Joystiq hands-on: New Resident Evil 5 levels

by Randy Nelson @@dangerpenguin on Dec 18th 2008 12:30PM

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Capcom held an event in San Francisco on Tuesday to showcase the two-player co-op mode in Resident Evil 5. When we arrived, we were greeted by ... the demo version of the game released a week ago in Japan, which was more or less what we'd already played at Tokyo Game Show. Still, there was a promise of "new never-before-seen levels!" to be played, somewhere amid the couple dozen PS3 and 360 kiosks crammed into the venue.

As it turned out, there were four stations showcasing small snippets of two areas we'd caught glimpses of in trailers for the game. The first was a fairly linear cliff-side run through a desert setting, with a couple of opportunities for one co-op player to cover the other from higher ground. (We snuck a peek at an on-rails vehicle segment where Chris and Sheva had to take out red-eyed non-zombie-zombies on dirt bikes, before a Capcom staffer quickly skipped past it.)

Resident Evil 5 (12-18-2008)

The highlight of the desert level – which, we have to admit, had us flashing back to Army of Two – was a boss fight against a giant, flying bat/hornet/cow creature that would have been impossible to defeat in this build if infinite ammo hadn't been enabled from the debug menu. We were concerned that there was no way to tell how damaged it was, and that the optimal strategy for defeating it – attacking from behind while our AI partner distracted it – wasn't working because our AI partner ... wasn't working.

We were able to simply run past most of the enemies in our path unscathed.

Nevertheless, we eventually did away with the beastie (though we're pretty sure it will return) and were plopped into the second new scenario, which took place inside an oil refinery. This section featured some light puzzle solving in the form of valves that had to be closed in order to extinguish flames blocking the exit route.

These valves were guarded by chainsaw-wielding enemies, familiar to anyone who has played Resident Evil 4. For whatever reason, this particular build had their health ratcheted up to an ungodly degree, meaning they wouldn't die until we pumped 30-40 shotgun rounds into them. It was in this stage that we also met up with an NPC named Josh, a fellow BSAA member.

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We were tasked with protecting him from more non-zombie-zombies and chainsaw goons while he hacked door terminals. Once outside, we had to beat a two-minute countdown to board an escape boat, which was pretty easy – we were able to simply run past most of the many enemies in our path unscathed.

We couldn't spot any appreciable graphical differences between the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions.

From what we played of both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game – which were running on identical LCD displays – we couldn't spot any appreciable graphical differences between the two. RE5 is unquestionably a gorgeous, big-budget game; we're just a bit stymied by some of the design shortcomings we've encountered thus far.

In addition to the ability to simply rush past enemies we mentioned, we found the act of actually running through levels rather jarring, as we'd have to briefly pause every few feet to "re-aim" our character down the path, or they'd get hung up on the environment. Holding down a button to locate our AI (or human) companion was also troubling, since it left us with little to no ability to see enemies about to sneak up behind us at crucial moments. That said, Capcom still has until early March to work on these areas, which are hopefully where a majority of the dev team's "home stretch" resources have been assigned.