Our E3 preview reveals some of the new features of the upcoming horror game.

Resident Evil 4 was an amazing game. It managed to branch away from the main story of Resident Evil without going too far astray; it had a compelling story and challenging gameplay that both forced players to express excruciating pain for not being able to strafe and was simultaneously entertaining. 5 follows in its prequel’s footsteps.
As a huge fan of RE4 and the franchise in general (save for the movies), it’s hard to not be excited for the upcoming title. Everyone has high expectations of it, and so far it’s delivered on most points brought up, including racial prejudice. Not amazingly, during my playtest I found no prejudice of any kind.

The demo I played featured Chris Redfield strolling along with his new partner and cooperative counterpart Sheva Alomar. She’ll provide support for Chris throughout their journey, and will also act as the online cooperative second-skin, if you will. She’ll be important whether a friend is present or not, similarly to how allies in Gears of War functioned, splitting up to reach new areas and helping each other out in any and all situations.
I found the most significant difficulty was overcoming the lack of specific aim. RE4 on the Wii was certainly a triumph of gaming, even though the title was originally released for the Gamecube and PlayStation 2. I felt lost for most of my time playing, but at the end was able to get a hang of not using the Wiimote to aim so easily.

In typical Resident Evil fashion, it’s lots of enemies to fight against, and limited ammunition to spare. On what appeared to be a farm area, Chris and Sheva watch one of the infected saying something to the others over a loudspeaker. Someone is on a guillotine and a giant executioner looms over him. At the leader’s command, off with his head. The infected crowd cheers madly, only to turn their attention to our heroes when the leader spots them inside a small wooden house.

With only a scant moment to prepare, Chris and Sheva are soon overwhelmed by the number of infected. They don’t seem quite like zombies yet, but they’re just as dangerous. Sheva can stand for herself much better than I could, and in fact the few people I watched play ended up running and leaving her behind to help themselves, only to find that she finished everyone off. Quite the asset.

Within minutes I found myself running from the giant executioner because I’d spent all my firepower on him, and he was still alive. The massive guy follows slowly with a giant axe, and it isn’t pleasant running with only a knife. Finding another ten bullets to shoot is just as frantic as before, and Redfield’s giant arms are no match for the behemoth.

It’s very similar to the gameplay of RE4, but with exceptional graphics and just about everything but strafing updated. They’ve managed to capture that same feeling of gripping ‘get-me-the-hell-outta-here’ that’s prevelant among the franchise.

Resident Evil 5 is set to release March 13th in the US and Europe on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.