TGS Day 1 Impressions Part 1 - Biohazard 5

Although it was a Press Day, there were still tons of people. There were tons of lines and even the line just to get my badge took forever. It’s a little bit more difficult when you aren’t very familiar with the language and the people here are a little timid to speak to you in English.

Before I go into any impressions, let me start by saying these were all demos. If you’ve been listening to a show a while, you’ll know my feelings about demos and how I think they effect unfairly effect hype/judgment.

The first game I played was Biohazard 5 on the PS3. For me, it’s the biggest game here and you can tell it’s huge by the number of places it’s being shown at. Three. Capcom, Sony, Microsoft. For those of you wondering, the item management is now all in real time. You have items set to your D-pad and you can select to equip them as such through a menu system, also in real time. Sheva was there too running around wasting her ammo like an NPC, so that was expected. The Co-Op parts seem a lot more like split ups rather than say Splinter Cell Co-Op. And even though I was forced to stand 12 inches with the 36” screen engulfing my face, the game does look crisp and sharp.



My main concerns with the game now rely on the fact that it doesn’t feel all that different from Resident Evil 4. I mean, even Wesker is making an appearance again. When I finally played through RE4, it was because it was on the Wii and there was a new control scheme, which I think is far superior to the controller, in the case of Resident Evil. The enemies are still slow to walk to you giving you time to take your time to prepare and reload. In my mind the evolution of Resident Evil would be with the Wii Remote Controls and with faster moving enemies and more complex situations. Especially after playing something like Left 4 Dead, Biohazard 5 seems like a cake walk when it comes to Zombie Management.

There was a point in the demo where I was able to effectively dodge 6 zombies and one chainsaw man by running up and down an alleyway and avoiding them by making quick passes through the slow moving crowd of on lookers. I was fumbling through the controls trying to figure out how, in real time, to equip the grenades and switch weapons while still being able to avoid the group of baffled zombies. I was able to exploit the AI and the game for its shortcomings, and was greeted by chuckles from the Sony Girl observing me. Wait, What I meant t say was "and was greeted by chuckles from the Amazingly Cute Japanese Sony Girl in Uniform observing me."

I really can’t believe that I had so much to say about the demo, maybe there is something to talk about after all. Real quick, the healing is in real time as well. The herbs you pick up, you do not eat. They are made into vial which you spray on yourself as you do with the first aid. Sorry Brad, I know you were looking forward to that. I do wonder if the game will allow you to be “interrupted” while healing. That would be an interesting mechanic since they’re putting in all this real time stuff. What would be the point of putting in real time, if you’re invincible during the healing animation?

Needing to see something more,

David