Resident Evil 5

2026-05-03
Please save the "racist" diatribe. I've been to Africa. I've seen a sexy freaky bulging bicep white boy roundhouse kicking the heads off hordes of black people. This is real life and only a sick boring little basement dweller would complain about racism and "inaccuracy".

But really, imagine getting mad about "racism" when you're playing one of only two mainline Resident Evil games with co-op, and the only great one of the two. Imagine complaining about racism when you could be punching a boulder as Chris Redfield while a frothing-at-the-mouth, unbelievably insane, cooler than piss, Matrix-ass Wesker screeches "CHRIIIIIS". Imagine not playing Mercenaries till your thumbs bleed, till you're so good at melee-comboing hordes of zombies, while autistically milling about the map for pickups that you rank #1 in the US for one of the maps. That one I don't need to imagine because I'm that good and I'm that racist.

Get on my level.

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Here's the thing: I'm a mutant strand of RE player. The franchise has spent the last decade trying to scare me with omnipresent unkillable assholes — RE2R's Mr. X clomping around the police station, RE9's The Girl constantly popping out of the ceiling like she's never heard of a door. Fuck running away and fuck a stalker. The dusty old video essayist alone in his room can babble all he wants about the horror of the original REs and what was lost. I'm the coked-out gooner ripping shots with Chris Redfield at the bar before we eiffel tower some lucky lady. I am here for the camp. I am here for the action. I want to kill everything in the building and then do inventory tetris in the menu while my co-op partner waits and sighs.

Resident Evil 5 was made for me. It's the virulent action strain of Biohazard, mutating live in front of you like a virus inside the universe of its own franchise. Take RE4: that quick-turn, those limb-specific melees, a dollop of campiness, and that brown hue to everything that ushered in the 360 era. Now mutate that bitch and watch it all grow uncontrollably like Chris' car-tire thick biceps. Chris has got more ways to send a Majini to Africa Hell than you can shake a rotten egg at. Wesker has ascended to the king of camp single-handedly elevating the entire game (two hands when he's stopping an RPG). And Capcom has invented new types of browns that will have you questioning whether you're colorblind. Capcom made a great mess with RE6 by cranking that same mutation dial to eleven; RE5 is the version where the dial is set to a sensible nine and the whole thing actually holds together.

And then there's Mercenaries. The thing that elevates this game from a co-op campaign you finish in a weekend to a something you yearn to master. Drop into a map, eight minutes on the clock, hunt time bonuses, hunt combo extends, never let the meter break. Backhand a Majini, kick the next one into a wall, suplex the third before he hits the ground, and somewhere in the middle of all that find a chicken to pop, find an emerald in a pot, find the next time bonus before the timer runs out. It's a tight little arcade game hiding inside a campaign game and it might just be the best thing in the package.

You wanna know if you'll get along with me? Tell me what you think of Resident Evil 5. It's the cleanest personality test in the medium. Can you handle change to a thing you love? Can you look past the surface to find the good shit underneath? Do you like shooting people of different skin colors with a friend on the couch?