Anticipating Resident Evil 5 was clearly a mistake. After playing Resident Evil 4 twice and subsequently labeling it “the most overrated game of 2005″, I should have known better than to expect anything different from a sequel banking on its progenitor’s critical and commercial success. But I can hardly be blamed in full for this misconception after all the posturing in the demo’s press release citing Halo and Gears of War as influences on its enhanced control scheme. This is only slightly true, as playing through the demo’s two available levels would painfully reveal.

The actual controls used in Resident Evil 5 share more in common with Resident Evil 4 with a few additions, but they are still clumsy and unnatural. Sure, one trigger is AIM and the other is SHOOT, but how about that awkward inventory selection screen? The D-pad can be used to quick select weapons, but there’s no on-screen menu or feedback like in Gears.

What is clouding the issue – and I explain this in my lengthy analysis of Resident Evil 4 – is that these controls are new to the Resident Evil series, and as such are only praised by fans who had to deal with even shittier controls before. But to ignore all the advances that have been made in console-based shooters in the last four years is to say that they don’t matter, and that the average gamer interested in getting into the series had better start learning some new controls. This is especially relevant now that Capcom has basically abandoned the horror aspects of the game and created a simplified shooter.

Contrary to what the designers at Capcom may think (and some fans, even) slow-turning tanks are not fun to control and only induce frustration, not fear. For the entire length of the series, Resident Evil fans have been making excuses for poor controls to the point where people actually stand up to blindly defend them when they are questioned. These controls have not adapted to genre standards, despite publicly referencing them.

The series is no longer scary. Resident Evil is not a horror game anymore, it is a third-person shooter. Why were enhancements made to the controls in Resident Evil 4? To make it easier to kill things. If killing things is more important than developing story or tension, then you have made a shooter. Except these controls were only half-realized. You can’t move and shoot; Even Dead Space, a game widely recognized as being based on Resident Evil 4, allows you to slowly move your character while aiming a gun. It is not unrealistic to expect a human to be able to do that, perhaps with reduced accuracy – and this is reflected in most games. You must be aiming your gun to be able to reload. There is also a context-sensitive melee system that makes no sense when you are surrounded by a pack of zombies. There should be a melee action button for whetever weapon you are holding and that’s the end of it. I should not have to equip my machete.

Resident Evil 5 certainly makes the most of the XBox 360 hardware: the visuals show serious improvement over Resident Evil 4, especially with the main characters. And that’s probably the only positive thing I can muster about this game. The Zombies/Infected as a collective are boring. They seem more human than ever before. Even Resident Evil 4‘s denizens were more exciting because decapitating them or shooting limbs off would reveal an enemy that could smack you around from afar with evil-looking tendrils. In Resident Evil 5 the “zombies” are eager to run in for the kill, but stop suddenly in the general vicinity allowing you to queue up that laser pointer and blast away.

Resident Evil 5 is vanilla; it is unoriginal and it is playing it safe. Co-op may be where games are gravitating towards, but even that is not preventing this demo from being some of the most unexciting gaming I’ve ever experienced. Make me scared again, Capcom. Return to the horror roots of this franchise and stop trying to compete with shooters. There are already too many of them.

I’ve been playing Dead Rising for the last few weeks, and must give credit to Capcom for capturing what it’s like to actually be threatened by a crowd of zombies. Sure, shooting a gun is about as satisfying as punching myself in the side of the head, but at least I can pick up a baseball bat and swing that for a while. In its current form, Resident Evil is offering nothing more than a bunch of slow moving targets to aim a laser pointer at. I never liked Resident Evil 4, so maybe I was a bit naïve thinking that Resident Evil 5 would win me over. This game is for Resident Evil fans, and they can have it. For a tedious exercise in survival horror, I’d rather go back to Dead Space.