E3 2019: Hands-on with Resident Evil 5 on Switch

In a not so surprising move, Capcom announced that more Resident Evil was coming to Switch and at E3 2019, the Nintendo booth had Resident Evil 5 available for playing, having never finished that entry in the series, I thought it time to reacquaint myself with it and gave it a go.

If you have played Resident Evil 5 before, then you know exactly what you are getting with this game, except there is a slight change, the game now allows for full co-op play on two Switch systems, whereas originally you could only do split screen. The demo had a time of 15 minutes and dropped me in the African town, where the game begins and that was on me to go from there, before anything thinks anything further there was no difference to the controls from Resident Evil 4, the same tank style is still present and while I did ask the Capcom Rep who was on hand about whether they would add motion controls or other basic schemes, the response was that they are listening to fan feedback about what to include to all their games, so that’s a no answer.

What surprised me about the game, was how quickly it all came back to me, something that I had thought would not happen, given the fact that a decade has past since I last attempted to play the game. While the clock was on the screen at all times, counting down, I kept pushing on, there were times when I, playing as Chris would boost Shiva up to a ledge, letting her take the high ground, while I stayed down in amongst the action. Things were moving at a nice brisk pace, until the chainsaw guy, burst through the door, I had plenty of ammo, some grenades and a few herbs, so I was good to go, except when I wasn’t.

As I mentioned before, the controls are the same basic tank controls they have been for a while now and as you can’t shoot and move at the same time, I was struggling to find a rhythm on the fight. I would gain some space between me and Mr chainsaw guy, only for him to close it, whilst I was attempting to aim at him, the result was I lost my head, literally and the demo ended there. When I put the controller down, I did get a nice pat on the back from the Capcom rep and the folk manning the station for Nintendo, as they were both surprised at how fast I got up to the boss and were both thinking I was going to make it past him, which would have ended the demo anyway, sadly that was not in the cards.

One thing I can say is that the game has a slightly improved look over the Xbox 360 release, but as the game is still being ported across, things are always changing. With the recent release of Resident Evil, Resident Evil 0 and Resident Evil 4 on Switch, adding 5 to the mix is a welcome addition and as you can now play with a friend, it seems like a worthy one.