(Update: The songs in bold are now confirmed as being in the game. The whole setlist has not been fully announced yet, so I’ll continue to update this post as we get more information. Paul.)

With Activision releasing a new Guitar Hero game compiling songs from their previous titles with the drums and vocals interface of World Tour added, here’s a list by game of the songs we want to see on it.

Guitar Hero
Audioslave – Cochise
Bad Religion – Infected
Black Sabbath – Iron Man
The Donnas – Take It Off
Joan Jett and The Blackhearts – I Love Rock and Roll
Sum 41 – Fat Lip

Guitar Hero II
Guns N’ Roses – Sweet Child O’ Mine
Iron Maiden – The Trooper
Lynard Skynard – Freebird
My Chemical Romance – Dead!
Spinal Tap – Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight
Toadies – Possum Kingdom

Guitar Hero Rocks The 80s
Asia – Heat of the Moment
Dio – Holy Diver
Extreme – Play with Me
Oingo Boingo – Only a Lad
Scandal – The Warrior
The Vapours – Turning Japanese

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Bloc Party – Helicopter
Disturbed – Stricken
Heart – Barracuda
Kiss – Rock and Roll All Nite
Muse – Knights of Cydonia
Rage Against The Machine – Bulls on Parade
Priestess – Lay Down
The Sex Pistols – Anarchy In The UK
Slayer – Raining Blood
Social Distortion – Story of My Life
The Who – The Seeker

Guitar Hero Aerosmith
Aerosmith – Dream On
Aerosmith – Livin’ On The Edge
Aerosmith – Love In An Elevator
Aerosmith – Rag Doll

Aerosmith – Sweet Emotion
Cheap Trick – Dream Police

Guitar Hero On Tour N/A
Smash Mouth – All Star
Twisted Sister – We’re Not Gonna Take It

Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades N/A
Alien Ant Farm – Smooth Criminal
Edgar Winter Group – Free Ride
Foo Fighters – The Pretender
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Can’t Stop

Fingers crossed!

Here

…Is where you will find a series of fascinating, hilarious and occasionally horrifying short presentations on the way Gamestop, the USA’s premiere game store runs it’s business. It was produced by a disgruntled Gamestop ex-employee and mentioned by Edie Sellers in Digital Cowboys: Episode 97. For some reason it starts on episode 3, so kick off there. These were removed from YouTube and the producer Whistleblowerzero had his account suspended. It’s pretty obvious why.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Some games youâll never beat.
Statistically only a small percentage of players see a game through to
the end, but thereâs a difference between getting pushed to the edge of
your abilities and laying (or throwing) the pad down and just never
getting into the game in the first place. I went back to Mass Effect
last week. It was one of the hardest moments in gaming for me. Not
because of the difficulty of the game, but because eight months had
elapsed since Iâd last sat in the Mako and wondered where to go.

Going back to games is
something weâve all faced. Maybe the first time round you werenât in
the mood, or you had too much on your plate or the game simply repelled
you by being tricky and convoluted, but then you started seeing it
everywhere, your friends kept staring at you aghast when you said you
hadnât even really played it and finally podcasters started talking
about the thing like it was a world changing event in gaming, one which
youâd missed out on. Those thoughts trickle to the back of your mind
and prick at you when youâre in bed, or walking down the street or
cruising Amazon. âYou never finished Mass Effect dickhead.â They say.
âWhatâs the matter? Is Little big planet too hard for you?â until
eventually. âYouâre not afraid of The Darkness are you?â Until you snap
and go on a budget spending spree.

This is the best thing about
the ordeal. You spend only a fraction of what these games originally
cost. I picked up Mass Effect for the British equivalent of $12, The
Darkness for $9 and LBP for $18. All of which add up to less than one
new game. The slow decline in price of any game on the market is a
godsend for folks who pick it up late, something that may go away when
itâs digital downloads only. Pleased with your bargains you take them
home, slap them in and fire them up again.

âand youâre back where you got
stuck before. This is the hardest part and the biggest hurdle you will
ever jump in that game. RPGâs are the worst offenders. With a
platformer or a shooter, youâre going to get fairly universal controls
and hopefully an easy to grasp interface. An RPG takes the five hours
youâve already played it just to get to grips with the complex combat,
leveling and item system, so when you come back, you have to re-learn
that in minutes or youâll die quickly and repeatedly. Final Fantasy XII
still has me stymied. Iâm not sure Iâll ever be able to go back to that
one because itâs a generation behind. The lumbering behemoth of
non-widescreen, standard definition, coupled with a wired pad of all
things, is a mighty enemy indeed.

But in the case of Mass Effect
I had two avenging angels on my side. Xbox Live and a good friend.
Quantum sat patiently and talked me through a difficult vehicle section
and the mine that followed simply by listening to my descriptions and
going from the memory of his past six runs through. Yes thatâs not a
typo, this man has spent hundreds of hours in that game, and who better
to have at my back? Now Iâm halfway through and really beginning to
enjoy the story and the world itâs set in. So next time you venture
back into an uncharted game that you just canât seem to break into, I
can thoroughly recommend getting a coach. Someone whoâs been there and
can dissolve your frustrations with knowledge and guidance. Quantum, to
me is better than a strategy guide. Thanks mate.

These are some of the best previous episodes of Digital Cowboys. Look for them on iTunes or indeed, here on the blog. The best ten are highlighted in bold.

• Episode 5 (May 22/07) Features a screwball radio play 45 minutes in.
• Episode
  9 (June 20/07) Was sequels and why they suck, where we worked out the
  mathematical likelihood of any trilogy being even good, let alone
  great. This data was extrapolated from 57 existing trilogies.
  
• Episode 10
  (June 26/07) Featured among other things video game controversy where
  we talked about Carmageddon, Beat em and Eat Em and Custers revenge.
  This was after Manhunt 2 was refused classification in the UK.
  
• Episode 11 (July 4/07) The first room 101 where we threw things we hated about films and video games into a room representing hell.
  
• Episode 13 (July 18/07) Was the 2007 E3 special, featuring Chewbacca and his PSP.
• Episode 18 (August 22/07) Where we looked at films that need remaking. It finishes on an awesome Clive Owen song.
  
• Episode 14 (July 25/07) One for Firefly fans.
• Episode 19 (August 30/07) Movies based on video games and why they all suck.
• Episode 24 (October 3/07) With the release of Halo 3 we did an epic episode looking at the whole trilogy. 
• Episode 36 (December 29/07) The games of 2007 roundup.
• Episode 37 (January 10/08) 2007 news roundup (Including Jeff Gerstman’s sudden exodus from Gamespot)
• Greatest Hits (April 22/08) Episodes 1-51′s best bits (Also look on the blog at April 6/08 for the trailers of the Bollywood movie of Digital Cowboys)
  
• Episode 53 (April 28/08) Retro games console test and Wii Fit
• Episode 55 (May 15/08) GTAIV Epic Review
• Episode 56 (May 22/08) After Empire magazine published the 500 best movies and Godfather was number one as usual, we decided to do our own, alternative ten greatest movies ever.
• Episode 58 (June 5/08) The NES special
• Episode 59 (June 12/08) The Sega special (featuring Tony Edwards)
  
• Episode 61 (June 26/Part 2 27/08) Metal Gear Solid special
• Episode 63 (July 11/08) Gameboy Special
• Episode 64 (July 18/08) E3 2008 Special
• Episode 67 (August 8/08) The second Room 101
• Episode 69 (August 21/08) Amiga 500 Special
• Episode 70 (September 11/08) SNES Special
• Episode
  74 (October 12/08) The dead console special. Turbo Grafx-16, Atari
  Lynx, Jaguar, 3DO, Sega Saturn, Nintendo Virtual Boy, Nokia N-Gage.
• Episode 75 (October 16/08) Our online friend Davus died. Tony hosted this one and we talked about the gaming community we build up around us. Probably one of the best episodes.
• Episode 83 (December 12/08) The death of the PS2
• Episode 86 (December 30/08) The games of 2008 awards ceremony double episode. After this, we had to decide what to do with the show.
  
• Episode 88 (January 16/08) Following the death of EGM; The decline of print in gaming journalism
• Episode 92 (February
  14/08) We got mentioned on ‘Gamers with jobs’. Kropotkin guested and we
  talked about mobile gaming. We also started our Twitter account.
  
• Episode 97 (March 20/08) Paul took a break, we got a new logo and ethos. Alex started writing for PN. Edie guested. Alex’s favourite episode.
  

In preparation for this week’s episode 101, which is focused on sex in video games, our listeners should check out Daniel Floyd on YouTube.

He has posted various mini-lectures on gaming elements. They are hugely entertaining and very well researched. Made in conjunction with James Portnow.

There is one on Sex.
One on Storytelling.
One on the uncanny valley.
One on learning in games.
And finally one on choice in video games.

Check them all out but especially the one on sex. My wife discovered it after I wrote my article on Sex in video games: how far we’ve not come.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Valveâs recent knee-jerk escapade at GDC had Gamehoundsâ Edie Sellers in a lather this week. On her podcast she expressed surprise and annoyance at their decision; namely the withdrawal of Kim Swift, project lead on Portal, from the yearly game design challenge, this year provocatively titled âMy First Timeâ. Itâs a dully predictable move in an industry still remarkably coy about sex. âMy first timeâ, was an open challenge, marrying sex and autobiography, and the final submissions from Swiftâs two substitutes and the remaining contestants showed invention and a mischievous streak, but certainly not the headline-baiting boldness that Valve would need to justify such cautious behavior.

You donât have to look far though, to see why they might not want their name attached to anything that could be misinterpreted as sordid or corrupting. The media-fueled hubbub over Mass Effect in early 2007 speaks volumes for how different the general public perceptions are between film and video games. The sex scene in Mass Effect is by all accounts no different to the kind of soft-focus, fare you would find in movies like Daredevil or Ghost, with lingering shots of perky backsides and a fleeting nipple or two. This was fed through the Fox-news exaggeration machine, given a quick bake in their conjecture oven and passed around between a group of people who havenât played ANY video games, let alone Mass Effect, and the resultant debate, now well-worn on YouTube borders on farcical. While Spike TVâs Jeff Keighley defended the gameâs content with maturity and crucially having actually played it, he was up against the wall of loudmouthed, opinionated busybodies spouting non-sequiturs like âWho can argue that Luke Skywalker meets Debbie Does Dallas is a good thing?â and my personal favourite, and the basis for this article; âWhat happened to Atari and Pinball and Pac-Man?â. This sentence crystallises the problem game developers face when trying to advance the industry in any challenging way. Too many people still envision single-screen 8-Bit arcade machines from the early 80âs when the words âvideo gameâ are mentioned, and they can only see children playing them, because why would an adult do so? Time has moved on, those children have now grown up and have children of their own. Now the games they play can be vast, complex odysseys with lifelike HD graphics, and the singular inability on so many peopleâs parts to marry this evolutionary step with the notion of a growing and maturing audience is what holds back sex in games.

Violence? No problem. We jumped that hurdle in the early 90âs with Mortal Kombat, a game so cartoonish and innocent now, that itâs very hard to see what all the fuss was about. Bad language has crept in slowly, seemingly one curse at a time, until with trailblazers like The Getaway, no word was unmentionable. Sex; however is still the thorniest subject in an industry that regularly produces entertainment that involves slaughtering Naziâs, drug-dealing or dismemberment on such a regular basis that we see these as commonplace, even conventional. A rough sort of acceptance has formed in the minds of outsiders. The above is just the sort of thing that happens in video games. But sex is different. Look at the examples we have of games that dared to deal with this nest of vipers; Custerâs Revenge on the 2600, in which you play the famous General defiling various Native Americans, Leisure Suit Larry, with its smirking innuendo and juvenile attitude, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, with the drawn out court case over âHot Coffeeâ. Then thereâs the actual Japanese PC-based rape simulator âRapelayâ by Illusion Soft, which Amazon wisely decided to stop selling. Projects like this, whatever the intent of their developers make it hard to build a positive case for sex in games and seem to serve only to inflame public outrage.

Violence is horrible and illegal to the vast majority of non-incarcerated, non-military citizens, but sex means so many different things to so many people that there is no way to reach a general consensus. Itâs totally subjective, and highly likely to provoke a negative reaction. Itâs an act that can be beautiful, embarrassing, incredibly fun or utterly awful, different every time or always the same, may be meaningless or lead to life-changing relationships and indeed the continuation of the species. Asking why it canât be in a game is a question with its answer rooted in culture. I could (and should) write a thesis on this, but the short answer is that the public appreciation for sex is changing with the times, slowly, as we crawl away from the Victorian period when it became so utterly reprehensible to even mention. It took decades for sex and nudity to be accepted in books films and TV, but those are long-established entertainment forms and comparatively video games are still in their teens. It will take a few more generations before all the people who only remember Pac-Man are gone and those born into an era of Mass Effect and any other game that dares to tackle intercourse reach the obvious conclusion that people of all ages play games and those of a certain age should have no problem exploring relationships of all kinds, with and without sex. The detail and emotion-heavy gameplay of the future could indeed prove quite interesting. Taboos are broken all the time. Last monthâs cocky, male full-frontal in GTA: The Lost and Damned was a first, and whether Ms. Sellers is right and the scrawny chicken-neck of a reproductive organ on offer was a poor example or not, I agree with her that itâs steps forward like this that bring the industry that little bit closer to real maturity. Maybe then weâll get to see âMy First Timeâ as a full game.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Iâve been writing furiously about Resident Evil 5 for over a week now, exorcising demons I was clinging to regarding the controls, inventory, acting and story but to prove Iâm not all bile and fury, itâs time for a bit of post-mortem praise. There were some excellent moments in playing through story mode which you forget while your bloodâs boiling over control issues. For those who havenât yet finished, Iâll steer clear of spoilers.

The depiction of an African village is extremely detailed. Thereâs some very compelling evidence pointing to casual, clumsy and thoughtless racism on Capcomâs part, which would make for another article altogether, but the fact remains that the sun-bleached township you begin at, with its oppressive shacks and buzzing flies, is very evocative. The scene is horrible and you wish you werenât there, but thatâs surely the point. Now while the labyrinth of locked rooms and puzzles that formed the backbone of the whole series is gone, whatâs in its place will make for great replay value. Being able to dive in and out of each level, with or without a friend, and hold onto a consistent stash of loot and weapons means you can explore every nook and cranny on multiple occasions. The mercenaries mode yet again adds the element of score-beating and rewards to emphasize the new arcadey nature of the core game. In addition, the cut scenes are undeniably pretty, with a lot of stuff flying about and some impressive fighting, and working for achievements was a welcome addition, which made me alter my playing style several times. Finally there is one very effective moment when you have to be very, very quiet that had my nerves shot to hell, harkening back to the tension of the Nemesis theme.

If the series is to progress and weâre going to get that reboot that Capcom are hinting at, I have some suggestions here which may interest them. Firstly; take it back to the mansion. Itâs where we go to in our heads when we think Resident Evil. Ditch S.T.A.R.S, Umbrella, Chris, Jill, Claire, Leon, Wesker and everything else. What they equated to thirteen years ago is not where story games need to be going. For a reboot, we need new characters, plot, settings etc; itâs in a mansion, there are zombies, puzzles and weapons. That should be all that remains of the original story. From then on, we need new ideas.

A more successful blend of action game and survival horror requires a nimble character you can rely on with a solid control system. No more movable turrets. This means running while aiming (at the expense of accuracy), and being able to dodge an attack (but not run rings around slow enemies.) Go back to slow zombies as the main grunts of the game. Introduce much faster, more intimidating enemies in thinner numbers (the Crimson Heads of the GameCube version, for example) further on. Since 28 Days Later weâve had the zombie upgrade of screaming, charging infected in popular culture, but theyâve never quite been done right in a survival horror game. They always move too slowly or stop to attack, or in the case of Left 4 Dead, attack en masse without the creeping weight of a Resident Evil encounter. They need to be savage, blood spewing maniacs who never stop moving.

Hereâs the formula; enclosed corridor + fast zombie + half-empty handgun and the exit in sight. Tension up the wazoo! Survival means scraping together everything you have. Bring us back to a place where every single bullet counts and careful organising of your inventory kept you alive. Allow us to keep a hand free and pick up something like a herb in an emergency, even if we have no slots empty (again at a loss of firing accuracy because youâre shooting one handed.) The gameplay should involve running between rooms, braving the prowling undead and giving us the binary choice of the original games; shoot now and this room might be safer, but youâll have less ammo, or run for it and the room stays lethal. The taking of responsibility for your environment and being permanently wary of what is around the next corner is something that needs bringing back. The spirit of these games is very much alive, but something has been lost along the way as action games evolved. To successfully instil us with horror, Capcom are going to have to make us fight to survive and that means holding on to your last bullets like youâre in Die Hard, and every slowly opening door will once again make us hold our breath.

Written By: Alex Shaw

I’m very proud to announce that I’ve begun writing articles for the website Platform Nation. Check them out here, they are a fine source of gaming news and reviews with an excellent forum section and plenty of podcasts including of course Edie Seller’s Gamehounds.

My first article for them is My Old Friend Nintendo.

I sit
gazing into my rapidly cooling coffee. It’s two in the afternoon on a sunny day
in a sleepy New York bistro. Nintendo, sitting across from me
laughs uproariously into his cell phone and says his goodbyes to the caller,
closing it and setting it beside his untouched cup.

"That was Time magazine,â he says.
âThey want to do an interview with me this week.â

âI know,â I say. âYou just agreed to
meet them Friday after lunch.â Nintendo nods and takes out his Blackberry,
tapping at the tiny keys and smiling.

âMmm,â he says.

âThat was the day we were going jet
skiing on Drake Lake,â I say pointedly. Nintendo stops
tapping and looks at me as if waking from a dream.

âCan we make that Saturday?â he asks
and starts to check his Blackberry. âNext Thursdayâsorry, the Tuesday after
that?â I look at Nintendo as he starts to pencil me in and my shoulders slump.

It was
never like this before. We met in 1985 when we were both very young. It was one
of those friendships that you find yourself holding up as the yardstick to
every relationship. He was fun back then, and honest. We"d play at exploring castles,
rescuing princesses, battling fire-breathing monsters and all the other things
kids find to do. We grew up together and our friendship only became stronger.
We played better, smarter games, went Kart racing and got into RPGs exploring
vast imaginary worlds. He learned new skills and I learned from him.

Then came
high school and college and we still kept in touch, even though we saw each other
less. I hooked up with an ex-girlfriend of his, who was a little more mature
then either of us, causing an undeniable rift – yet still every time we met it
was like we were kids again, but with encounters tempered by our newfound view
of the world. The imaginary lands never seemed more vivid and real.

Of course
people change. They grow up and move on to greener pastures with the
inevitability of little Jackie Paper. The last time I saw Nintendo he wasnât
doing too well. The imagination was there in his work, but he was having an
awful time of getting people to really pay attention to it. I was frankly
worried about him, but the distance between us was growing vast and noticeable.
We kept in touch; we both got jobs and moved in different directions. The way
it always goes.

Next thing
I know, itâs New Yearâs 2006 and heâs calling me up, blind drunk and very
happy. His business ventures in Japan, America and Europe are all paying off so well, he can
barely get the stock in to meet demand. Iâm so incredibly happy for my old
friend and tell him so, but for the first time it doesnât seem like heâs
listening to me. Then he calls me the wrong name. I mention it, and he mumbles
something and hangs up.

Itâs July
15^th 2008. Today. I havenât seen Nintendo for four years and heâs sitting across
from me in the bistro, with the world at his feet.

âI saw your work with the space
project,â I offer, âGreat stuff.â He looks up at me from his iPhone.

âThanks,â he beams. âWhat did you
think of the sports programmes?â

âAlso good,â I say diplomatically. I
donât want to bring any personal feelings of indifference into the
conversation. Iâm trying to be as positive as I can be, but itâs hard when heâs
received seven calls since weâve been sat here. I feel like the proverbial
third wheel.

âAnd what about that music project?
That looks like great fun doesnât it?â

Not wanting
to be painfully honest, I change the subject. âAre you planning any more
projects based on your old creations?â I ask hopefully. Nintendoâs brow creases.

âThatâs a lot of effort for
not much return,â he says absently, ordering us both another coffee. âThe last
one took three years to make and made substantially less profit than a cheap
little Carnival I set up in two days.

âBut it was such a great piece of
work,â I press on. âSurely thatâs what counts in the end; building something of
substance, something of merit. Something that will last and future generations
can appreciate.â He looks stumped and chews thoughtfully on a biscotti. Then
Time magazine calls and Iâm alone again for fifteen minutes.

âSo Iâll
put you down for jet skiing on Duck Lake on Tuesday the twenty-ninth, OK?â
Nintendo repeats.

âDrake Lake,â I say quietly and nod.

âSwell,â he says, rising from the
table, throwing down a handful of bills. âListen, I have to run, Iâve got to be
on the Tonight Show, and they start recording in three hours.â

âIâll see you later,â I say, locking
eyes with him. He smiles, but his eyes are on his Blackberry again.

And you
know what? In a few years time, when the standard of his work is at an all time
low, his new friends have all deserted him and heâs no longer the man of the
hour, he may come to me, deflated and contemplative, with plans and ideas that
more closely resemble the heights he reached as an imaginative child with a
world of potential. On that day, when I could crow and sneer at his downfall, I
will instead sit back and look at his new ideas and encourage him in doing what
he always did best; creating worlds that were bright and fun and innovative, and
of undeniable substance and quality.

I tell
myself this as I watch him go. Who knows what will happen to him, but if my
battered heart knows anything itâs that heâll always land on his feet, and Iâll
always be there for him.

Part 5 of the Resident Evil Musings.

Does this sound familiar?

1. "Boom – Resident Evil!"
2. Hey you’re a white, average cop in their twenties. Your name is Chris/Jill/Leon/Claire.
3. Welcome to the scary mansion/police station/Raccoon City/Eastern European/African village.
4. Things are looking a little scary, thank God you have your pistol.
5. Aaagh… Zombies/Infected folks of mixed ethnicity!
6. Solve this puzzle.
7. Oops, the pistol’s a bit rubbish, here’s a shotgun.
8. Aaagh… monsters that are faster and more dangerous than zombies!
9. Here’s a bit with a train/tram/boat.
10. Hey you’ve reached the laboratory, now get to the bottom of this mystery.
    
11. Damn, it was Wesker what done it!
12. Aaagh… a Tyrant! Better use this rocket launcher.
13. All done. Fly away on the helicopter and stare at your partner with your dead, personality-free eyes.

It’s really as by the numbers as that, and this is coming from someone who loves the Resident Evil series. My biggest problem with 5 is that it does nothing with the formula. The acting is just as bad, the plot twists just as trite, but there isn’t anything new or sparky about it. Resident Evil 2 had branching story lines for the two leads, 3 had the ever-stalking presence of the Nemesis, Veronica had a scrolling action that did away with static screens, and 4 had the new controls and perspective. Aside from pretty graphics, Capcom have come up with nothing new for the series in five years… with the exception of an incompetent sidekick who gets herself in trouble or killed more often than a Doctor Who assistant.

Yes, it would appear co-op was what they were dangling their hopes on for this game, but if you don’t have a friend with you – if, say, your best mate is still waiting for his copy to come through the post, days after yours arrived – you have to make do with the AI to help you out as Sheva. But she doesn’t. Sheva wastes your good ammo and herbs, creates frustrating weapon trading scenarios and gets herself cornered and squished by axe-wielding brutes when you’re being relentlessly attacked. The brutal combination of non-pausing item control and belligerent, suicidal AI makes your single-player experience hollow and annoying, leaving you only able to see the similarities and lack of improvement on previous games.

Think of the advancements we’ve seen just in video games over the past five years since the last RE game. We’ve
had two Gears of War games, which picked up and ran with the third
person action perspective redefining it in the process; Silent Hill Homecoming, which by all
accounts has improved the control scheme of the original game and made
it easier to move and dodge, in a survival horror long known for its
steadfast adherence to slow, awkward progression. We’ve had Left 4 Dead
with its multiplayer orgy of never-ending fast-zombie onslaught,
twitch-fast controls and genuinely nerve-wracking pace. And we’ve had
games like Uncharted and The Darkness which worked on a tried and
tested movie formula and made the delivery fresh and interesting.

In truth RE5 is not a bad game experience. In relation to 50 Cent: BOTS
it’s a breath of air that, while not fresh, is at least breathable. But
another average outing in Umbrella-Town is not what I wanted. I want to
see this series that I cherish advance on the level that Metal Gear did
when it jumped from MSX to PSX. Maybe it needs a hiatus before a grand reboot,
but if Capcom do the same thing again for 6 then there’s going to be
words.

Screw Chris, Jill, Leon and Claire. They are mindless, character-free automatons which have no place in contemporary games. The day of the Mary-Sue superman whose abs ripple in the sunlight and
whose catlike reflexes are remarked upon and admired by all has long
since departed. We need flawed, fascinating, dangerous or vulnerable individuals, surrounded by a cast of similarly original creations. Capcom need to employ some western writers of high quality like J Michael Straczynski or Mark Millar if they wish to continue the form of homage to American movies, because their staff scripters and plotters are doing a horrible job.

And finally the controls simply aren’t good enough any more. If Capcom want an action game they need action controls. This means running while shooting, an intuitive item system you really can operate on the fly, canceling of animations if you need to move fast, and the ability to beat the crap out of your enemies without fulfilling certain criteria first. It’s what we’d all do in a survival situation and it’s time RE reflected this.

The rating I give RE5 is based on the game itself, but taking into account what it should have been. Tony maintains that experiences of Resident Evil 5 may vary.

Final Score: 6/10