The corresponding blog post by Shamus had already gone into great detail regarding the boss fight with the Ouroboros creature, but I am most interested in the response in the comments section. Many had made note of their own awful experiences to this boss, or referenced other streamers that had a similarly confusing time. Yet still there was the odd comment, shrugging their shoulders and saying “I don’t know what to tell ya, I found it simple to comprehend”.

I am a strong believer that true objectivity may be impossible, but it is still something to strive for when examining a work critically. You want to understand the developer’s intent and what common response players have to it. However, there is no disregarding of personal taste and whether the subjective preferences of the developer will align with the audience or not. This is where “intended audience” becomes an important factor, and while it must be taken into account for anyone seeking as objective an analysis as possible, it must also be recognized that, sometimes, one person’s experience is just that: one person’s experience.

That is to say, while it is possible to immediately understand the logistics of the fight, there are too many questionable or vague features that go against common gaming expectations to make the proper course of action clear.

The primary design flaw is the nature of the weak points themselves. In most games, if the obvious glowing bit bursts after so much damage, that indicates progress. However, if there seem to be regenerating weak points each time you access a damage phase, then it begs the question of whether any progress is being made at all. Do all weak points need to be destroyed in a single phase? Does each regenerated weak point indicate regenerated health? Without a health bar present, there’s no clear indication as to the state of the enemy’s vitals.

There are plenty of games in which weak points regenerate but the monster’s health does not. However, this fact is made clear by the health bar at the top or bottom of the screen. There are also games in which regenerating limbs or weak points are also indicative of regenerating health, indicated by green glowing numbers or, again, a health bar. That the ouroboros has no health bar means the player cannot be certain whether they are making progress or not.

The intention of the design is likely to have one player wielding the flamethrower while the other has the high-damage weapons equipped, unloading magnums or shotguns into the weak points after the ouroboros has been doused in fire. If those weak points continued to reduce in number each phase, then the players would instinctively understand the route to progress. Instead, Shamus and I felt as if we were repeating the same steps over and over again, and therefore wondering if, perhaps, we were doing something wrong. Even guides did not help align what we were seeing visually with what was being described.

This is objectively bad design, but only because of one small, minor detail. It’s a shame, because otherwise it would certainly enforce the game’s themes of teamwork. Each player would divvy up responsibility.

Woe to anyone playing single player, then, as trusting the flamethrower to Sheva may be unwise, assuming it is even possible.

I was originally certain we were near the conclusion of the game, particularly as it feels like there’s not really much story to chase. In fact, there really is no story to Resident Evil 5, when you think about it. Chris and Sheva are “investigating” suspicious B.O.W. activity at the start, but there’s no real plot to follow. It really is just one set-piece after the next with some ham-fisted sense of “partnership” thrown in as a theme. Chris and Sheva aren’t actually looking for Jill as Leon had been searching for Ashley. Additionally, once Leon had found Ashley, he had to not only extract her and get her to safety, but he had to find a way to remove the Plagas parasite from himself and her. There were clear goals beyond simply having to shoot the locals and kill the baddy.

Resident Evil 5 feels overlong because it not only lacks the clear segmentation of its game world — we go from jungle to ruin to high-tech facility back to ruin only to return to high-tech once more — but because there’s no real story to progress, either.

It’s just another way in which Capcom tried to replicate the prior game’s success but with a co-op twist, yet failed to miss all the points that made that prior game work so well.