of greed just as Co-Op doesnt function well in what should  be a single player game.

Now some of you could claim that my whining would be due to  my lack of friends. I assure you I do have friends, however  I also find the idea of sitting way too close to your  friends on a small couch squinting at my overly small  television screen is not my idea of an "exciting" friday  night.

This caused me of course to brave the game alone seeing as  all of my friends on XBL were either busy or no longer had  the game *cough*VERVEISATRAITOR*cough* ahem, anyway....I  found my way lumbering through the less than intuitive first few levels of the game where you pretty much just have to  "wing it" in where you're supposed to "go".

Joy.

So needless to say, my original attempts to get past the  first level ended in tears and a thrown controller. Capcom  games seem to have this effect on me.

Once I made it past the first few levels everything seemed  to be fine and a mainstream cake-walk of what you would  expect a Resident Evil game to be. Oh wait, I forgot to  mention that you have an annoying AI partner who instantly  uses any ammunition you give her until it is at zero, heals  you at akward times, runs around like a retarded beheaded  chicken, and gets killed more often than naught? Fuckin'  Wicked.

I finally figured out that if you give her a rifle or stun  baton and use her as a pack mule for extra ammo and coca-I  mean extra weapons then you should be fine. This pretty much eliminates the case in which everytime you attempt to shoot anything her DUMB ASS steps in front of your line of sight  preventing you from using your less than abundent amount of  ammo to shoot THE GIANT ZOMBIE WITH THE CHAINSAW who will  then DECAPITATE your DUMB ASS. Or hey remember that one time when there were 15 zombies were running at you to eat your  face off and your AI controlled partner stood behind you and unloaded the 43 pistol rounds, you for some reason trusted  her with, into your BACK not damaging A SINGLE GD'in ZOMBIE!

Capcom I love your game but fire your fucking AI  programmers.

This brings us to the new inventory system that I would like to screa-I mean talk about. You each have 9 slots of  inventory in Co-Op and in single player you would share the  18 slots. Don't even get me started on how difficult this  can be trying to swap things with your retarded computer  partner during a boss battle. Oh and did I mention that the  bullet proof and melee proof vests take up two slots if you  buy them? That takes you down to 7 slots for ammo and  weapons plus any misc items/health you wanna pick up.

I feel like Capcom may have screwed the pooch by not only  trying to fit too much in the game with such little space to play with. I understand that some people wanted a Co-Op  Resident Evil but I think that most of us were completely ok by playing with ourselves. Ha Ha penis joke. I also feel  that charging people for a Co-Op challenge mode was a cheap  way to force people to give them more money so that got them points deducted in the long run for bad business practices.

Let's face it Capcom no matter how bad you fuck up a  Resident Evil game the masses will still continue to buy  them. I mean loko what you did to the last Devil May  Cry....it still sold incredibly well.

Ok now that I've slammed Resident Evil's clear and open  flaws like a cheap hooker on half off wednsday lets move on  to the good stuff. First of all the game looks great. I  don't know how Capcom always manages to keep games looking  this realistic and fantastic on consoles. They have such an  approach to art that no matter how many zombies I see there  is never one that looks just like the other one...something  is always different and for that I give them hellapoints. I  want to sex their entire art department from here to  Bangkok, ha ha second penis joke.

On top of that I feel that the game is quiet fulfilling and  the characters are very welldeveloped and they've managed to keep the Resident Evil franchise fresh and new for over 10  years. Suck on THAT Atari! I feel that the "boss battles" in RE:5 were a little bit generic but they still had that "Oh  Shit Oh Shit Oh Shit" feel to them as RE games generally do  and as I've said it before the boss battles follow a nice  sequence and Capcom did a great job on the set up. Loved it.

Adding to the already excellent boss fights and graphical  content for your eye holes the control scheme is a huge deal in this game and as it originally feels quiet akward I was  suprised how fast I became acquainted with it and how smooth  it felt after I did. After you become familiar with it  you'll be exploding heads like it ain't no thang but a  chicken wang on a strang HEY HEY HEY!

All in all I have to give them some bonus points on the  creative presentation and the very movie like feel of the  cinematics and even though I am a bit disappointed that  there were less dynamic cut scenes then I would have wanted  I still, for the most part, enjoyed the game even if I  didn't finish the very last level.

So you take the good you take the bad and there you have...a score of 90%. I'd give Resident Evil an A rating and a  definte rental status. If you have someone to play with  whether they be at your house or online and you're a fan of  the Resident Evil series then I would have to recommend it  as a purchase as well.

Thats all I got for you this week kiddies.

-RJ