Resident Evil 5

XBox 360

In recent months, zombie video games have flooded the malls like, well, zombies. The latest undead shooter, Resident Evil 5, received more puffed-up PR fanfare than the bloated corpses you’re salivating to set your guns on. However, in the wake of last year’s Left 4 Dead, the game quickly deflates by comparison. The latest entry in the Resident Evil franchise is entertaining enough—splattering zombies, like killing Nazis, never really gets old. Sadly, over-convoluted controls and sparse ammunition make flight over fight the norm. And that’s just not fun. A more engaging story, incredible graphics and a diverse variety of bad guys trump Left 4 Dead, but the big bads fall into stereotypes too easily. For this, 1980s video-game rules apply: when in doubt, shoot anything that pulses, is red, or appears sporadically. Two-player co-op is a welcome feature, but Left 4 Dead has four-player co-op and you don’t have to buy a Versus mode separately. You can blame Left 4 Dead for still scaring the shit out of us, but Resident Evil 5 arrives DOA on its own power.