Before I unleash the hounds, let me direct you to towards required reading: the first part of this editorial. With that out of the way, I can begin.

Let's jump right into it this time. What's next, you ask? The vz61 Skorpion subgun, or as it is called in RE5, the vz61, and the Heckler & Koch MP5. Originally, I was going to keep these as separate topics, but since they both fit into the submachine gun category, it will make sense to treat them as such because issues that affect one affect the other.

The real life vz61 is a cheap machine pistol that is chambered in .32 and exhibits a high rate of fire. The real life HK MP5 is a venerable submachine gun chambered in 9mm that also boasts a high rate of fire, although not as high as that of the Skorpion. So how do the guns in the game stack up to their real-life counterparts? That depends on how deep you want to go. I was hoping I could avoid the whole "generic ammo for different calibers" trend that started in RE4, but the remarkable differences between these guns and their real-life versions suggest that I'd better take it from the top. For starters, the vz61 and the MP5 both use different cartridges, .32 and 9mm, but in RE5, they somehow use the same generic "SMG Ammo." What? Now, if they'd gone as far as to say that the vz61 (.32 ACP) was in fact a vz68, which shoots 9mm, then I could believe that. However, they don't say that. Can we overlook this error? I believe we can. Hardly a major transgression.

Moving on, though, we discover that it is merely one of many. The real-life vz61 uses 10- or 20-round magazines. The real-life MP5 uses 30-rounders. One of the most glaring is that the MP5's magazine holds 45 rounds, and that the vz61's holds 50? They must be joking. Have you ever seen a 50-round magazine that was the size of a 20-round magazine? Of course not. Take a look at the physical size of the vz61's magazine in the game. How in the world could they figure that a magazine that size could hold 50 rounds, when a magazine twice that length on the MP5 only holds 45? Does that even come close to making sense in any way? Do you guys see what I'm getting at here? So much for realism. I understand that they're trying to "balance" the guns or something like that, but... well, anyway.

Continuing on the submachine gun line, some of you who are well-read about firearms might mention that, technically, handgun ammo and SMG ammo are the same thing. This is because SMGs are simply pistol-caliber automatic weapons. In RE5, shouldn't we be running the same ammunition in our handguns as we do in our SMGs? The (short) answer is yes. We should be able to use the ammo interchangeably in RE5. Can we? No.

With those nitpicks out of the way, I'll break the rest of it down. In my main three categories, the vz61 and MP5 are symmetrical; design is perfect, sound is weak, stopping power is... almost accurate. Both guns are weaker than they should be, but other than that, (and the things I already mentioned,) they are fine. I really enjoy using the MP5, myself. I can't wait to see the other automatics in the game.

All right, now I can finally talk about the "S75" rifle, which, for all intents and purposes, is a Remington 700 rifle with a variable-magnification scope on it. The design is great, the sound is loud, and the stopping power is magnificent. When you shoot somebody with it, the bullet will rip right through them, much like how it would if you actually shot somebody with a .308 at the ranges you do most of the shooting in RE5 at. Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything that I don't like about this rifle's presentation. Oh, wait. There is one thing.

I don't know how many of you have seen or played the RE5 demo, but if you haven't, you can watch gameplay videos on my YouTube. The Shanty Town video, where you get to use the rifle, is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtmaTbeHXhM

At 5:10, after shooting off a full magazine of rifle rounds, notice how when I reload, the reload only shows Chris thumbing two cartridges into the internal mag. Yet, it shows me as being completely reloaded to full capacity of six rounds. This is not me using a bug or trick to skip reloading the rest of the rounds; it is simply a set animation of reloading two rounds. Whenever you reload, you reload only two rounds, yet magically your rifle is full again. It doesn't matter if you fired six, or four, or one round. Chris/Sheva will always reload two. Nice lazy programming, devs. I thought you'd have given up on that stuff in the last generation. Apparently you didn't. This annoying flaw is also, as in RE4, present with the shotgun. You don't reload a full tube of shells, you only reload two. I wish I could get away with this kind of slacking at my job. Don't you guys think that if you had to take the time to reload the full pipe with shells, it would make for many more intense moments than a brief, "okay I'm reloading, sort of" animation before they throw you back into total dominance of the battlefield? I ask everyone this question honestly.

Apart from the shortening of the rifle reload, which is otherwise semi-accurate, (although I prefer Leon's smooth use of stripper clips on his bolt-action in RE4) here are some more reload bloopers in RE5...

MP5: Here is a breakdown of what happens every time you reload the MP5 in RE5. And yeah, it gets old.

1) Chris/Sheva pulls back cocking handle into notch to open the MP5's action.

2) They hit the mag release, letting the old mag drop while they access a full one.

3) New mag goes in.

4) They slap the cocking handle out of the notch to close the action, chambering a round and getting the gun ready to shoot.

Is this right? Absolutely, but... when doing a "wet reload," or a reload when you haven't shot the magazine or gun completely empty, almost none of these actions are necessary. The reload steps I just numbered are the process for a "dry reload." In other words, for when you have shot an MP5 dry, which means the action is closed, there is no round in the chamber, and none in the magazine. When you do a wet reload, as in if there are still rounds in the magazine and/or the chamber, the steps are as follows:

1) Hit the mag release, letting the partial magazine drop while accessing a full one.

2) New mag goes in.

Then, realistically, you could resume firing immediately. If you wanted to complicate things but add a certain level of assurance, you could add...

3) Pull back cocking handle and let it fly forward in one motion. This will eject the round currently in the chamber, but ensure that the rounds from the fresh magazine will feed properly.

Even with this extra step, it would still be much faster than how it is represented in RE5, which some might call "the hard way."

M37:

1) Chris/Sheva bring the gun in close, and thumb two shells into the pipe.

2) They rack the pump.

Accurate? Not really. It should look more like this:

1a) DRY RELOAD ONLY: Chris/Sheva pulls the pump back, opening the shell loading tray.

1b) DRY RELOAD ONLY CONT'D: They thumb a shell into the tube, then slide the pump forward, chambering a shell.

2) If there is a round in the chamber already, they start thumbing shells into the tube until it is filled to capacity.

That's all there is to it. It is NOT necessary to rack the shotgun after you fill the tube if there is already a round in the chamber. This is because the shotgun is already charged. Racking the shotgun after you load it full, if there is still a shell in the chamber, will simply eject the round already inside the chamber. So in fact, the way that Sheva and Chris do it is wrong because when they rack it after loading, they would be ejecting fresh shells. Make sense?

Beretta 92:

1) Chris/Sheva pulls the gun in close and hits the mag release, letting the old magazine drop free while they access a new one.

2) New magazine goes in.

3) DRY RELOAD ONLY: They hit the slide release to close the action and chamber a round.

Accurate? Yep! Except for the fact that they don't take into account whether there is a round in the chamber already on a reload. This would bump the gun's capacity up by 1, allowing you an extra shot. Can we let this slide? Yeah, probably. (This should also be taken into account on all the other guns except the S75.)

Skorpion:

1) Mag release is hit; old mag hits the deck. New one accessed.

2) New mag goes in.

3) Cocking handle is charged.

Accurate? 100%. This does work for both the dry and wet reloads.

Okay. I am almost done here. Before I dip, I only have a few more pet peeves to point out.

Anybody with even the slimmest amount of firearms training knows that one of the most important rules, if not THE most important rule, is to KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER until you are ready to fire.

There
are
NO
EXCEPTIONS.

This is an unmoving, 100% steadfast, set-in-stone law of gun safety. There is not a single gun course out there that does not establish this rule within the first 5 minutes. Yet, how come, constantly, in almost every video game and movie, do the people in charge INVARIABLY ignore this rule?

Short answer; because they don't know what the **** they're doing.

Long answer; because they have no training, and don't know what they **** they're doing.

It really doesn't make Chris or Sheva look professional when they're running around ignoring the simplest and most basic rule of safe gunhandling. Gun safety is a major insistence of mine, and of all intelligent shooters. It pains me to see it being ignored. There's no excuse for it. 30 seconds on Google or Wikipedia would tell you the same.

My last (really last, I promise) issue with all of this business is a rather small one, and one that you really might not notice unless you were informed or trained otherwise. It is called "mag retention." In a real gunfight, given the opportunity, you should try and retain your empty and partial magazines from your weapons, because you might need them later. In RE5, and pretty much every other game except a few, Chris and Sheva just dump their magazines, whether empty or partial, all over the ground, which in real life would leave them short of mags, and also deny them valuable extra rounds of ammunition that they might need. Of course, in video game land, this is nothing to worry about, but for the sake of this supposed "realism," maybe they should take that into account in the future. Sure, in the heat of battle you might need to speed-reload, and get the gun into action again as fast as you can, which means dropping the magazine and leaving it, but that isn't going to be the case all the time. In combative shooting, they say that switching to another gun is faster than reloading. This is usually because of the issue of having to dig through your gear for a new magazine, and having to stow the empty or partial one. In video games this is never an issue, but in the future, maybe it should be. Make sense?

I left off yesterday with the message that current-gen developers shouldn't be allowed to continue to make the same mistakes that previous-gen developers have made. I don't mean this only as far as guns. I mean everything. As producers and purveyors of goods, they are required to constantly provide consumers with compelling new products. Such is the nature of commerce. No company chooses to be left behind in the marketplace; however, they might make choices that end up securing that as their fate. Put simply; if you cut corners it can bite you in the ass. I think we can all agree on this. We all have jobs, and school, and sometimes both, so we are aware of the all-pervading necessity of work. The kind of work that Takeuchi-san stated that they have done, but I suspect they have not.

That's enough of that. For God's sake, CAPCOM, hire a proper consultant. Or me! Hire me, please!

Be safe,
Gene

P.S. Release the RE5 demo on PSN. Stop ****ing around.

P.P.S. I told you guys I would talk about the AK47, but this is already much too long, and the thread I was going to talk about it on is kind of tangential to this, so I'll wait.

One thing that bugs me about game developers these days is that nobody can get guns right. There is always something missing. I find, for the most part, that while video games and guns go together really well, exquisitely well in fact, nobody can seem to hit the nail on the head. Every game has "good" guns, but not "great" guns. Devs will get the design right, but they'll get the reload wrong. They'll get a caliber right, but a mag size wrong. Normally, this goes completely unnoticed by the gaming public, and if it gets noticed, it doesn't get brought up. Except by guys like me. In my opinion, too long has lazy work by devs been going on unchecked.

In interviews regarding RE5 and it's realism(s), Takeuchi-san has stated that they're really upping the level of detail on the firearms this time. He mentions this while making faint reference to RE4's wilder, more fantastical weapons. (I assume he means the PRL412, Mine Thrower, et cetera.) He even goes as far as to say they hired a "firearms specialist" to consult! Wow. So who is this "specialist" then? One of the self-proclaimed "experts" you might find trolling the various message boards, who know every spec and detail of their favourite guns, but wouldn't have a hope of being able to fight with it because they have no training or experience? You guys know the type of person that I mean, we've all met them. (I used to be one of them...) Does he play a lot of Airsoft? A lot of CoD4 maybe? Or does he have a lot of training? Hell, even a LITTLE training? I ask because he's getting a lot of things wrong. To his credit, he's getting a lot of things right as well.

Now without getting into too much of a negative or sarcastic tone for this "article," to use the word loosely, I shall begin talking about what I've seen in the guns from RE5 so far. I will be centering this largely on the guns in the demo, which are, the Ithaca M37 shotgun, Skorpion vz61 submachine gun, Beretta 92 pistol, Remington 700 rifle, and the HK MP5 submachine gun. However, I will touch on some other guns that have made appearances in RE5 promo materials, such as the ubiquitous AK47.

To start off, let's address the Beretta 92. Everyone remember the funky little "Samurai Edge" pistols that the STARS had in RE1? Well, the base model of those guns is making an appearance in RE5, used by both Sheva and Chris. I don't intend on getting too techy or esoteric about this, so I'll jump right into the meat of what I'm here for; what's correct, and what's not? The look is correct, the stopping power is, dare I say, "correct," the sound is a bit quiet and weak. Overall, the gun is pretty accurate to it's real-life counterpart. The sound, though, really bugs me. It is the same sound from RE4; a light, "pak-pak" kind of noise. It doesn't make you feel like you're firing a gun at all. This is because real guns are L-O-U-D. Anyone who has been to a range or even just heard a gun go off knows that even quiet guns in small calibers are quite loud. Hence why shooters are recommended, and usually REQUIRED, to wear what we call "ear-pro," or ear protection. In games, your favourite heroes go through the entirety of a game busting thousands of rounds from their long and short guns, indoors and outdoors, with no ear protection. In games, this is nothing to worry about. In real life, doing this would wreck your hearing for the rest of your days. I need not explain this particular point further.

Next, let's talk about the Ithaca M37. Actually, let's talk about shotguns in general. In games, most of the time shotguns are mythical gods of war that can knock down buildings and send bad guys flying. In real life, they are just guns that can either shoot one really big bullet, (a solid slug) or a bunch of small ones. (To keep it simple, we'll just say buckshot, even though there are many kinds of 'shot.') A slug is a big wad of lead that punches a big hole in you. A load of buckshot is comprised of about eight or nine .32 caliber pellets that put several smaller holes in you. That's it. They do not lift you off your feet. They do not blow up cars. They do not tear you apart. They only put holes in you. The same thing every gun does. Now that we've got that part out of the way, let me discuss another fundamental part of shotgun ballistics that many people are not aware of, and that nobody in the developer community seems to know about. That is the actual external ballistics of shotgun projectiles. By "external ballistics" what I mean is, what happens when the objects are in flight. In games, and out of the hundreds of games I have played, I can only think of ONE where this does not apply, what happens when you shoot a shotgun with buckshot is the pellets expand into a pattern a few yards wide immediately after leaving the barrel, making it easy to hit things up close, but impossible to hit anything past about 10 or 15 yards.

What you guys have to understand is, projectiles do not just fan out of a gun's barrel as soon as they leave it. It is physically impossible. Think of the way a water hose works. It directs a lot of water molecules (the shot) along a straight, restricted channel, (the barrel) and when those molecules leave the hose, they leave IN THE SHAPE OF THE CHANNEL, until they spread out after a certain point of freedom in the air. The water doesn't just spray apart as soon as it leaves the hose, does it? The same thing with a shotgun load. It requires time and space to spread into a pattern. In reality, an average load of buckshot will make a spread of pellets approximately 12-15 INCHES APART at 20 yards. That means if you shot somebody 20 meters away in the chest with a shotgun, there is a good chance that all of the pellets would hit him. AT 20 YARDS, most of the pellets would hit him! Compare that with the pellet spread of video game shotguns, and it seems we have quite the discrepancy on our hands, don't we? Do you guys think that maybe there is something a bit absurd about video game shotguns now?

So let's take a look at the M37 shotgun in RE5. What's correct, what's not? The design is A-okay. Wood grip, lots of scratches, looks grimy. The sound is great, loud and powerful. The stopping power is way, way too great. This thing is a street sweeper. I don't know who the "firearms specialist" they hired is, but maybe they should have hired somebody who has fired a shotgun before. He might have been able to help Takeuchi-san with this typical, cliché, video game fantasy weapon.

Wow... this is turning out to be a lot longer and more in-depth than I wanted it to be. I hope people out there will still read it. :\ The truth is, I'm not even half-done with this, but I feel I should throw this out there now before I tackle the rest of it.

Before I jet, though, let me establish one thing; I'm not by any means saying that RE5 is bad, just that the devs are falling into the same lazy traps that every game developer falls into. They just don't do the work. Feeding their clients stereotypical content bites every company in the ass eventually. I mean, come on, guys. This is 2008, we have the most powerful consoles ever imagined, yet you still can't even get the fundamentals of SHOOTING BAD GUYS right. Get it together! Consumers aren't stupid. We like realism, not faux-realism. Takeuchi-san, if you say you're stepping up the realism, step it up. Don't just put a glossy coat of black on the guns and call them "realistic." MESSAGE TO ALL DEVELOPERS: One day, we will find out that you've been fooling us all these years. Stop faking it, and do the work.

Anyway, with that said, if you guys dig weapons, watch my blog for successive parts of this article, where I'll discuss the rest of the guns in the demo, and also some training and handling issues that I notice with them. I'll be paying special attention to the reloads.

Be easy,

Gene