Resident Evil 5 Co-Op: Hard Being a Heroine

Yesterday, the gaming department of Softpedia decided to try some co operative play for Resident Evil 5, the latest game in the very popular series from Capcom. My last experience with the franchise was the excellent Resident Evil 2, which managed to scare me a little and to thrill me quite a lot with its puzzles, boss fights and quite engaging story.

Co op in Resident Evil 5 means someone taking on the role of Sheva Alomar, the side kick that helps protagonist Chris Redfield to take care of yet another zombie (technically “ganados”) outbreak, which occurs in an undisclosed location in Africa.

The problem with Sheva is that she is nothing like me. I am white, a bit overweight and speak English with an accent, while she is a woman, quite beautiful and speaks almost perfect Oxford English. And she has quite a few skills, like doing roundhouse kicks, which I cannot hope to learn. So, I decided that out of respect for a clearly superior human being, be her simulated, I would tailor my playing style to what I believe Sheva would do. I would be daring, quick, deadly with a long range rifle and quick to run away from any hard hitting zombies.

The problem is that Resident Evil 5 makes role-playing hard. First, the inventory is rather small, at only nine spaces. Consider that fact that, for the first two levels, I relied on the pistol while having a shotgun that I dared not use for fear of wasting its ammo before I really needed it. I also carried grenades, again not using them, and ammo for the pistol and the shotgun, plus some herbs.

So, when I finally found the long range sniper rifle, I was faced with some tough choices. Should I drop the pistol that is quite effective and for which I had full ammo? Should I drop the more powerful shotgun? Should I drop the healing herbs, even if they are a combination of red and green? I think I prefer the days of role playing game inventories, when I could make two halberds and three scimitars disappear in my magical pouch.

And because inventory management is done in real time, I also found that my elegant strategy of running and gunning was not too effective when I had to fiddle with swapping weapons with zombies closing my avenues of escape. I had to settle for some serious melee work at some points. And let me tell you, it was not pretty and it did not feel like something Sheva would engage in.

Even with the game design of Resident Evil 5 cramping my style, I really enjoyed the opening levels, especially the portion where we ran frantically from a huge guy with a jagged axe while our helicopter came in to save us.