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Resident Evil 5 Succeeds Without Building a Better Mousetrap

Posted by Bob Mackey

March's release of Resident Evil 5 was met by a hail of criticism; while the game tried to capture the same spirit that made Resident Evil 4 so breathtakingly amazing, many thought certain core design elements used by RE5's older brother (no strafing, no running and gunning) were a bit too archaic to rehash without significant revamping. But rehashing is something Capcom does very well, and they took this familiar approach to their famous survival horror series with fantastic results: Resident Evil 5 was last month's best-selling game (thanks to Game|Life for the stats). As much as we like to gripe about the lack of innovation in gaming blockbusters, there's something to be said about the comfort that familiarity brings--a comfort borrowed entirely from Resident Evil 4's goodwill.

Of course, if you look at the sales numbers, you'll see that this is the case for some of the strongest performers. New Super Mario Bros., a game that's been out for nearly three years, has rarely--if ever--dropped out of the top 10 DS games--hell, it's usually in the top five. But having played New Super Mario Bros., I can't say it's entirely deserving of its success; the core Mario gameplay is great, but having to shepherd around the power-ups necessary to open up certain levels adds a level of off-putting randomness to The Mushroom Kingdom's typically immaculately-designed world. Resident Evil 5 has its own share of problems, but, like Mario, it offers a familiar setting without any big shake-ups, which is why so many of us hardcore gamers are facing franchise fatigue.

My point with this post isn't the overly-obvious "big-name franchises sell well;" it's more of a general hissy fit over the lack of innovation seen in big league series. I'm a bit of a hypocrite because I didn't really mind Resident Evil 5 being more of the same, but I remember a time--Nintendo during the GameCube era, specifically--when developers would use sequels as the testing ground for new ideas; because the audience was already built in, there were less worries over whether signficant changes would be alienating. But we all saw what this kind of franchise experimentation did to Nintendo's bottom line during the last gen, despite experimental, critical darlings like The Wind Waker (and Majora's Mask before it). Nintendo's been pretty quiet about any possible upcoming Wii Zeldas, but if they pull an RE5 for a second time--in my opinion, Twilight Princess was the RE5 to Ocarina of Time's RE4--I'm not sure if I'll be interested.

Any thoughts about familiarity versus experimentation in big-name franchises? The Resident Evil series can make an argument for both the former (5) and the latter (4).

Related Links:

The 61FPS Review: Resident Evil 5
Resident Evil 5: If You're not Offended, Then You're a Racist?
Up All Night: Dark Sector

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Posted Apr 20 2009, 12:05 PM

Filed under: hardcore, resident evil 4, bob mackey, resident evil 5, innovation, sequels

Comments

Sam said:

An interesting idea but I think it depends on where you're looking for your changes. For me the most welcome change was the biggest one, multiplayer. It has completely changed the game, experimented with it in a new way and to me that's brilliant. But, if you took that multiplayer out then yes, I would 100% agree with this article.

April 20, 2009 7:50 PM

About Bob Mackey

For a brief period of time I was Bull from TV's Night Court, but some of you may know me from the humor column I wrote for Youngstown State University's The Jambar, Kent State University's The Stater, and Youngstown's alternative newspaper, The Walruss. I'm perhaps most well-known for my bi-weekly pieces on Something Awful. I've also blogged for Valley24.com and have written articles for EGM, 1UP, GameSpite and Cracked. For all of my writing over the years, I have made a total of twenty American dollars. It's also said that I draw cartoons, which people have described with words such as "legible." I kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby and am looking to do so again in the future.

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