Note: Replaying Resident Evil 5, I have indeed found a toilet block. Details to come.

One of the Resident Evil series greatest strengths is it’s ability to gradually take you places you’d never expect, and, in such a way that you have to stop, turn around and wonder just how in the hell they did it.

In the last fifteen hours I’ve spent in Kijuju, I’ve gone from small unassuming shanty towns, have driven across wide savanna plains, tromped through marshes, gone Indy and raided expansive underground kingdoms, watched a whole mining complex explode, trashed a variety of unbelievably sprawling underground labs, fought through a shipping container maze on a giant aircraft carrier thing and then, at the end of it all, stood on the fiery ashes of a fighter bomber precariously mounted in the middle of an active volcano to fight a boss character who has been confirmed dead at least twice, and thought to have died a few times more.

I didn’t bat an eye-lid.

Each cut-scene pulls you from one location to another as characters chase the atomically small breadcrumbs. “Apparently someone is heading to the Mines through the Marshland”, then set a course for the Marshlands! Yet, there is often no reasoning as to why.

With every Resident Evil game, you know that no matter where you start, whether a mansion in the woods, a police station with the worst locking system ever conceived, a jail on an island in the middle of God-knows where, or a Spanish village, you’ll end up in a laboratory somewhere. Where you’ll drop in for tea and scones along the way is like a lottery draw of fantastical locations, and none of the joints have toilets!

Though I love the ludicrous over-the-top, deliberately hammed-up nature of the series, since the onset of Left 4 Dead, which draws it’s scenery from more believable locations and where one false move would take you down, I’d actually like to see the series pull-back a little and return to what made the first Resident Evil so enthralling. A single zombie, under the right circumstances, could take you down if you had already expended your few last remain bullets and weren’t quite quick enough with a knife.

As the industry has moved forward and we have shown an unrequited love for our Gears of War and it’s pacing, action and control system, I know Resident Evil will never go back but, with all the advances in graphic, sound and control technology, that’s what I’d like to see.

Imagine returning to that first Racoon City mansion again, where you’d be lucky to find a box of handgun rounds locked in someone important’s desk drawer. When the quiet sound of shuffling feat from a blackened corner of the room, accompanied by a hunger moan, would send shivers down your back, knowing there’s possible death lying between you and that shield-shaped key. Or leaving the safety of a two exit corridor for the wide-open space of the courtyard, where a smothering fog hides the approach of fast moving creatures unknown.

Shit, I want the team behind Resident Evil to sit down and chat with the Redwood Shores, the guys behind Dead Space.

That game took full advantage of both deafening noise that drowned out all but the sound of heavy, clanking machinery and the silence in vacuum that masked an enemy approach. They contrasted pitch black with bright light. It was atmospheric and it got my heart racing. It was really scary, even after I began stock-piling super-powerful weapons and ammunition. And they included toilets. You know, because real people supposedly lived on that cursed ship, the Ishimura.

Not once while playing Resident Evil 5 did I feel scared, or anxious. Did my heart rate get up, sure, but mostly due to frustration when poor level design disguised where I should head to next. And, sure as hell, now one lived in any of the facilities I ever visited. I’m not even sure I saw a bed, a kitchen. In fact, the only way through most of the facilities was the one I took. Rarely did I see a door that didn’t open for me. Was I really traveling along the same one-way path that all the previous employees did? Were they expecting to fight hang-glide from one side of the mine to the other just to twist some valves?

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I loved Resident Evil 5. It’s a great action game but it wasn’t really what I wanted.

I want Capcom to take everything they’ve learned and start fresh. Sometimes, walking alone down a long corridor in a friend’s house is scary. Make me live through that.

They won’t. But, maybe I’m looking in the wrong place.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 11:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.