Resident Evil 5: Trailer

By Will Barker

As one of Capcom's best-selling franchises, having already been converted into a couple of movies, Resident Evil is a money making machine. 

Like a modern-day golden goose, only much bigger and scattered across the numerous floors of a large skyscraper in Japan, Capcom delivers these gilded eggs in the form of new games, games that attract players by their millions.

And when a new Resident Evil title hits the headlines, peoples brains begin to pulsate with unadulterated glee, sometimes causing the eyeballs to distend.

Resident Evil 5 is well on the way to production, and Capcom has been nice enough to cobble together a very disturbing trailer for everyone to see. Click here to see the new trailer.

The new game will be coming to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 consoles, as well as the PC, and is expected to reach stores in 2008, and possibly 2009 if the rumours about delays are to be believed.

The trailer shows some pretty sweet visuals and lots of claustrophobic/zombophobic elements all designed to add an extra layer of suspense to the survival horror game. The main character is Chris Redfield, and the game is set in an African/Middle Eastern region where sun-baked dust is expected to muffle the cries of people being torn to shreds by malevolent zombie-like beings.

According to the game's producer, Jun Takeuchi, the game begins some 10 years after the events of the original Resident Evil game, where protagonist ChrisRedfield is a member of a spec-ops group, the BSAA. This group is believed to have been sent to investigate an incident in a arid desert region and as the trailer shows at the end, there's a enigmatic female character in the game. Is she a shape-shifter, or perhaps a comely hobbit with an drinking problem?

Much like Resident Evil 4, players will have to skulk around collecting items and weapons, and weapon items as the case may be, in order to unleash several shades of pain onto very suspecting and sometimes oblivious zombies. The gameplay will be one-part action, two-parts mayhem, and three-parts lemon juice.

Jun Takeuchi, the Capcom producer who was also the dude behind Lost Planet and Onimusha, has revealed that the enemies in the new game will have much sharper AI scripts, and also hinted that there may be a new type of enemy to slaughter. I pray to Xemu it be scientology preachers...

The polygon count will also be beefed up to provide gamers with a more graphic and presumably spooky experience, plus the rumour mill has been working overtime pumping out such dross like the inclusion of online elements. 

But honestly, that's something we'd like to see - 2-player online co-op. Bring that shit on. MAN, that would be fun. Bam! Take that zombie. Bam! Eat lead Internet buddy. Hehehe. 

Anyway, the game will play out much like Resident Evil 4, though expect more emphasis on environmental interaction. No, I don't mean zombies planting undead trees to help reduce their zombie emissions, but rather that Chris Redfield (the main character) will be able to interact with his surroundings. For example, he may be able to use a discarded lederhosen outfit to dazzle his enemies with his old-school German fashion sense before shooting them in the brain with a cleverly hidden shotgun.

Well, the game is expected in 2008, but most likely will arrive in 2009, by which time I'll have amassed an army of deadly shiatsu-trained spider monkeys large enough to conquer at least half of the entire Capcom design team! Though it's still early days, the trailer looks very good, and if an online mode makes it's way into the game that allows cross platform gaming (Xbox and Playstation gamers united?), then so be it.