Resident Evil 5 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom and released in 2009. It is the seventh major installment in the Resident Evil series, and was announced in 2005—the same year its predecessor Resident Evil 4 was released. Resident Evil 5 was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles in March 2009 and for Microsoft Windows in September that year. The plot involves an investigation of a terrorist threat by Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA) agents Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar in Kijuju, a fictional region of Africa. Chris soon learns that he must confront his past in the form of an old enemy, Albert Wesker, and his former partner, Jill Valentine.
The gameplay of Resident Evil 5 is similar to that of the previous installment, though it is the first in the series designed for two-player cooperative gameplay. It has also been considered to be the first game in the main series to depart from the survival horror genre, with critics saying it bore more resemblance to an action game. Motion capture was used for the cutscenes, and it was the first video game to use a virtual camera system. Several staff members from the original Resident Evil worked on Resident Evil 5.
Resident Evil 5 received a positive reception, despite some criticism for its control scheme. The game received some complaints of racism, though an investigation by the British Board of Film Classification found the complaints were unsubstantiated. Resident Evil 5was re-released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in June 2016. As of December 2018, the original release has sold over 7.4 million units. An additional 3.6 million units have been sold between a special edition of the game and releases on other platforms, bringing the total sales to 11 million. It is the best-selling game of the Resident Evil franchise, and the original version remained the best-selling individual Capcom release until March 2018, when it was outsold by Monster Hunter: World. A sequel, Resident Evil 6, was released in 2012.
