The fifth is also the shortest episode Shamus and I recorded for our Resident Evil 5stream series. He hadn’t been feeling well and, in hindsight, it is quite obvious he was having a more miserable time than usual as a result. It’s good we cut the stream short.

While his write-up on the episode was quite short and focused primarily on recovering long-lost files of his Stolen Pixels comic series (of which he shared one of his best in said post), I feel like this sixty minutes is also a nice vertical slice of the game’s problems. The environmental inconsistency, where you’ll go from high-tech laboratory to old ruins in an instant without any sense of continuity. It’s almost as if they randomly shuffled environments and set-pieces during development after they’d already styled and textured them rather than before. The pointless and clumsy cover mechanics compared to the superior Gears of War cover system. The absolutely terrible dialogue and story.

One element that only occurred to me watching this time was the Licker horde, however. I recall playing the first Resident Evil: Revelations on the Nintendo 3DS and thinking the limited enemy types in a single level was in part due to the limitations of being a handheld. One level had nothing but Hunters, for example, only for another to exclusively pit you against wolves. Later levels would better mix said enemies up, however. Here, the only time you ever face Lickers is when there’s a whole crowd of them.

Perhaps on my next playthrough I’ll try and observe the dynamics within the human opponents that feel natural and appropriate while waves of Lickers feel like a cheap, hasty development trick.

What likely feels most fitting for this game is the conflict with Wesker and Jill immediately following the unclear, overlong and under-explained boss fight with the Ouroboros. There are many aspects of the fight that aren’t clear, and this is in part due to that factor of time. The player has a limited amount of space to tackle Wesker and Jill at first, a phase in which Wesker will dodge every attack. If the player stands in front of a very specific closed door for several seconds, however, a cut-scene will trigger in which Wesker kicks the player through and expands the battlefield. This also changes they dynamic somewhat, as there are some hidden items in this newly opened passage that can only be accessed during this phase of the battle.

Once the player is through that door, however, Chris and Sheva are quick to discuss a “change in strategy”, one in which they hide from Wesker. This isn’t too bad to figure out, but the player can speed the process up dealing enough damage by hiding from Wesker and catching him off guard.

This isn’t a particularly unclear or awful portion of the game. It’s still far better than the Ouroboros fight. However, it’s clear that they’re trying to marry theme with mechanics in a way that just doesn’t work. Chris and his new partner are now pit against his ...nemesis? Rival? and his former partner. Chris and Sheva are outmatched in brute strength, so they have to rely on their wits to survive this fight. The player and their companion must work together to distract Wesker while evading Jill. On paper this is actually a great concept, but I think there are several factors that make this fight a mundane mess rather than an exciting confrontation.

The first is a combination of dialogue and voice acting. Franchise fans seem to love D. C. Douglas’ performance as Albert Wesker, but his hammy performance and fake accent just come off as grating and smarty when you hear the same handful of sound bites over and over. He only talks so much in order to communicate his current awareness state to the player, but this is the first of two battles where the player will be forced to hear his sneering snarl repeatedly.

The other issue relies on shortcuts like standing in front of a door for a few seconds to open up the next phase. Not only are there no clues to this door’s purpose, but there’s no accomplishment to finally opening it. The trick is to literally stand there and get kicked by the bad guy. It would be one thing if there were some puzzle in the environment, such as finding chains tied to weights that, when released, could raise the gate. This would reward player observation and require their own action. The cut-scene kick into the door rewards nothing.

Jill’s brain-washing boob jewel, however, is the real problem. If you shoot Jill too much, she dies. As such, it took a while before Shamus and I decided to try and shoot the jewel to hasten the fight. It turns out this works, but Jill still does take damage. She can still die trying this strategy. If the player never thinks to fire on that jewel, then it will take several, several attempts to rip that jewel off, to the point the player will wonder if they’re doing something wrong again.

It’s not as bad as the ouroboros fight since it at least doesn’t cost ammunition, but is still lacking in proper feedback to the player… and results in hearing the same handful of barks from Chris over, and over, and over again.

Next episode sees the epic conclusion.