Make way for another rambling nigh-incoherent conversation about videogames. Brought to you by the fine folks of the BBPS, me, and the letter E.

The Show:

• What’cha Been Playing? (A whole lot)
• Break (49:22)
• Demo Impressions – Halo Wars, Killzone 2, Resident Evil 5 (49:40)
• One Last Thing… (1:17:29)

Download BitCast 66 here, or in the usual spot on iTunes.

That said:

I keep reading about “sluggish controls,” but let’s go with “obstinate” instead. It’s more literary and more accurate – I would have settled for either, honestly, so this is a real treat. I would say that sluggish controls represent a technological or design concern that manifests in the simulation’s inability to reflect your will. That’s not the case with Resident Evil 5, or 4, or (I would say) any Resident Evil ever. The controls work precisely as they were designed to: to make you mindful of your play. If you don’t like it, and certainly that is your prerogative, at least have the self-awareness to recognize it as the twisted, petulant sense of adolescent entitlement that it is.

Allow me to provide a properly petulant, adolescent response to this: fuck your fucking twisted sense of grandiose pomposity. Those controls are outdated and ridiculously clunky. Period, full stop. I provided reasons for why I believe that to be the case; just braying about the poor unwashed masses and their “not getting it”, while condescending to all of us who dare not enjoy the game, is a far greater example of adolescent entitlement than any whining I have read on any forum. Literary? Accurate? What in the name of zombie jesus is he talking about?

But hey, if Tycho wants to further explain and extrapolate the sublime nature of making me think extra hard to remember that a crappy knife slash is LB+RT, I’m all eyes. And I do mean that: if someone can wave a verbal wand and somehow make Resident Evil 5 fun for me, I want to hear it. But judging from the reactions I have read around the web, I am far from alone on this.

I finally got a chance to play the Resident Evil 5 demo, which has been out a week on X360 for Live Gold members (i.e. not me). I tried out both the 360 and PS3 versions last night. I noticed no significant difference between the two. All impressions below are from the single player levels.

The African village re-creation looks really fantastic, and I like the general direction of having the player move between blinding daylight and dark, cramped interiors. The usual Capcom attention to detail is present as always, in the heat waves and dust particles. It’s not state-of-the-art by any means (take a look at any door texture), but it certainly gets the job done. The look of the game owes everything to its superb art direction and colour palette. Music is appropriately moody, if a little forgettable. Cutscenes such as the one opening the Public Assembly level are well-directed, making heavy use of the handheld camera style.

So, the setting is great. Unfortunately it rapidly falls apart as soon as you start shooting things.

A quick mention of RE4 is in order, just so you know where I am coming from. I didn’t play through more than the first 45 minutes of that game. The control scheme was a dealbreaker; I simply can’t get used to the lack of any walking, or even slow strafing*, while shooting. I know it has it’s fans, and if you are one of them, then some of the following criticisms will not necessarily bother you as much as they did me, because RE5 is RE4 in a new setting, with a partner character.

Like RE4, you can’t move at all while your gun is aiming. The aim button causes you to plant your feet and go into turret mode. When the bad guys get too close, you execute an instant 180º spin, run a few steps, spin again and repeat. This was kind of clunky when RE4 came out, and it’s really stupid today.

Furthermore, because you can’t move while aiming, this fact has forced the developers into some truly contortionist tactics regarding the animation of the enemies. They will shuffle toward you at a ridiculously slow pace. In groups they will walk up to you and dutifully wait until you shoot some of their friends in the face before setting upon you. Sometimes, hilariously, they will sprint up to about 10 feet away from you, then resume the zombie shuffle. Most of these zombies can take 3-6 shots to go down, sometimes even in the head. They will stagger around for several seconds at a time holding their face until they resume their determined, snail-like pace.

The new partner character, Sheva, is not very effective. She gets in your way quite often, begs you for your (precious) ammo, and likes to get into situations where you need to help her right away. She definitely helps with the shooting, but between the slow zombies and the fact that she will “spend” your ammo at will, she’s just as much of a liability as not having her there at all. I imagine it changes significantly when you have a co-op human partner playing as her as well, although this is only available when playing online (There is in fact offline co-op, thanks Ajar. The PS3 demo allows free co-op online play also.)

The old Resident Evil contextual items are back: when approaching certain ledges or windows or doors, Chris can move over/through it by pressing the right button. Sometimes he will help Sheva onto a slight fork in the game path. You can’t actually tell where these magic “moments” are until you are actually standing on them, which can lead to some frustration.

But the biggest offender, by far, are the controls. They are needlessly cumbersome and difficult in ways that are frankly indefensible. To run you hold down a button and move the stick, otherwise Chris walks. There is no reason to walk anywhere. At all. To use your knife, you must combine a chorded 2-button combo with the shoulder buttons (upper left and lower right on both consoles). That 180º spin that you must use so often? No button for that. It’s not even mentioned anywhere within the game’s pad control scheme: I had to look it up on the net to make sure it was even in there (it’s down on the left stick while pushing the same button that also reloads, or opens doors, or runs). I mean, seriously: there’s a dedicated button for “show minimap”, a dedicated button for “look at Sheva”, but for the crucial and oft-used knife attack or 180º spin? Nope. Inventory management is ridiculously clunky and poorly designed, but runs in realtime, so you need to fuck around with it while zombies shamble forward, and sometimes involves a menu structure that is 2 or 3 levels deep. Haven’t combined the herbs you picked up? You’re probably toast.

I set the scheme to type D, which was the least offensive of the bunch, but still a far cry from – I have to say it, a normal new-gen shooter. Dead Space had a control scheme that literally disappeared when I played it; I spent no time thinking about how to do something, just what I wanted to do. The aiming (which I set to “fastest” – there are only 3 settings) was still like moving underwater. Chris literally cannot turn with anything approaching normal human speed. Outside of videogames, I have fired a real gun exactly once, and even so, I feel quite confident that if Chris Redfield were to somehow materialize and come after me in real life, I could fuck that guy up without much of a sweat. All I’d need to do is step around him.

My demo experience ended with a giant dude with a chainsaw and a bag on his head. I shot him in the face 5 times then threw a grenade (6 button presses to make that happen, btw) for good measure. He shook his head then killed me. I turned the game off and walked away.

It’s just not scary. And the controls suck ass.

My recommendation would be to play Dead Space or Left 4 Dead instead. They’re both a lot scarier, and control beautifully. It’s a shame really, after all the talk of “western-friendly controls” being added to RE5, I thought maybe this is one I would enjoy. The designers seem to be hamstrung by their own dogged insistence on outdated control schemes.

* It has come to my attention after writing this that apparently you can sort of strafe left-right with one of the control schemes. I was unable to discover this. It’s certainly not mentioned anywhere in the game.

Lots more info for the RE aficionado at BioFlames.

First thing we noticed was that track 2 – the Batman theme – was way, way better music than what they actually used in the game. So we started trying a few other Elfman classics: Edward Scissorhands, Scrooged… and then we hit upon a winner.

Big Top Pee Wee.

I originally posed this question on the forum at Ars Technica a few days ago:

New Resident Evil 5 trailer is spectacular – and disturbing

If you haven’t seen it yet – GO. It looks unbelievable. Insane, crushed HDR lighting actually works for this game. You almost feel like you need sunglasses to look at it. The atmosphere, the setting, it’s amazingly detailed.

But here’s the thing. I’m not posting just to say how incredible the graphics are. I’m posting because… well there’s no other way to put it: I’m a bit disturbed by the setup.

You are a lone, beefy white guy who is shooting an entire village’s worth of skinny black Africans.

Now, I’m not crying foul over this personally. I played RE4, and no one howled when you killed an entire village’s worth of Spaniards. Is this any different, really? They are all zombies after all right?

The game’s creators (no links, sorry) have referenced Black Hawk Down as a major influence on the game and it definitely shows. I remember watching that movie and being taken aback by the insane slaughter – in fact I remember remarking to my girlfriend at the time that I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea to portray the people of Mogadishu as the nearly mindless zombie freaks that they were in the movie. Upon reflection, I came to respect the approach of the film more; everything is told from the eyes of the squad that was shot down, and in their view, it probably did seem an awful lot like that. We have books written by the survivors that more or less confirm the hellscape that the movie portrays (which of course was also based on a book). We know it actually happened, and in a sense that renders it less controversial, at least as far as the film treatment went.

But with RE5, I fear that there is an inevitable backlash coming because of the theme. Capcom needs to tread very carefully with the setup, in order to not piss people off. And again I’m not advocating any sort of political correctness, but rather just an awareness of how loaded their imagery potentially is in this game.

What do you guys think? Am I being alarmist or did you get the same vibe?

While many of the responses in the thread centered around “why would we complain about this when we’ve already killed an entire village of Spaniards” – quite rightly, I’d add – it looks like the racism shitstorm has in fact been kicked off by this post at blog Black Looks. I quote:

This is problematic on so many levels, including the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages, the killing of Black people by a white man in military clothing, and the fact that this video game is marketed to children and young adults. Start them young… fearing, hating, and destroying Black people.

The first thing I’ll note is that what you read above is the entirety of the post. There’s no follow-through, no exposition, no analysis. It’s a classic knee-jerk reaction. (And devoid of any understanding of an M-rated game… “children”? Er, no.)

I’m not worried about this particular post. But think of it as a spark landing on some dryer lint. This story is now going to morph into much longer op-eds and blog posts and forum rantings all over the internet. Move over, Manhunt. We’ve got a new videogame whipping boy in town. Moreover, RE5 is not due until 2008. The game is not even remotely close to finished, and thus the controversy can continue to fester in the absence of any real information for many months yet. It’s going to be ugly.

footnote – the post title refers to the fact that the “original” zombies are, of course, black. A fact that I’m sure will be brought up many times in the ensuing debate.