Resident Evil 5

Capcom's beloved survival horror series gets an extreme makeover.March 6, 2009 - Change can be a painful process. Just ask one of the unfortunate citizens of Kijuju, the fictional region of Africa that serves as the setting of Resident Evil 5, the latest entry in Capcom's ongoing zombie videogame saga. A power-mad corporation's evolutionary manipulations have caused a biological disaster that turns people into mindless hosts for a military-grade parasitic infection. And you thought the Bird Flu was nasty.
The citizens of Kijuju are going through some ugly changes, many of which involve tentacles, oozing eyeballs and heretofore unexplored bloodlust. And, as is the custom in a Resident Evil game, you drop into the situation woefully underprepared for what awaits. The resulting experience is an intense, action-packed adventure replete with satisfying combat, tight gameplay and gorgeous, well-crafted environments. Resident Evil 5 offers all those things and then some, but it doesn't do many of the things longtime fans of the series expect. It won't scare you. It won't fill you with creeping desperation. It won't have you collecting and counting bullets like they're precious stones. It won't, in essence, make you feel like you're playing a traditional Resident Evil game.

Like the story it's trying to tell, Resident Evil 5 is all about evolution. Capcom has gone out on a limb with the latest numbered sequel in its long-running survival horror franchise, and although one of your goals as a player is to survive the horrors around you, this entry in the series is a radical departure from the genre Capcom helped create near Raccoon City more than a decade ago.
You'll start out the game as Chris Redfield, who fans will remember as one of the co-stars of the original Resident Evil. But Chris is no lone wolf. Joining him on his mission is Sheva Alomar, an African national and bioweapons expert. Both Chris and Sheva are members of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, a global outfit tasked with preventing the proliferation of "biological organic weapons."

And to date, the group has done a pretty poor job of it. From the incident at the Arklay Mansion (RE1) to the outbreak in Raccoon City (RE2) and the Las Plagas infestation in Spain (RE4), the B.S.A.A. and its predecessors such as the S.T.A.R.S. team have been one step behind the Umbrella Corporation and its mysterious backers. When we last left the story of Chris Redfield in Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, he and fellow former S.T.A.R.S. member Jill Valentine were battling through Umbrella's Russian base. So why isn't Jill at Chris's side in RE5? It's a good question, and one you'll have to play the game to answer.

This time around, it's Sheva who has Chris's back, and she'll be with you every step of the way, whether you go it alone or recruit a friend to play along. On your first playthrough you're stuck with the beefy Chris, whose bulging biceps and gigantic torso make Street Fighter IV's Ken look like a stick figure. Once you complete the game, you unlock the ability to play single-player as the more compact Sheva, who can handle herself and just about everything else.
There are several scenes in RE5 where the more acrobatic Sheva will need to part ways with Chris to reach hard-to-access areas. It's a cool nod to the co-op nature of the game, but I felt Capcom could have gone farther with the concept. There are no moments when you truly feel separated from your partner, which could have upped the fear factor significantly. Part of the horror of past RE games lay in the cramped isolation of knowing you were all alone in a dark corridor. But here, you're never truly on your own, as Sheva is always at your side.

When Sheva is controlled by the game, she does a pretty fair job of staying out of your line of fire, watching your back for enemies and healing or reviving you when you take damage. But just like any partner, she does have her annoyances. In RE5, as in other games in the series, each character is limited to a set number of inventory slots, and making the best use of that space is one of the keys to doing well in the game. In single-player mode, you have access to both characters' inventories, and you can swap items back and forth between them as you see fit.

Jagged Alliance 3 Impressions - First Look

We finally get an up-close look at Jagged Alliance 3, the sequel to the cult-classic strategy game.

We'll gladly come in out of the warm summer sun in Santa Monica for a look at Jagged Alliance 3, the long-awaited sequel to the beloved cult-classic 1999 strategy game from retired Canadian studio Sir-Tech. What we saw was extremely early, pre-alpha code that was definitely rough around the edges, but still showed hints of potential that we really, really hope will be realized. We hope.

Jagged Alliance fans are already familiar with the series' unique combination of deep turn-based tactics, role-playing-style character advancement, contemporary military fiction, and an unforgettable cast of hard-bitten, loud-mouthed mercenaries who don't always get along. Apparently, the sequel will take place in a fictitious South American country during a modern-day conflict that will require you to once again commission the services of the Association of International Mercenaries (A.I.M.) and hire a team of mercs for a new tour of duty.

We watched a brief demonstration level with a small team of mercs, though for the purposes of the demonstration, cheat codes had been enabled to boost each character's abilities well beyond what they'll actually be in the game. If the early demonstration is any indication, we can expect to see the return of at least three familiar mercenary faces: knife expert Jean-Pierre "La Malice" Viau, covert ops expert Kyle "Shadow" Simmons, and expert sniper Sheila "Scope" Sterling. The team infiltrated a small installation which was apparently the headquarters of a local drug lord with the purpose of assassinating him. According to an Akella representative, the game will have an overarching story, but like previous installments in the series, it will be largely open-ended and will feature side missions you can take on.

The game's interface seemed a lot like what you'd expect from a game like 3D Jagged Alliance. At the bottom of the screen, as ever, was the mercenary interface with each merc's photo, health and status bars, and statistics, including old favorites like leadership, marksmanship, strength, and speed. When an individual merc is selected, a new interface appears, packed with additional iconic buttons for every available action, such as changing the firing mode on your weapon if you have an automatic or using a first-aid kit if you have one.

In Jagged Alliance 3, you still give move orders to your teammates to send them along through the areas, and once you've sighted hostiles, the game still switches to a fully turn-based battle that lets your team and your enemies move and act only as long as they have "action points" they haven't spent yet. The turns in the battles still switch between your teammates and the enemies, who, when out of sight, are represented by glowing red polygonal silhouettes. The game will still have "interrupt" phases for alert characters who still have remaining action points that let the characters react to enemies who have blundered into line of sight. Interestingly, the new game will have some measure of destructible objects, so that you can shoot through doors, for instance, though we didn't see this have any significant effect on gameplay so far; we watched Scope blast through wooden door to get at an enemy soldier who had run into sight, though we were still unable to draw a bead on an enemy who was just around the corner from the shattered entrance.

Then again, Jagged Alliance 3 isn't very far along yet, or so we're told. The game's 3D graphics seem like they could definitely improve. The environments, though populated with plenty of appropriate objects like swaying palm trees on the beach and cluttered furniture inside the houses, have a rough feel to them that could benefit greatly from some antialiasing, more-detailed textures to bring out the lived-in feel that the game is clearly shooting for, and extensive lighting effects to help differentiate different parts of the environment and add atmosphere. Still, we're told that Russian developer F3 is providing production work with design feedback from the original Sir-Tech Canada team, which is encouraging news indeed. The game itself won't be out for some time--most likely near the end of 2008--and we hope the development teams will take all that time to make sure the game ends up being highly polished and as playable as the previous games in the series.