I bought RE5 Gold several months back and finally got a chance to play it. I've cleared the game and played the DLC.
My initial impressions are that Capcom basically said "people like RE4, let's make that!" For the most part it doesn't stray away from the establish formula. You start out with a crowd control level complete with an executioner in place of a chainsaw guy (except they do throw chainsaw guys at you later) and pretty much stays in sync for the rest of the game. The enemies are almost exactly the same the difference seems to be they changed Spaniards into Africans.
But where it stays close to RE4 it adds almost nothing. I'll admit I didn't play co-op but for the single player the co-op mechanic adds nothing. That's not to say it's bad, the AI generally stays close and out of trouble. What I really hate is how the item system was dumbed down. You get the classic RE grid that holds 1 item each but now you have to share with a partner. No attache case tetris, basically the other member becomes a pack mule because they will only use common ammunition weapons. But what's annoying it that they force the real time mechanic on you. It's annoying because switching from long range to shotgun or grenades or healing is just infinitely more cumbersome (and it wasn't great before). It's also cumbersome to have to trade herbs with the other character just to combine them. The other thing I didn't like was the elastic ammo system, if you have too much ammo you get less ammo from pickups. I later found that upgrading magazine size means you get more ammo because it increases carry capacity. Forcing artificial sharing especially in single player was really dumb and surprisingly I ran out of ammo fairly regularly (I beat the final boss with a knife and rifle).
Upgrades too seemed dumbed down into some sort of formula where you pay double as much for some stat upgrades that are too insignificant to be apparent. While the merchant in RE4 was interesting RE5 just strips that out with between chapter or on death shop screens. I also found that there only seemed to be enough money to fully upgrade a couple weapons but since the AI needs a good one too you don't really have room to experiment.
Overall levels were more dull than RE4 and new enemies were mostly the bullet sponge "chainsaw guy" variants and not especially fun to fight. Bosses were pretty decent though.
That's not to say it was a bad game overall. I enjoyed it as to be expected of something that doesn't stay very far from RE4 but they kinda fell backwards in some respects.
I tried playing the DLC missions and found both to be awful. Lost in Nightmare has you doing nothing for solid 15 minutes and then fighting/running from yet another brand of chainsaw dude. I died a few times and then stopped. Since it seems to not save on the extra content, I'm probably not going to do it again. Desperate Escape was also bad for different reasons. Nearly the whole time you're contending against infinite respawn enemies and some turret guns. Very annoying. I think I got to the last part and then Josh kept dying (not my fault), which was the first time I really had a problem with the AI helper but that too got annoying enough that I just gave up.
So yeah it started good and then with the DLC ended on a sour note. I paid about $15 for this game, it lasted a while and I think I got my money's worth. I did find it annoying that the extra mission weren't on the disc and it just came packaged with a card. No real point in getting the Gold edition and forced me to drag my long ethernet cable out to my Xbox. I guess it makes me dread RE6 which I hear nothing but bad things but may pick up super cheap someday because I'm already this invested. On the other hand it makes me more appreciative of RE:R and excited for the up-port as it's a better game than this.
My initial impressions are that Capcom basically said "people like RE4, let's make that!" For the most part it doesn't stray away from the establish formula. You start out with a crowd control level complete with an executioner in place of a chainsaw guy (except they do throw chainsaw guys at you later) and pretty much stays in sync for the rest of the game. The enemies are almost exactly the same the difference seems to be they changed Spaniards into Africans.
But where it stays close to RE4 it adds almost nothing. I'll admit I didn't play co-op but for the single player the co-op mechanic adds nothing. That's not to say it's bad, the AI generally stays close and out of trouble. What I really hate is how the item system was dumbed down. You get the classic RE grid that holds 1 item each but now you have to share with a partner. No attache case tetris, basically the other member becomes a pack mule because they will only use common ammunition weapons. But what's annoying it that they force the real time mechanic on you. It's annoying because switching from long range to shotgun or grenades or healing is just infinitely more cumbersome (and it wasn't great before). It's also cumbersome to have to trade herbs with the other character just to combine them. The other thing I didn't like was the elastic ammo system, if you have too much ammo you get less ammo from pickups. I later found that upgrading magazine size means you get more ammo because it increases carry capacity. Forcing artificial sharing especially in single player was really dumb and surprisingly I ran out of ammo fairly regularly (I beat the final boss with a knife and rifle).
Upgrades too seemed dumbed down into some sort of formula where you pay double as much for some stat upgrades that are too insignificant to be apparent. While the merchant in RE4 was interesting RE5 just strips that out with between chapter or on death shop screens. I also found that there only seemed to be enough money to fully upgrade a couple weapons but since the AI needs a good one too you don't really have room to experiment.
Overall levels were more dull than RE4 and new enemies were mostly the bullet sponge "chainsaw guy" variants and not especially fun to fight. Bosses were pretty decent though.
That's not to say it was a bad game overall. I enjoyed it as to be expected of something that doesn't stay very far from RE4 but they kinda fell backwards in some respects.
I tried playing the DLC missions and found both to be awful. Lost in Nightmare has you doing nothing for solid 15 minutes and then fighting/running from yet another brand of chainsaw dude. I died a few times and then stopped. Since it seems to not save on the extra content, I'm probably not going to do it again. Desperate Escape was also bad for different reasons. Nearly the whole time you're contending against infinite respawn enemies and some turret guns. Very annoying. I think I got to the last part and then Josh kept dying (not my fault), which was the first time I really had a problem with the AI helper but that too got annoying enough that I just gave up.
So yeah it started good and then with the DLC ended on a sour note. I paid about $15 for this game, it lasted a while and I think I got my money's worth. I did find it annoying that the extra mission weren't on the disc and it just came packaged with a card. No real point in getting the Gold edition and forced me to drag my long ethernet cable out to my Xbox. I guess it makes me dread RE6 which I hear nothing but bad things but may pick up super cheap someday because I'm already this invested. On the other hand it makes me more appreciative of RE:R and excited for the up-port as it's a better game than this.
