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Resident Evil 5 Preview

• By Sid Shuman and Patrick Shaw
• December 15, 2008 12:15 PM PST
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Capcom's new survival-horror opus is closer than ever, and the staff of GamePro got unprecedented access to the game.

In this exclusive report, we detail the shocking shifts in gameplay, dissect vile new Resident Evil 5 enemies, including giant bats and bloodthirsty crocodiles, and engage in desperate shoot-outs in an oil refinery and a desolate mountain pass. And check out our new Resident Evil 5 Q&A and new Resident Evil 5 screens.

Resident Evil returns on March 13 with a nightmarish new strain of parasitic enemies to hack through, a frantic cooperative gameplay style, and a heavier emphasis on action. Capcom's undead-shooting series is known for its scares and its grim, isolated atmosphere, but Resident Evil 5 boosts the action quotient and turns up the lights to create a fast-paced horror game that's scary even when it's set in broad daylight. The game pits you against teeming masses of zombie-like aggressors, misshapen monsters, and other carriers of the mysterious Las Plagas infection that were last seen ravaging the spooky Spanish village from Resident Evil 4.

Heart of Darkness

After rising from the smoldering wreckage of the Umbrella Corporation facility at the conclusion of Resident Evil Code: Veronica, original RE veteran Chris Redfield now heads to Africa to battle more plague-carrying adversaries. As part of the BSAA, the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, Redfield and new partner Sheva Alomar team up to investigate a new outbreak that sees its victims turned into mindless hosts for a prehistoric body-snatching parasite. Umbrella Corporation, the shadowy bio-tech conglomerate that pulled all the strings in the previous Resident Evil games, is no longer the villain du jour. But a new pharmaceutical firm called Tricell appears to be picking up where Umbrella's forbidden bio-weapons research left off, and the result is an outbreak of unprecedented size and virulence in a small village in eastern Africa. You won't have to wait long to find evidence of infection, either. Just minutes into the game you'll be forced to fend off an army of sprinting, snarling zombies, who will tear down a house, board by board, to reach you.

Social Anxiety

In a nod to blockbuster shooters such as Gears of War, Resident Evil 5 enables you and a friend to play through the full campaign storyline together, whether you link up online or in your living room using split screen. Before playing, both users enter a lobby menu where they can trade weapons and ammo, purchase new guns or upgrade existing ones, and stash gear in a persistent inventory. And if you want to tackle the game solo, no problemo: the computer will fill in for Sheva's role and does so quite capably. When the computer controls Sheva, she'll grab supplies on her own and automatically heal you if you're struggling. If you're in a micromanaging mood, you can also swap her behaviors between Assault and Cover, or signal for her to stop or go. Luckily, the computer is smart enough that you won't need to babysit.

Whether you're playing with the computer or a human, providing cover fire for your partner as you both fight off hordes of the infected is a reoccurring theme in Resident Evil 5's campaign. Co-op adds more than just a second trigger finger, though. With a little communication, two players can easily launch orchestrated attacks against some the game's behemoth bad guys. One player can lure a particularly tough enemy, for example, while the other player blasts away from behind. We saw some inventive scenarios that further exploited the two-player formula, one such action scene set deep inside a dimly lit mine shaft. Armed with a single bulky spotlight to illuminate the suffocating darkness, one player can guide the beam to illuminate onrushing enemies and enable the other player to pick them off one by one. Moments like these made us smile, and gave us several of the startling jolts that made the prior games so memorably creepy.

With Resident Evil 5 shifting gears to a more action-centric experience, some series loyalists will undoubtedly worry that the game has abandoned its tough-as-nails, bullet-counting ways in favor of wall-to-wall shoot-outs. It's true that Resident Evil 5 has adopted a brighter, more visual style than its predecessor, trading in the gloomy Euro villages for the smoldering light and heat of Africa. And because you'll almost always have Sheva watching your back, the sense of brooding isolation that haunted Resident Evil 4 fades into a low background hum. On the other hand, we found that the cooperative experiences jangled our nerves in some new and unexpected ways. The game ends if either Chris or Sheva dies, so your self-centered tendencies will naturally give way to genuine concern for your partner's safety. Seeing your buddy go down under a tangle of thrashing zombie limbs marks a palpable sense of fear and dread, and you'll find yourself in moments of genuine panic as you desperately try to locate and save your dying comrade before he or she bleeds out. Luckily, some helpful on-screen prompts will alert you to your partner's condition, but you won't want to stray far-death lurks around every corner.

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