Resident Evil 5

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5 (バイオハザード5), is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror video game series for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. It was developed and published by Capcom. Capcom officially announced Resident Evil 5 on July 20, 2005. It was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan, and March 13, 2009 (Which was, coincidentally, Friday the 13th) in North America and Europe.

Plot
The game starts in 2009, six years after the destruction of Umbrella. Chris Redfield has become a member of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance and is sent to investigate possible Bio Organic Weapon smuggling in Africa. Upon arriving in the Kijuju Autonomous Zone, Chris meets his partner, Sheva Alomar of the BSAA West African branch. Together, the two individuals attempt to rendezvous with the BSAA's "Alpha Team", who were attempting to intercept a supposed B.O.W smuggler named Ricardo Irving. However, the situation quickly escalates as their local contact is executed and the pair are forced to fight literal crowds of Las Plagas infested Majini.

Eventually, they find Captain DeChant, the only remaining member of Alpha Team. Fatally wounded, the Captain warns them of Irving's betrayal and gives them a file. Moments later, the two find themselves face-to-face with a bizarre and dangerous creature, seemingly made of leech-like worms. Destroying it, Chris and Sheva send the newly acquired data to HQ, soon meeting up with the BSAA Delta Team. Captain Josh Stone, leader of Delta team, gives Chris a memory card containing images of research material. Among these is an image of Chris's supposedly dead partner Jill Valentine. Chris and Sheva search for Irving, still determined to discover Jill's fate.

It is during this time that Chris reveals the truth behind Jill's supposed "Death": In 2006, Chris and Jill were working to track down Albert Wesker. They attempted to gain answers from Umbrella's former President, Ozwell E. Spencer recently learning of his possible location. By the time they arrived at the estate, however, Wesker had already murdered Spencer, and they are forced to fight. Severely outmatching the pair, Wesker prepared to finish Chris off. Jill, sacrificing herself for Chris, tackled Wesker through the nearby window, and over the surrounding cliffs. Unable to find her body, the BSAA was forced to assume that both had died in the fall.

Chris and Sheva then encounter Irving, accompanied with a mysterious, cloaked woman, trying to get away. The BSAA catch up with Irving's boat. Then Irving has a flashback where the cloaked woman provides Irving with a Control Plaga. He uses it to try and defeat the BSAA agents. After defeat at the hands of Chris and Sheva, the dying Irving utters "Excella Gionne". With another possible lead, the pair trudge on.

When they come upon the pods seen in the research material, Chris frantically searches a nearby computer for Jill's location. They are forced to fight a huge B.O.W. named U-8 before they can check, and discover afterward that the pod is empty. Excella Gionne appears and denies any knowledge of Jill, much to Sheva's doubt. When Chris and Sheva encounter Excella again, they are fought off by the cloaked woman who accompanied Irving. A stray round knocks away her mask, and Wesker makes his appearance. The agitated Chris is quickly left speechless when Wesker reveals that the woman is Jill. Chris attempts to reason with her, but she attacks him with a flurry of hand to hand moves and starts an intense battle. Wesker arrogantly claims that he can spare only seven minutes for the pair, and eventually leaves Jill to handle them. Chris again calls out to Jill, and she attempts to resist the P30 used to control her. Wesker then activates a device, causing her great pain and administering more P30. Jill attacks Chris and Sheva again, and Chris and Sheva work together to remove the device from Jill's chest that is administering the P30. Chris then cradles the severely weakened Jill and she apologizes to both, stating that she was fully aware of her unintended actions. Ignoring her own state, Jill tells the pair to leave her and stop Wesker. Chris objects, but grudgingly agrees when Jill questions "Don't you trust your partner?" As they leave through an elevator, Jill finally says: "You're our only hope to survive this."

Chris and Sheva manage to board Wesker's ship and soon locate Excella. She flees, dropping a case of chemicals. After a brief flashback from Wesker's point of view, Chris and Sheva find the now dying Excella. Wesker then calls out over an intercom, casually discarding Excella. Simultaneously, Uroburos burst from her, killing her, and consuming the surrounding corpses. Destroying it, they discover that Wesker plans to spread Uroboros around the globe with a bomber. Jill then calls and informs them of Wesker's weakness: regular doses of serum called PG67A/W. Overdoses would not maintain his superhuman abilities but weaken him, and Sheva realizes that the case Excella dropped contained the serum.

After doggedly pursuing Albert Wesker across the wilderness, Chris and Sheva find themselves in the bombers' hangar. Wesker had stocked the plane with enough Uroburos-carrying missiles to infect most of Earth. After combating Wesker in vain with conventional tactics, Chris resorts to injecting Wesker with the serums Excella dropped. This weakens him, allowing Chris and Sheva to fight on more level ground. Wesker is forced to escape with his Jet, but the BSAA team is able to pursue him. He reveals that the bomber is climbing to the ideal altitude for global infections. He is soon blasted out of an airlock by Chris, but manages to grab onto Sheva. Tortured by the memory of Jill, Chris jumps forward and catches her hand after she loses her grip. Sheva shoots Wesker in the face, and he falls into the caldera of an active volcano. The craft itself crashes into the same volcano shortly following.

The two agents are shocked to find a battered Wesker. Arrogant to the last, he plunges his right arm into an intact Uroboros missile, and is immediately engulfed by the symbiont. Chris and Sheva desperately fight the Uroburos-empowered Wesker precariously over a molten battlefield. The heaving volcano causes the ground to crack and melt, sending Wesker tumbling into the magma. Josh, piloting a BSAA helicopter, spots the pair, and Jill Valentine kicks a ladder to the them. Chris and Sheva barely escape as the ground melts beneath them.

Enraged and defiant, even in the face of his own mortality, Wesker attempts one last gambit, snagging the BSAA helicopter with his monstrously mutated arm. Jill tells Chris and Sheva to use the RPG-7s mounted in the rear of the rocking cabin. The two partners send a pair of anti-tank rockets racing down into the corrupted face of Albert Wesker, ending his life in a cloud of flame and ash. [1]

As the chopper flies away in the final cutscene, Chris remarks: "More and more, I find myself wondering if it's all worth fighting for." He looks at Sheva and Jill and concludes with: "For a future without fear.....yeah, its worth it." The game ends with the chopper flying into the dawn.

Gameplay
Resident Evil 5 features similar gameplay to Resident Evil 4 utilizing the same over the shoulder view. The game's environment also plays a significant role. The Mercenaries minigame, which was featured in both Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil 4, also made a return.

This game only has 2 type of herbs, Red and Green. Previous games had Red,Green and Blue. RE4 had removed blue and replaced it with the Yellow Herb. Healing items vary from Herbs, the First Aid Spray and Eggs(the Rotten Egg, an exception). You can heal yourself but to heal your partner, you must be near them. Pressing the action button heals both of you if you plan on healing your partner, otherwise you'll be healing yourself. Doing the former is very useful, especially if both are in low health. If the partner is in the DYING stage, you may resuscitate them to prevent them from dying, as the health bar gradually lowers as you prolong in the DYING stage.

The game also featured new types of enemies. These enemies feature similar behavior the Ganados, but here, they are called Majini and mostly are of African descent rather than Hispanic.

The game also has a vast selection of firearms. Handguns, shotguns, machine guns, rifles, magnums and the knife also return with wider selections(along weapons unique to certain characters). The knife retains its usefulness, but since Majinis are much more intelligent compared to the Ganados, killing them with the knife is much more difficult as they are fast, they don't get stunned easily, they react much faster and they can surround the player's characters easily. To counter this, finding ammo is not as hard as it was in the previous games.

Since the Merchant is absent from this game, it is replaced with a shop that comes up at the beginning of every chapter or when a player restarts or dies after passing a checkpoint. In the shop, you cannot buy ammo except for the Grenade Launcher which fires different types of rounds. Also, you can't buy any healing items other than the First Aid Spray. A new feature is that you can buy a Melee Vest which halves every physical attacks dealt to the character wearing it, and a Bulletproof Vest which halves every firearm-related damage to the character wearing it. Both can be worn at the same time, but takes space in the inventory.

Inventory in the game is different from the previous game. This time, the inventory is a 3x3 grid which carries 9 items at once. Ammo and grenades picked up are now stacked(in quantity) instead of random placement, again unlike RE4 and similar to the old-school RE games. Opening the inventory is now in real-time(similar to Outbreak) so the player can get damaged if there are enemies nearby. Items placed in the inventory are assigned to a specific button(for example, the numpad in the PC version) for easy item management.

Online gameplay is also included. 2 Players may not only work together playing through the chapters, but also in The Mercenaries. An offline co-op is also included, with 2 players playing through split screen(which was the reason why Sheva was made left-handed). A new type of online gameplay was introduced which was the Slayer mode(DLC). In this mode, characters battle each other while Majinis and other enemies occasionally enter into the fray. 4 players can join this mode, at maximum.

The player is now dependent on the second player (or A.I.) more than in older games. When the player's health bar drops down to 0, a "DYING" period occurs, in which the player must revive another one or themselves when playing Solo in The Mercenaries by rapidly pressing the "Partner Action" button (B on Xbox 360, O on PS3) before the red meter depletes, otherwise the said other player will die in a matter of minutes (seconds on Professional). They also need to work together in some parts for example: kicking down a door, pulling switches, or freeing their partner from the enemy's grasp before they are killed. The player can give out commands when playing solo or with a partner by the same "Partner Action" button.

Gameplay Changes
Many changes came about during the development of RE 5. There were changes from previous games, and many new ideas were scrapped.


 * Very early trailers portrayed Chris in a survival commando-like costume, using a form of 1911 pistol and a version of the Silver Ghost outfitted with a compensator. These were scrapped, save for the skeletal work of the Chris model.
 * The S100 never appears in the game, nor does it appear to be a real firearm.
 * In some early trailers, the M3 appeared with pistol grip and short barrel. In the final game, it had a pistol grip and full stock with a full length barrel and magazine tube.
 * The SIG 556 was originally the FN SCAR or a similar rifle, although limited footage makes identification difficult.
 * In addition to the grenade, flame, and acid rounds traditionally used in Resident Evil games, the grenade launcher can also use liquid nitrogen and electric rounds.
 * Very early trailers showed Chris battling Majini alone, whilst in the final game he meets Sheva immediately after the game starts, before any combat takes place.
 * In one trailer, the Chainsaw Majini was portrayed as the Executioner Majini, as the Chainsaw Majini was seen swinging the Executioner Majini's giant ax in the trailer.

Controversy
The E3 2007 trailer for Resident Evil 5 drew criticism from various sources for containing supposedly racist imagery, specifically that of Caucasian protagonist Chris Redfield fighting and killing an all-black group of African enemies. Newsweek editor N'Gai Croal was quoted as saying "There was a lot of imagery in that trailer that dovetailed with classic racist imagery", commenting that the common counterpoint that no racist accusations were leveled against Resident Evil 4, which featured Spanish enemies, was inaccurate; "The imagery is not the same. It doesn’t carry the same history, it doesn’t carry the same weight. I don’t know how to explain it more clearly than that." The second RE5 trailer, released in May 2008, introduced the character of Sheva Alomar, an African native and partner to Chris. In addition, the crowd of enemies pictured, while still predominantly black, also featured Hispanic, and Caucasian characters. It was rumored that the Sheva character and the mixed race enemies were added specifically to counter the accusations of racism, though producer Jun Takeuchi insisted that the accusations made absolutely no impact on development, and that the Sheva character had always been intended to be included.

Development
Jun Takeuchi, the director of Onimusha and producer of Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, will take over producer duties from Hiroyuki Kobayashi. Keiji Inafune, who served as promotional producer for Resident Evil 2 and executive producer for the PlayStation 2 version of Resident Evil 4, is overseeing the project. In February 2007, members of Capcom’s Clover Studio were also called upon to help develop the game. However, many developers from the studio moved on to work on the Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, which debuted for the Wii. Several staff members who also worked on the original Resident Evil are involved in development. According to Takeuchi, the game will utilize the same gameplay model introduced in Resident Evil 4, while implementing thematics from the original Resident Evil into the game.

On January 21, D+PAD Magazine reported that Resident Evil 5 will be released with Limited Edition Xbox 360 box art. On January 21, 2009, pictures of the Limited Edition box claimed to allow 2-16 players to play offline via system link. Capcom initially responded stating that their "box art isn't lying", but refused to give any more details. However, soon after, Capcom issued another statement that contradicted their original response stating that the information on the box art was an error and that the correct number of players supported by system link is only two.

Music
The music for the video game was composed by Kota Suzuki. His score was electronic, but includes 15 minutes of orchestral underscore, which was recorded in Los Angeles at the Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox Studios with a 103-piece ensemble of the Hollywood Studio Symphony. Additional orchestral arrangements were composed by Wataru Hokoyama, who conducted the orchestra.

Capcom recorded in Los Angeles because they wanted a Hollywood-caliber soundtrack that would increase the game's cinematic value and global interest. The game’s soundtrack will feature an original theme song as well as live orchestral music compositions. The theme song, entitled "Pray", is composed by Kota Suzuki and sung by Oulimata Niang.

Marketing and updates
Although the game garnered much interest among Resident Evil fans, Capcom did not present any footage or information about Resident Evil 5 at E3 2006. Capcom revealed a brief new trailer for the game at E3 2007. The full E3 trailer for the game became available on the Xbox 360 Marketplace and PlayStation Network Store on July 26, 2007.

In late March 2008, the April issue of Famitsu Wave was bundled with a DVD containing a preview of the game. On April 10, 2008, a translation of the video was published on Capcom's official blog. Takeuchi gave new information on the game and showed new gameplay footage. A new trailer shown at Captivate '08 debuted on Spike TV's show Gametrailers TV, on May 31, 2008, as well as the GameTrailers.com website.

A playable demo of the game was released in Japan on December 5, 2008 for the Xbox 360. A playable demo was released in North America and Europe as a one-week exclusive for the Xbox 360 on January 26, 2009. On February 2, 2009, the demo was released for the PlayStation 3. Another preview was released for the movie Friday the 13th, finally giving the name of the virus; "Uroboros"

On PlayStation Home, a Resident Evil 5 themed area can be accessed known as the Resident Evil Studio Lot.

An updated version of the game, Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition, was put on shelves (in the case of the PS3) or offered for download (the Xbox 360) on the first anniversary of the game's release. It featured two new levels intended to better flesh-out the main game's storyline. The pack also came with an alternative Mercenaries mode, "Reunion", which featured S.T.A.R.S. officers Rebecca Chambers and Barry Burton.