There’s been a fair deal of conflicting opinion regarding the recently released Resident Evil 5 demo, and for my part, I’m not entirely sure what side of the discussion I fall into. Is Resident Evil too mired in its past for its own good?

It’s strange, seeing so many people in the gaming community at large arguing about not being able to move while shooting, I immediately considered that nobody had that issue with RE4, and if RE5 is more of that awesome best thing ever, what’s the problem? I mean, Resident Evil tries to cast you as a common person thrown into dangerous situations, and pulling off a running headshot is indeed unrealistic for that kind of protagonist.

So the demo was released to the masses and, still very excited about the game, I dove into it. I wouldn’t say I was disappointed, but the experience has tempered my anticipation for the game. Reflecting on it, I came to think that perhaps my experience with EA’s Dead Space has changed what I believe this genre of so-called survival action can do. Where it could have been argued that RE5’s control restrictions were necessary for the pacing and intensity of the game, Dead Space had no such limitations.

Another thought that came to mind is perhaps the westernized control scheme in RE5 has had a negative impact on the perception of the game. The new scheme is very smart, including things like a gears of war-style roadie run, but where in RE4 both movement and aiming were handled on the left stick, you aim with the right stick in RE5, which has the left stick completely freed up during aiming, but also totally inactive.

I’m also frustrated by the knife-turret control, where you hold down the left bumper and then have to slash with the right trigger. It’s just one step too much for a quick low-damage short-range attack. It’s analogous to how it was in RE4, and it was an issue in that game too. What really bugs me about this is that they fixed this on the Wii version of RE4, where you simply shook the nunchuk to have Leon automatically aim and slash the knife.

There’s been lots of comments about the inventory system as well, but given the new co-op nature of the game, they had to devise a simple real-time solution for inventory management, and for their part, I think they’ve done a fair job. You can map things to the d-pad, quick select items with the left trigger, etc. You can’t break up packs of ammo though, you either give your partner the entire stack or nothing at all.

In spite of all these considerations, I still did have a lot of fun playing the demo cooperatively online, enough to replay the two brief levels repeatedly. I have concerns with the AI’s capacity for handling your partner in solo play, which seemed to act with an impressive degree of intelligence at first, but it became somewhat frustrating to manage as the intensity of the combat increased.

It’s important to remember that this is a demo and is not entirely indicative of the final product, but the simple reality is that this demo has had the opposite of the intended effect, and while I can certainly say I enjoyed the demo, my anticipation for RE5 has been tempered considerably.