More thoughts on RE5

I've almost made my mind up on RE5. The Game's controls are so frustrating - especially after coming off of Dead Space - that I don't think I'll get this game the second it comes out (which is my favorite time to get games). For those who have been following up on the game, you'll no doubt have heard this argument several times on forums,etc and I think it is compeltly valid. For those who want to know more specifics, I'll shalst bust a phat beat and break it down, right now, right here, live and in your face.

For the most part, the single most frustrating aspect of the game is more of a design issue : you cannot move and shoot / reload. Now in the RE4, this was pretty much just accepted. For the most part, no game had really been like RE4 in terms of its camera. In that game, it was pretty much a move till you got a good position, whirl about, shoot as fast and as accurate as you could, then move again. However since RE4, there have been a few games to use this camera style but moved the "genre" forward. The best one I can think of is Dead Space which the developers themselves said took directly from RE4. In Dead Space, players can move at pretty much all times. When you do start to shoot, your character will slow down (same when you are reloading) but the key is that you can keep moving. What this creates for Dead Space is a seamless set of controls that allow you to navigate the game without having to think Oh yeah, I'm blank so I can't blank. RE5 is plagued by this. When you start to shoot, you cannot move so you need to constantly keep that in mind which is difficult cause the concept is not the norm for shooter controls and this is my major beef with this whole mechanic. It seems to disregard all conventions or things that players can expect from the game. So to put into perspective, lets say you were playing a shooter and your gun has a limited amount of ammo. The game does not provide a way for you to tell how many shots you have left. The gun will just go empty. Now this would be a pretty justified complaint since as a user, you expect this kind of "feature."

My second complaint which I feel could be changed in the game is the lack of an instant melee button. Melee is instead a two-button process. You need to "arm" your knife by holding the left bumper button and then pull the right trigger. Why not just make the right trigger melee? Oh no, thats so you can lock on to your partner. Why not make that the left bumper button? Ugh. Doug and I played co-op last night (the only saving grace in my opinion) and kept yelling out "preparing to melee...melee initiated...activating melee."

Seriously. What gweat way to pway.

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