Nothing like spending 5 hours a day in a virtual world full of people looking to "hook up" and being subjected to an endless barrage of advertising from Sony's sponsors. I was actually looking forward to a virtual lobby which would break the boundries of social gaming. Too bad Sony made HOME, instead.

... so that game isn't at all what I expected/hoped it would be. Lets review a little first on some of the key things which made the Resident Evil series special:

I. Moody, aptmospheric environments which are usually dark and could obscure any number of creepy things ready to pounce at a moments notice.

II. Survivalism in gameplay. Specifically making the player choose whether to expend valuable ammo or run and live to see another day. This creates tension and further signifies the series as "horror" based.

III. Slow paced, deliberate story telling which allows players to opt in their exploration to collecting files which further flesh out the nuanced story of the game.

Now lets look at Resident Evil (action packed super blockbuster state of the art graphics thrillride 3rd person shooter) 5. Well that gets most of it. Another list, this time of things I noticed and dissappointed me whilst playing RE5.

I. Nonstop action which does not give the player a choice between fight or flight. Every area has a fight in it. The fights are predictable and detracts from the (is something going to get me?) aspect of previous Resident Evil titles. In short, yes, things will get you. They will be obvious, easy to predict, and constantly there.

II. Co-operative gameplay. Another genius move by Capcom to make Resident Evil 5 just another second rate 3rd person shooter. If you play solo, enjoy having an ai partner who will consistantly take damage, move to the wrong area and squander every item (and bullet) you give them. If playing on co-op, you completely lose the feeling in previous titles of dread in which things may be ready to destroy you within moments. Having your partner at your side gives you the comforting feeling that everything will be just fine as you blow mutants to kingdom come. You can also forget about the story, because like every other co-operative game, its a competition to see who can kill the most. Story would just get in the way of gameplay. Would you really sit and read a file while your friend gets all the glory?

III. Bright, linear and cliched environments. Secret laboratory? You got it! Ancient ruins with mirror puzzles? As awkward and trite as you remember!

I might also add that gameplay has never been one of the finer qualities of the Resident Evil series. Action has not been the focus. Even Resident Evil 4 had the player choose their battles. It has always been more of an experience of adventure rathter than action. However, when Capcom switches the focus to a standard 3rd person shooter (with a few collectables) they may want to consider changing the gameplay formula a little bit from RE4's stand and shoot policy. In 4 players were not faced with bum-rushes of enemies all the time. In such few sequences where having a strafe may have been warranted, the game compensated by giving players a way to trick or delay the enemy so that they could fall back and continue shooting. However, in Resident Evil 5, the player is consistently jumped from all sides by enemies who attack rather immediately with no real way of getting out of the fray and thinning out the ranks. It becomes rather frustrating as the player is constantly running, pulling off a few shots and running again, usually backing themselves into a corner. There are simply too many things to fight from too many directions to keep the player from getting cheap shotted. Ultimately, this game should have contained a strafe feature.

Does anyone agree or are we still easily oo'ed and ahh'ed by fancy shading, textures and shiny bullets?

So I played Orange Box and Portals is by far the only thing actually worth playing. I was tired of how overrated Halo is and whenever I complain about it people agree with me and recommend Half Life 2... which I've learned is actually much worse. So I stuck it out and finished Half Life 2 and Episode 1 and got half way through Episode 2 when I was getting so incredbly bored with the dull physics puzzles, incredibly stupid enemy ai, the ridiculous story that even puts "Wally Bear and the NO! Gang" to shame that I dropped the controller and moved on.

Seriously, what in the world do people see in Half Life 2? It's not exciting, even remotely. The areas seem to linger on much longer than they should with no real "action" happening. I'm not a "PRO" fps player but I even found the difficulty laugably easy. I can easily just charge in and mow everything down then wait another 15 to 20 minutes for the story to happen a bit, go on a little jog, solve another stupidly done physics puzzle and mow down another set of enemies. At least Halo 3 kept me occupied with *shudder* ACTION. Won't find much of that in Half Life 2. I don't know if Half Life 1 is bad but I've had enough with these over rated FPS games. I could go on but Gamespot has a language filter....