Resident Evil 5

This has got to be the worst horror game I have ever played in my entire life. There wasn't a single moment in this game where I was terrified. Quite frankly, anybody -and I mean ANYBODY- who considers this scary belongs to a mental hospital because something is seriously wrong with them. Resident Evil is supposed to be the leader in fear, so who the hell were they expecting to scare? I would recommend Alone in the Dark for horror before I recommend this, and Alone in the Dark is a piece of shit. Awful awful horror game. Well, good thing it wasn't intended to be a horror game because it makes for a somewhat adequate action game.

OH GOD! Don't tell me your pregnant!

The story begins with Resident Evil vet Chris Redfield responding to a disturbance in a unnamed African region (maybe it is named, I wasn't paying attention) that may have something to do with a deadly virus. Being the only white guy in the area, the agency he works for, the BSAA, dispatched Sheva Alomar to be his backup and calm the locals from overreacting to whitey. I wish I was fuckin kidding; she's there to protect from racism; how fuckin hilarious. Sadly the virus has spread completely and every citizen has turned into zombies, only that's wrong. These guys are actually called majini, not zombies. Seemed like something I should point out before I get railroaded by RE fans, but for those who don't give a fuck I'm calling them zombies for the rest of the review. So now Chris and Sheva have to do what an entire army couldn't do and save the people by killing the people in their way at the moment. One of the main problems I have with the story is that it's tied to the previous RE series, and there are people and events that will leave you lost if you haven't played the series before or paid much attention to the story (like me).

You better hope that next shot kills him

Some of you already know this, but I just have to complain about the control scheme. Dammit, first Legends of Wrestlemania now this game. Lately I've been having bad luck with controls. There's nothing inherently wrong with them, and once you get used to the somewhat stiff movements running is no longer an issue, but why the hell can't I move and shoot at the same time? Aren't these trained soldiers? It just looks retarded standing there shooting as the enemy advances to your position and proceed to bite your nipples off. They said they did it to add tension, but since we're no longer in the realm of fear anymore it's not really necessary now is it Capcom? And why can't I pause to go into my inventory screen? I can't fuckin micromanage in a middle of a horde. So if my partner has ammo I need, I go into the screen, do the switch, and hope I don't get attacked during the proceedings. And why only 9 slots? You guys really know how to complicate shit don't you? It's bad enough having limited ammo, but now you're super limiting what we can carry. By the way, every time you pick up a herb, that's a slot. So if you pick up 5 herbs, that's 5 slots gone. What the fuck? Ammo stack on one slot; first aid sprays stack up; everything else stacks up. Why not herbs? And why does wearing a vest take up a slot? Aren't I putting everything in my vest? Why is my vest taking up space in my vest? AAAAHHHH!

......FUUUUUCK!

If your doing single player, then you're gonna hate your partner, Sheva. Yea, she's somewhat helpful, but sometimes she's either too helpful or never around when you need her. Whenever I'd get somewhat hurt, Sheva would run in and heal me. That's nice and all, but we're working with limited supplies so you can't just use up all our aid every time I stub my toe. And she never uses the small stuff; it's always the most powerful mother fuckin herb or spray she can find. Also, the bitch keeps taking all the pistol ammo. At one point, I completely ran out of ammo and Sheva was having a field day picking off zombies, and she wouldn't give me any. With all that ammo, she still found a way to run out, leaving us both in deep shit. Sometimes I wanted to leave her behind and let her die, but the game doesn't let you do that. The minute she dies (and it will happen....repeatedly) it's game over and you have to start at the last checkpoint. After a while, I refused to play another minute of this shit alone, so I waited till Neil got his copy. Since my game was royally fucked, we started a new one on Neil's game. He played as the male with the rugged good looks and insanely tight shirt that seems impossible to put on in the first place and doesn't look like he'll be taken it off any time soon, and I played as Sheva where for the first time in my life I had a sweet ass. This girl is hot. Seriously, I have never seen so many guys drool over a black video game chic before, but that's what happening. I'm surprised there aren't any nude photos or art of her on the internet yet. While we were playing, the game really....WAIT! Found one nude pic on google. Be right back.................(soothing evelator music)............EW my hands are all sticky now. Anyway, while we were playing, the game really shined and became fun for me. It's a really rewarding experience to have someone you can count on and knows what he/she is doing when a onslaught of mutants show up, especially when one of them is branishly a chainsaw. Also, having a partner creates some funny ass moments. One time while Neil was turning some handles the chainsaw dude came out and chased him around. Since I was high up on a perch, all I can do was try to hurt him with some sniper shots....and laugh while he runs and curse. He eventually got his revenge when it was my turn to deal with a chainsaw dude, which took almost every single shotgun shell to take him out. Neil barely helped; he just stood there and laughed until I almost ran out of bullets, then he started helping with his little pissy pistol. At another point, we were in a marsh area, and when we got out of the boat, the path we needed to go was a body of water about waist deep. We got to the edge of dry land and looked around. When we saw it was nothing but water, we didn't put one foot in that water; we didn't shoot at the water to see if something would come up; hell we didn't even say anything to each other. We just turned around, got back on the boat, and did something else (and laughed about what happened). When we eventually went back, we found out there were crocodiles in the water. Fun. They're slow when you're in front of them, but try to run past them and they move quick as hell. I found that out the hard way. Another moment had me on a shitty little raft while Neil turned a crank to move me to the other side. By the way, there was a big fuckin croc in the water at the time. Before that though, we cleared the area of zombies and came upon the end of the road. By the time I noticed that there was a raft and one of us needed to get on it to open a door, Neil was already at the fuckin crank telling me to get on. I told him "The minute I get on this raft, I'm gonna die on purpose" for pulling such a bullshitty move on me. Sure enough the croc came up quick and I didn't respond to the quick time event (yea there are QTEs here). The croc ate me and we had to start all over. All he could say was "Dude...cmon dude. Dude". These are the kind of moments you can't have alone. Co-op pretty much changed RE5 from a lackluster game to a pretty excellent game. Honestly, I came in this thinking it would be awful, but despite the problems I had fun (in co-op ONLY!).

Charlie's Angels 5

Well, I've danced around the issue long enough so let's talk about some hot juicy racism. Capcom really opened up the floodgates (whatever that means) when they decided to set this game in Africa and released trailors featuring a white guy gunning down nameless black people. Ever since then Capcom has tried everything in its power to defer the racial talk. Your partner's black, there's some white people sprinkled in the crowd of darkies, and the setting is set up to look like some parts of modern day Africa. There was even one scene that got changed a bit because of some comments about it. In the original scene, a white woman was being dragged into a building by an infected black man. This clearly must have pissed off some people (or Capcom developed some common sense) and they changed it to look like a white guy - or at least a very light person. Either way I didn't pitied the bitch because she tried to kill us when we walked into the building. All this is fine and dandy, but even without those things I still wouldn't have called it racist. It's hard cry racism when EVERY black person is trying to kill him. I didn't really expect him to put his gun away and say "I won't do that. That would be a hate crime, and I love the blacks". Fuck that shit. While playing, not a single thought of racism had crossed my mind......UNTIL the halfway point. In the marshland I mentioned earlier, the people lived in grass huts and wore loincloths. To make matters worse, they chucked spears at us. Great. Just fuckin great. I have to deal with big lipped, loincloth wearing, grass hut living, primitive spearchuckers ARE YOU FUCKIN KIDDING ME!? Yep, there is no fuckin way this can be perceived as racist. What the hell Capcom? Who told you this was okay? (sigh*) God dammit. Well, I still wouldn't call them racist: just fuckin retarded.

Put the pistol away, Sheva

If you are a RE fan, you're gonna get this game regardless what I have to say if you haven't already. I could tell you this game will give you instant penis cancer and you would still go out and buy it. For the rest of you, DO NOT GET THIS GAME UNLESS YOU HAVE SOMEONE TO PLAY WITH! Without that second person, this game becomes shit, so find whoever you can. Get a friend; get your family; get someone you don't even like; do anything to avoid playing alone. Here's hoping RE6 gets the fuckin shooting machinics right (and is a little less racist...haha). I wonder if Resident Evil will ever go back to horror or just stick to its action based formula. I say they should go with the latter because it seems to me like the horror genre is dead (no pun intended).

NOTE: I know this has nothing to do with RE5, Xbox, or video games at all, but whatever happened to that R&B singer Ciera? She had a couple of hit albums, then just disappeared. Did all the hermaphrodite talk wear her out or something? Did she get dropped from her label and noone will pick her up? Did she just hate the business and decided to quit? Somebody let me know; I'm curious.