I have been playing video games since I was about five years old.  I remember playing the old school, gray brick that was Nintendo’s original system (Yes, I have been playing games for that long).  I have played all the classics and as I grew up my tastes changed.  My favorite games by far would have to be those of the Resident Evil series.  Killing zombies is just so much fun!  There is a thrill to playing horror games during the night that cannot be replaced. 

Resident Evil 5 came out on March 13, and I was ecstatic.  I had been looking forward to this upcoming game since I played Resident Evil 4.  As Capcom released more and more gameplay footage and trailers, I started to get even more pumped up.  On the other hand, many people were shocked and appalled by what was depicted in the trailer footage saying it is racism at its worst.

Chris Redfield, the star of Resident Evil 5, is also one of the main characters for the original Resident Evil game (back when Playstation 1 graphics were considered revolutionary.)  In the trailer footage, Chris is seen fighting off hordes of zombies, but these are not “normal zombies” according to some people.  These zombies happen to be African (gasp!).  This is controversial, right?  Many audiences have a problem with the fact that a white, male protagonist is going around killing legions of undead black people. 

One blog site, Black Look, has already formed angry mobs (fully equipped with torches and pitchforks) flaming Resident Evil 5 for its demeaning and hateful treatment of Africans.  Kym Platt, a blogger on Black Look, was in no way impressed by the game:

“This is problematic on so many levels, including the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages, the killing of Black people by a white man in military clothing, and the fact that this video game is marketed to children and young adults.  Start them young... fearing, hating, and destroying Black people.”

Reading something like this irritates me to no end.  It is ignorant statements like this that give people the wrong impression of something they will never come into contact with.  

Has society really fallen this far into this deadly spiral of political correctness?  For those who will not be playing RE5 anytime soon, there is nothing racist about the game. The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has reviewed footage of the game depicting a blonde woman being dragged away by an enemy.  They have determined that there is nothing racist about the game, since many of the enemies are not black, though some of them are black.

“As the whole game is set in Africa it is hardly surprising that some of the characters are black, just like the fact that some of the characters in an earlier version were Spanish as the game was set in Spain,” Board executive Sue Clark said.

People love to pick at everything and turn nothing into something controversial.  Trying to pass this game as stereotypical is just one more example of how society has yet to mature enough to get passed racism as a whole.