croik

This'll be my last post about RE5 for a while, seriously. But I finally started playing online and Mercenaries so now I can talk about them!

I've played with a couple different people now with various skill levels, none of which have been all that bad really, and a few that were a lot better than me. Sometimes it's weird not having more control over your partner like you do Sheva AI, and I feel guilty sometimes about slowing people down when I stop to look for treasures and emblems, but it's also been a lot of fun. I wish more people used mics. I've only gotten to talk to one of my partners and he didn't have much to say (though it helped a little with fighting the boss).

And then there's mercenaries, which is a total blast. Thanks to one helpful dude I was able to unlock all the stages and characters save one in one night (I got her this morning). When you're in the middle of the game fighting unending hordes of zombies it's stressful but when you're fighting against the clock with plenty of ammo and nowhere to run anyway it's a whole lot of fun!

The best part was when aforementioned Dude and I did a few levels together as Chris and Wesker. My inner dork took over and I was totally into it: he was clearly better than me, and I kept thinking, "C'mon Chris, you gotta prove yourself to Wesker!" And of course all of Wesker's battle taunts are obnoxious, so every time I saved him he just laughed, which only made me more determined to wreak havoc. It must have been pretty good motivation because we got an S rank that round.

Kind of a silly thing to enjoy as much as I did, but hey, it's going down as one of my happy gaming memories. Makes me want to write fic where Chris and Wesker are forced to fight together but 2 seconds of thought later it's obvious how impossible it would be to make it work.

Still don't know when the extra DLC is being released, but I probably won't get it. Mercenaries is enough for me. What they really ought to do is start releasing extra mercenary characters, like, say...Leon? C'mooooon Capcom, you know you wanna!

So I'm somewhere around 6 to 7 hours in Resident Evil 5 (ps3~) and I've already died 6 times, from the following:

3 chainsaws to the neck
1 quick time event gone wrong
1 Sheva got blown up where I couldn't reach her
1 Walked into a laser, oops

Which is a tad better than I did at RE4. I'm playing on normal and so far I'm consistently getting A's in my chapter scores, except when it comes to time. I am slow. But in general I'm enjoying it, even considering I'm using AI Sheva and haven't attempted online co-op yet.

( Some more thoughts with spoilers up to 4-2 )

EDIT: My neighbor is getting a tree cut down right now and the sound of the chainsaw is making me nervous B:

So I played the RE5 demo earlir and DIED, HORRIBLY. This is nothing new, I have always sucked at any kind of shooting game that isn't Dante (which isn't a shooting game so much as a shoot-everything game). I sucked at RE4 too. BUT...that won't stop me from playing it and dying lots.

It was kind of funny playing the demo because it was the same as the first playable demo Capcom showed off at Captivate last spring (except that co-op hadn't been worked in yet). Finally getting to play it after having been one of the first "civilians" to see it in action was really neat. I'm not sure yet how to feel about the co-op thing. On the one hand I can't aim for shit so it's nice to have a second person around, and the AI seemed halfway decent, but on the other I know it's going to suck up at some point (ally AI always does). I'm also too chicken to play the co-op online knowing I'd be a horrible partner XD;; Half the topics on the gamefaqs board already are people bitching about their partners sucking.

I don't want to hold anyone back! :(

It also makes me a little disappointed that I never kept up with the series from the beginning, so most of the canon is beyond me. I really liked Leon and I assume he and Chris fit together somehow*, and that Chris has a backstory I'm supposed to be familiar with going into this, but I'm not about to go hunting for RE1. Is there some kind of compilation out? Or like, a really good wiki article?? I hate being out of the loop!


*(And no, I don't mean in a slash way. Seriously!)