Resident Evil 5 Impressions

The Resident Evil 5 demo, which has hit 4 million download, offers two levels that can be played either by yourself with a friend.

The first level, Public Assembly, takes place at a small part of the village. (You know the trailer that features the guy giving a speech with a megaphone? Yeah, it takes place there.) Chris and Sheva barricade themselves in a small house as they try to pick off some of the mob, but of course, the barricade is eventually torn down. Soon they find themselves coming face to face with a giant, hooded man wielding a huge axe. It's a mini-boss fight that spreads out into the streets containing a few other buildings you can run into and climb the roofs of in order to put some space between you and the axeman. Explosive barrels are littered throughout the area, allowing you to lead him to them and shoot them off. The whole idea is to survive until reinforcements show up. (I don't believe there's a time limit; it just ends once you kill the axeman. At least, that is the impression I was given.)

The second level, something Town...Hell if I remember it's going on 6am...is the neighboring area. Here you can explore a bit as you meet a new enemy type: some flying bug thing. This is also were the co-op shines. When Sheva is tossed over the next building, it's up to Chris to help cover her with the sniper rifle from the other. Once the door on the other building has been opened, the two can proceed onward only to be confronted by another mini-boss, the chainsaw guy. Again, much like the first level, you're confined to a small area with explosive barrels. You can either use to clear out multiple weaker enemies at once or use to knock out some of the mini-boss' health and knock him down to allow you to get some good shots into him before he goes after you again.

The gameplay is good and solid. Besides following Resident Evil 4's over the shoulder camera, the game has also adapted Resident Evil 4's laser pointer, melee moves via button sequences, and inventory style. However, unlike the previous Resident Evil titles (besides Outbreak), the game does not pause itself when accessing the inventory screen. When you go to use a health item or change weapons, you become vulnerable since you are unable to move forcing you to rely on your partner.

Having co-op in a Resident Evil title might seem a bit unorthodox, even with a couple previous games having two characters together, but it actually was executed very well. There are a few parts where you do feel like you can carry your own weight but there's also a few parts where you are completely grateful to have someone by your side. When getting pinned by an enemy, the other player has an option to go and help you by knocking the enemy off of you. If you don't have a real-life friend helping you out, don't worry, you're not at a complete lose. The AI in Sheva (who will be a NPC if you don't have someone else to play her) is fairly smart. She'll gather ammo, give some if you need it, she'll heal you, and she can stand pretty well on her own. However, I do wish that there was some sort of "Give me" command similar to what was seen in Outbreak. I say this because at one point, I found myself mistakenly giving her all my handgun ammo and not having any way to get some of it back because she just wouldn't give it to me. (Greedy bitch...)

The difficult of the game also seems to change depending on if you are playing with someone or playing alone. When Amaterasu and I were playing together, there seemed to be a higher density of enemies, a little less ammo since we both were going through it pretty quickly, and the enemies just felt a bit more aggressive. Yet, when I was playing alone, there seemed to be fewer enemies that, while still aggressive, didn't overpower me like they did when playing with him. Then of course I could be greedy and horde all the ammo and health for myself if I wanted. (Naturally I didn't though because I needed Sheva's support and honestly, giving her some health items to hold isn't a bad idea since she is pretty good at healing you when your health gets low. It frees up some of your inventory space and gives you one less thing to think about.)

The game is naturally good looking but like so many other current games, the areas felt a tiny bit bland since tans and browns were the dominant colors. The environments were detailed though I didn't get a chance to see how the real time effects were since there wasn't much in the environments to see blowing in the wind. The character movements are superb though. The animations between switching weapons on the fly or doing some bad ass looking kick were smooth. There wasn't any choppiness between me changing from a shooting position to a kicking or punching position to knock some enemies away from my partner. The enemies movements were not jumpy either, though I will go to say that the blood and the decomposing effects look like bubbling jelly...

The controls were solid and easy to use once you get the hang of it. You might find yourself accidentally giving away an item when you meant to use it yourself or you might find yourself shooting when you meant to swing the knife or vise versa. But once you do get a hang of things and learn to balance out the items that you need and the items that your partner needs (unless you're playing with a person who I would hope tells you what they need and can think for themselves, if not, get a better friend), you'll do just fine. I personally felt that it was too easy but I'm hoping it is just because this is a demo probably taken from a very early part of the game. I'd like to think that the difficult will be a bit more tense in the final version or later parts of the game. It didn't necessarily take away the fun factor of the game, but when I saw just how easy it was to actually beat each level, I just felt a bit unsatisfied because I was expecting something a bit rougher.

Basically, if you've played any Resident Evil game before, even if it was just Resident Evil 4, you'll have no trouble jumping into this game. Once you get the co-op controls down, you'll do pretty well. Newcomers might have a bit of difficulty at figuring out how to conserve ammo or find alternative ways to dealing with the situations but the game shouldn't make you feel too overwhelmed.

I don't have doubts the final version of the game will be a good. I just hope there's some edgy parts in it when it's done.

Wii Music Impressions

Rather you play the air guitar, a real guitar, or Guitar Hero, almost everyone at some point in their lives wished to play an instrument. Maybe you wished to play something a bit more elegant like a cello or maybe you wanted to rock out with the drums or be the hit guitarist that every groupie wanted to sleep with. Needless to say, not all of us with the passion for music has the talent and we might turn to some musical games as a way to fill the empty void we have in our talentless hearts. It's such a shame the Wii Music doesn't really do that...It more or less only hints on what the game could have been.

Wii Music is an extremely simple game (if you even want to call it that) that anyone can pick up and swing their Wiimote around wildly to sound like some amazing conductor or musician. The whole game is played in a total of five different styles. The first style is the 'piano style' where you hold the Wiimote and Nunchuck out in front of you and move your hands up and down to represent the moment of your fingers hitting the keys. The second style is the 'guitar style' where you hold the Wiimote and Nunchuck like a guitar and swing the Wiimote in the motion of strumming the string.

The third style is the 'violin style' where, you guessed it, you hold the Wiimote and Nunchuck like a violin and move the Wiimote in the motion of a bow across the stings. The fourth style is the 'trumpet style' where you hold the remote out in front of your face and rotate between the '1' and '2' buttons to represent hitting the keys. Then the final style is the 'drum style' where you hold the Wiimote and Nunchuck in front of you and move them up and down like you're beating a drum.

The problem with this is that that's it. You would think that they would alter the styles a bit to fit the instrument a bit more such as requiring you to hold the Wiimote and Nunchuck in the 'V' shape like real drum sticks or have you move the Nunchuck up and down to represent moving your hand up and down the neck of the cello. However, you don't. Like I said a little awhile ago, the game is extremely simple. Honestly you don't even need to hold the Wiimote and Nunchuck in any special way to play it and most of the time, you can get away with just swinging the Wiimote.

There's a couple of different game modes, each one containing a sub-mode. The first mode- and probably the most played- is the Jam Mode. In here, you can do a couple of things like Instrument Improvements. Here, you select an instrument from a list which includes anything from the ukulele, a variety of drums, the guitar, the piano, and xylophone. Once your instrument has been chosen, you can "learn to play it" or you can practice with the virtual teacher Tute. But basically...You just move the Wiimote and play a unselected song.

Next, you can do a Jam Session where you and up to three other people can pick instruments, a song, and design a little stage to play on. Again, you basically just swing the controller around until the song finished. Once it is finished, you can choose to save a video of you playing and make a decorative cover for it. You can then rewatch your videos or send them to friends over WiFi. This is a kind of cool feature but it's nothing amazing.

The next mode you can play is called Lessons. Here, you can choose to go through a series of lessons for each instrument starting with the basics and moving on to slightly more advanced styles. This makes the Jam Mastery mode about the only mode where rhythm and timing actually matter...

The next mode is the Game mode which has a couple of different games you can play, but I'm not going to lie, many of them aren't really fun. The first game you can choose to play is the Maestro mode where you take the form of a conductor and conduct an orchestra. Here, you might want to try to keep up with the timing in order to execute the song, but I had a couple issues with it. The first being that the Wiimote wasn't sensitive enough to handle light taps. Like a real musician, you have to start slow so you begin by playing a lot of simple, easy songs like Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. This required easy movements with the Wiimote but the game would not read my movements unless I moved my arm in large arcs or moved it quickly. This resulted in the song being played too fast and even though it sounded like it was suppose to, my score suffered due to speed.

The other issue I had with it is that you don't feel like a conduct. All you do is move the Wiimote up and down...Even with more "complicated songs" (and I use that term very, very loosely with Wii Music) just make you increase the speed you swing the Wiimote.

Another game mode is the Handbell Harmony. In this game, you and up to three other people hold the Wiimote and Nunchuck up like giant bells. Each bell in your hand is a different color. Then on the screen there is a bar. Different colored bells then show up and move across the sceen, similar to Guitar Hero or Rock Band. The idea behind the game is that you hit your color of bells when it passes over the bar. (I could actually see this being fun for awhile with a group of people, but like most Wii games, the magic wears off fairly quickly.)

The final game is called Perfect Pitch. In this game, a tone is played and you need to match its pitch with one of the choices given to you. This is an ok game that gets old very fast...

Though Wii Music does have a final mode, but I was unable to play it. The final mode is the Drum Mode but it requires the Wii Fit Board which I do not own. Based on what I've seen...The Drum Mode actually looks fun and is what I was hoping the rest of the game would be like. A virtual drum set appears before you and you actually need to move your hands in order to select the drum you want to hit making you feel like you're actually playing a real set. This is something I feel the whole game should have been.

The bottom line is that Wii Music is definitely designed for people who want to pretend that they're actually playing something even though they aren't. The game doesn't really focus on rhythm or timing- only the Lesson Mode seems to really be effected by how you move the Wiimote. There's these little things in the bottom-right corner of the screen called be-bops that are suppose to help with rhythm and a metronome ticking comes from the Wiimote to help you keep rhythm but it doesn't matter because for most of the time, the song sounds the same regardless of when or how fast you move the remote. The same goes for timing. Hell, I got a 'good' on the first song when I was moving the Wiimote and Nunchuck as fast as I could.

This leaves Wii Music feeling like a broken game, if you even want to call it a game... It's a mixture of lazy development since Nintendo didn't go as into depth as they could have- and should have- with the instruments as well as their fear of losing their casual audience by making the game as simple as it possibly could. The amount of wasted potential makes me want to cry because Wii Music could have been a truly unique experience; there is so much that could have been done with the Wii's motion controls that Nintendo hardly even touched on with Wii Music.

So I guess that leaves me with playing my air cello until next year.