Resident evil 5 demo

Another month passes and another blockbuster title is released on the X360. The Resident Evil series finally made its debut on Microsofts console in the form of Resident Evil 5.

The Resident Evil series has long been lauded as one of the premier survival horror games and is probably responsible for the launch of the genre. Although I've never been a fan of the series, I downloaded the demo on Xbox Live to give it a trial run. And unfortunately for RE5, this doesn't look like its going to be the game that will convert me into a fan of the franchise.

If you know anything about the RE franchise, then you can probably already guess what the problem is - the clunky control scheme. The control scheme is quite frankly ridiculously bad. At this point, I should mention that I don't mind the fact that you can't run and gun (in case you didn't know, you have to stop and aim before you can fire your weapon in this game).

What does bother me is that your character moves in a clumsy manner. Unlike almost every other FPS (or TPS for that matter), the left stick is used to move forwards and backwards and to turn left or right. Yup, that's right - no strafe. To avoid an onrushing zombie, you have to turn left or right and turn run forwards. At this point in time, I just can't understand why anyone would make a game using such a clumsy control scheme considering almost every other game in existence has switched. Even Doom, which was released a millenia ago, had a better control scheme!

And then there's the knife melee attack. To use the knife melee, you have to move within range of the zombie, press 2 buttons in order to equip the knife and then press a third button in order to slash the zombie. Oh, and if you are out of range, then you have to put your knife away, move forward and then repeat the process. In a game where ammo is in short supply, this is just stupid.

The thing is, even fans of the RE franchise all seem to either implicitly or explicitly agree that the control scheme is bad. However, the most common reply from fans when faced with this complaint is that the game is still great despite the poor control scheme.

For example, Tom Russo said (when he was on the Bonus Round) that the complaints against the control scheme are unfounded because the game's difficulty is tailored to the control scheme. All this means is that even the developers agree the control scheme is poor and had to lower the difficulty of the game so that players could still play the game.

The sad thing is that I can really see the potential behind this game. It's got great graphics, some great cinematics, oodles of atmosphere, an interesting story and what looks like a pretty cool co-op mode. And the fact that the franchise has so many fans, despite the control scheme, is a testament to how good the game is once you get past the control scheme.

The problem is that, as I've said before, I suffer from having too many great games to play and nowhere near enough time to play them all. If you put a barrier to entry (such as a clunky control scheme), then my response is simply - Adios, there are other awesome games which I can, and will, play before I have to put up with "adapting" to the shitty controls.