At the Microsoft MVP Summit, Xbox MVPs were given the opportunity to play Capcom’s upcoming horror survival title, Resident Evil 5.  We had about an hour to immerse ourselves in the game, and in that short time, my expectations and general feeling of the game were radically changed.

You might have read all of the flaming and ranting towards this game back at E3 last year, with folks mainly griping about the clunky controls, lack of responsiveness, and the inability to run and shoot simultaneously.  I admit, I shared those concerns back then.

So when the demo was released on the Marketplace, I somehow was not able to find the motivation or time to play it long enough to try to understand this game.  In fact, this reminds me of the reception Shadowrun received by Xbox gamers a couple of years ago.  Shadowrun, a highly-underrated combat strategy shooter, was lambasted before people really gave it a chance.  Or to better put it, gamers did not give themselves a chance to understand how to play Shadowrun.  The end result was a bad first impression and a severely misinformed opinion by many gamers and reviewers.

I was one of the ardent supporters of Shadowrun, and I was highly critical of my fellow gamers for their unfair analysis of the game.  But until just a few days ago, I found myself on the other side of the coin with Resident Evil 5 – I had written off Resident Evil 5, and declared it unplayable without opening my mind and trying to change the way I think how a survival horror game should be played.

My expectations were tainted by my experience with another recently-released “survival horror” game called Dead Space.  For me, Dead Space ended up being another shooter set in space with a few scary elements.  Don’t get me wrong, it was a tremendously polished and fun game – but it was hardly a game of “survival” (though it definitely had horror elements throughout the game).  I know this because I have now experienced what a real survival horror game looks like.

Survival horror doesn’t just mean that you shoot a scary-looking creature until you kill it before it kills you.  Survival horror doesn’t just mean flickering lights and a haunting musical score.  Survival horror also doesn’t just mean that you have limited ammo and life.  So what the heck is survival horror?

It’s about running for your life, away from things that will maim and brutalize you.  It’s about panicking when you’re surrounded and cornered by a familiar being that has been made unrecognizable by something dark and evil.  It’s about realizing that your weapons will buy you time to run, but won’t kill what could surely kill you without any bullets.  And survival horror is about using strategy, the environment, and your buddy to escape imminent demise.

I came to this revelation when Wiseguy and I were paired up to play through the first three parts of chapter one via system-linked consoles.  While I began playing the game without taking it very seriously, by the end of our session, all I wanted was more time playing.  The level of satisfaction from simply surviving a level (without killing the “boss”) was incredible.  And figuring out that we can use each other as bait to lure a huge monster into a trap (and escaping with our lives) provided an even greater level of achievement and satisfaction.

Playing the game with a friend made the whole point of Resident Evil 5’s controls, movement, and design crystal clear.  It was like a gaming epiphany – Resident Evil 5 is unexpected and is far more strategic than I previously believed.  I’m going to love playing this game from start to finish with my friends, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I was completely wrong about this game.

Be sure to check out Capcom Unity’s take on their visit with the MVPs:

http://www.capcom-unity.com/snow_infernus/blog/2009/03/03/a_little_trip_to_seattle_with_resident_evil_5

written by Rick Kim \\ tags: Capcom