Designed Frustration

Capcom may or may not be aware that some people found the controls in the Resident Evil 5 demo to somewhat cumbersome to say the least, myself included. Either way, they are doing their best to defend it. Producer Jun Takeuchi explained,

We went in knowing that we weren't making a typical third or first person shooter; we were making a Resident Evil game. It was important for us to go with the design choices that would make the best Resident Evil game that we could. When it comes to Resident Evil, we feel that by imposing a restriction on the player you actually increase the tension that they feel while playing.

I really have to disagree here. Tension is not the same as frustration. The entire time I spent with the demo, about an hour, was spent fighting the controls. It had been a few years since I had played Resident Evil 4 but I couldn't get to grips with the controls. It wasn't even the fact that I had to stop to aim; I really think that when they brought the controls from the GameCube controls to the 360 controller, they weren't sure what to do with all of the extra buttons and made the controls overcomplicated.

The other problem I had with the scheme, and the idea that there the same as RE4 so what's the big deal, is that while they updated everything else, the controls stayed the same. There are more enemies and the enemies are smarter and faster but the player feels slow and dumb. It's not really a sound strategy to shoot a couple of zombies in the legs, run to the other side of the room, turn and repeat until they're dead. This tension, it's tedium.

Finally, I just finished plying through Dead Space. That game is tense. And guess what, you can shoot and run at the same time. Look for my thoughts on Dead Space later this week (preview: I loved it).