Variety gives five reasons why Resident Evil 5 isn’t very good

I really like Resident Evil 5. It’s not perfect, but it’s enjoyable, and I’ve been truly digging it. My opinion seems to be regularly contested, however, and the latest to heavily criticize Capcom’s sequel is Variety‘s Ben Fritz. Not content to give the game its bad review, Ben went ahead and provided five definitive reasons for the game’s abject failure.

The five reasons are pretty simple:

1. It’s not scary
2. It is a mediocre and derivative action game
3. The co-op doesn’t work very well
4. It’s old fashioned
5. Racial imagery is disturbing

The one major problem I have with Ben’s piece isn’t the racial part, a subject I’ve covered to exhaustion. It’s his assertion that co-op forces you to restart the game from the last checkpoint and doesn’t give the other player any guns whatsoever. He seems to have forgotten that characters carry all their equipment over into each game, and that you can at least hand ammo over when they run out. While I think co-op should let players drop in at any time, not just as the last or next checkpoint, I found that it worked out very well in the game with only a few flaws.

Resident Evil 5 seems to be the most controversial game of the year so far, not just for the racial debate, but for polarizing gamers and games press when it comes to the title’s overall quality. I should congratulate Capcom for sparking so much debate, even with Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars allowing players to deal drugs via the DS. For Resident Evil 5 to keep courting controversy in the face of that is quite an achievement.