I'm seldom being as horny as I had been just before the autumn pop wide opened the before-christmas surprise bag for PC gamers. And I'm only seldom being as pissed off and disappointed when my dearest business men closed it again to give us a swing of their highly esteemed dingleberries for us to hang as christmas decorations instead. 'STALKER: Call of Pripyat' heavily delayed until Q1 2010 (what the fuck do these Qx dates mean anyway? Jack shit, that's what.) due to a DX11 revamp. Knowing the STALKER devel team, we will probably be seeing- if anything- some underlit screenshots and blurry trailers for the next year or so. 'Assassin's Creed 2' delayed until, wait for it, Q1 2010 due to, wait for it a bit more, graphics adjustments to meet the capabilities of the PC. And the date for 'DiRT 2', the first-ever proper DX11 piece to which AMD themselves are pouring not insignificant amounts of money? That seems to be dodging the release quite very well too. So with 'Uncharted 2' being PS3-exclusive (the PS3 folk has its time with SCEI pushing the 'GT5' release away too :)), 'Need for Speed: SHIFT' being hardly worth taking out for a spin and Batman's asylum adventure long over, we're left with 10th November being 'Modern Warfare 2' day (no, really!) and one half-a-year late console conversion.
I'm not a die-hard fan of console conversions, their 4 fps performance, their infinite and adequately angry crowd of bugs, their IDIOTIC menus and the more and more "in" disability to use mouse in them... see needing to fucking PATCH 'NFS: SHIFT' in order to be able to use a mouse in the otherwise unusable and incomprehensible something I'd rather not call a "menu". I might as well be calling Paris Hilton a "perfect housewife" then. And no, I will never EVER buy a console controller as long as there is a laser mouse and an ultra durable keyboard sitting in front of my monitor. I might as well marry Paris Hilton to do cooking and cleaning for me then.
Ok, fuck all that. 'Resident Evil 5' is the topic of the day, let's be fair and sticking to it. And if that's what being fair means, let's just not try to build-up to it and get to the point. 'Resident Evil 5' is by far the stupidest, most apalling, flagrant, pathetic, miserable and woeful piece of gaming my rig will probably have had the honours with this year. And if fair means proving the point, I am going to do all this a bit different: I am going to put 'Resident Evil 5' head to head against two other games, out of which one is arguably the best action game in history and the other is a rock-bottom-budget fits-onto-a-single-CD game of say, a bit more relevant theme. It's 'Resident Evil 5' up against David AND Goliath, it's 'Resident Evil 5' up against 'Zombie Shooter 2' and, there is only one way to say this, 'Crysis'. Let battle commence.
Resident Evil 5 [2009] [PC]
* If you resolve the dilemma where odds are you'll be giving 'Zombie Shooter 2' a "trash" a lot more than "smash" predispositions, you'll probably find it an extremely addictive 'Diablo' clone that, once played with your brain on a sub-economy stand by, kind of rocks arse.
* There is hardly a dilemma with 'Crysis'. You probably already applied for a mortgage to buy new hardware and for a deeply overdrawable credit card to pay for all your electricity bills. But once you do that, please be advised to hold on tight to your sanity!
* Good thing is that you will be spared all of the above with 'Resident Evil 5'. With a confident "this just has got to kick butt" you'll install the game, set up the graphics, check the benchmark with a meaningful "uh-hmmm" in avowal and start playing. And then, after no more than 10 minutes, ask yourself. "Why the fuck am I doing what I'm just doing? Why am I not getting pissed down in the park where the machmen meet and machines play kill by number? What-fucking-ever?"
* You'll soon find that all the explosions and shooting locally hundreds, globally good fat thousands of zombies in pretty much any of the "Campaign", "Survive" or "Gun Stand" modes that 'Zombie Shooter 2' will generously offer you, brings some VERY relaxing new insights into your life. Even with all these RPG elements and money and upgrades and vehicles, things just SO do not have to be complicated, do they?
* You're probably having a serious medical condition of irreversible escapism by now and there's no point in telling you HOW good 'Crysis' actually is. There's no point in telling you anything really. You are in FULL control, do whatever you please, whenever you please. PLAY is what you do with GAMES and in 'Crysis', there's no way other than take it very SERIOUSLY. :)
* Every three seconds, you struggle to find where you actually are or what the hell are you aiming at and desperately trying to align the camera so that it will at least give you an idea. But that wild camera movement is, mainly because you're unable to adjust its distance from the character, giving you a bad headache. You are failing to comprehend why every minute or so, would you have to lose control to some "cinematic" of bottom line no value to anything. Or why is the corridor you're pretty much constantly trapped in so narrow it is impossible to even get behind a foe's back. Or why is your computer-controlled "partner" so unbelievably dumb and it somewhat feels that the game is playing you. These are just a few whys of 'Resident Evil 5'.
* You have grown a gatling gun instead of an arm. You are an unstoppable killing machine a berserking vengeance of... well, in 'Zombie Shooter 2' you don't REALLY get a solid sense of what or who, or why are you avenging it. You just are. And the good thing is, you are begging for more.
* Introducing them fucking aliens to later stages of 'Crysis', I must admit, was a bit of a letdown for me, personally: I hate all that fucking plasma shitters and laser crap spitboxes. No matter what, if you are willing to play along and change your style embracing the "new" nature of the action, you WILL find yourself again in the centrifuge of irresponsible FUN.
* I'd imagine that by now you are absolutely furious about Chris What's His Face and Sheva What's Hers, the "dynamic" duo that 'Resident Evil 5' presents as main characters. And I'd imagine that their ludicrous disability to move (yes, AT ALL!) while meleeing or reloading is all the fuel it takes to this fury. But 'Resident Evil 5' has a trick up its sleeve, you may comfort yourself, something that...
* neither 'Zombie Shooter 2' no...
* nor 'Crysis' no, no, no...
* ... have. Something that has through the years made the 'Resident Evil' franchise what it is. Sense of fear, deep dark shivery tension and hopelessness. Yes, THAT would be the loser's secret speciality weapon unsheathed at the battle's last decisive moments. If the loser actually HAD any, that is. Yes, you are reading this correct. In 'Resident Evil 5', there is roughly as much tension and fear as it is in Kensington Harrod's ground floor food court. On christmas. Don't bother.
what's it?
Even if there IS A LITTLE good on 'Resident Evil 5' it's been professionally undermined by spreading ridiculous qualms over the game's hardware requirements. Whoever brought that "120Hz monitor or severe screen tearing" bullshit into the light of day clearly haven't had a clue what that means or even worse, never heard of a thingy called v-sync before. Thruth is that even an average iron will make the game dirty-dance and sexy too. But (Over)lord help me if I care the tiniest bit! This game is quite simply HORRENDOUS and it's not the conversion of it, it's the game ITSELF, which makes it almost impossible to comprehend what is it that it scores the points of applause for. It's barely controllable. The story is a load of negligently told garbage. The AI... well, there isn't any. The player character. He's just a walking beefed-up fridge-shape evidently wannabe appealing to japanese female teen audience, which is ALWAYS a bugger. Same applies to his girly partner in who I can not help seeing Lara Croft-headed Schwarzenegger's Terminator. Very unsexy especially if you realize that both characters "sport" a personality emptiness a bourbon bottle in 'Dallas' could single-handedly compete with. No, thank you, I'd rather shoot myself in the knee and run a marathon than spend a sole more minute with this!
SCORE: 2/10
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