Capcom recently partnered with the American Red Cross to drum up publicity for the hotly anticipated Resident Evil 5, which will be released on March 13. And the campaign? Capcom will fund a blood drive with the help of Red Cross.

The Capcom / Resident Evil 5 blood drive will be held at the World of Wonder Gallery located in Hollywood California. The whole day event sounds like fun. People who donate their blood during the event will get a chance to win prizes that includes several limited edition Resident Evil 5 Blood Drive collectors items like posters, bumper stickers and buttons along with, predictably, copies of the Resident Evil 5 game.

Capcom will also be raffling off limited edition red Xbox 360 Elite gaming consoles that are bundled with the Resident Evil 5 game. Interested to join in the blood drive? Just visit the Red Cross web site for details.

Limited Edition Red Xbox360.

Fans will enjoy the same premium Xbox 360 Elite experience at an even greater value with a copy of Resident Evil 5, matching Limited Edition red Wireless Controller, black Xbox 360 Headset, a 120 GB Hard Drive and exclusive premium Resident Evil 5 theme (download via Xbox LIVE). Supplies are very limited, so Resident Evil fans will want to pre-order theirs today.

With the release of Resident Evil 5 and the special edition red console, the game has found a new home on Xbox 360. The new two-player cooperative experience in Resident Evil 5 is a perfect fit for Xbox LIVE. With 17 million members and growing, Xbox LIVE connects Resident Evil fans and their new red Xbox 360 consoles to their friends on the couch or across the globe. To further provide a taste of the full entertainment experience available on Xbox LIVE, fans will also receive a bonus card to download the hit Xbox LIVE Arcade title from Capcom, Super Street Fighter ll Turbo HD Remix.

As an addition to this information, I’d like to say that I managed to complete the demo levels for Resident Evil 5 about six times. Is it going to be good then? Oh yes, I would imagine that it’ll be a very good game indeed. If you’re lucky enough to get your hands on a limited edition red console then that’ll make the game just that little bit sweeter.

With Resident Evil 5′s impending release, more and more information is beginning to trickle in. For example, according to the product page on Xbox Japan, Resident Evil 5 will have downloadable content. What kind of content is still up in the air, at this point your guess is as good as mine.

One thing’s for sure though, I’ll get the game on the first day.

Sheva Alomar in RE5

There was some criticism when Resident Evil 5 was seen earlier in the year – with some even going so far as to suggest that the game featured racism.  In order to counter this argument, Asian and Western zombies were put into towns.  Whatever you might think about this action, I’m sure that you were quite happy with the introduction of a rather tasty looking character to the game – Sheva Alomar.

Whereas Leon had Ada Wong as his female sidekick (and she was a playable character in a bonus mission) in Resident Evil 4, Chris Redfield gets the lovely Sheva.  What makes her even better is that she’s based on a real person – the lovely Michelle Van Der Water.  Look her up on Google images and I’m sure you’ll agree that she’s more than worthy to be basing a character model on.

This continues Capcom’s trend of using real world actors to model for games – which takes the idea of motion capture and goes even further by using facial likenesses as well.  I have to say that the results look astounding as you can see from the picture so I hope that Capcom continues to use this technology in future games.

Resident Evil 5 has a first quarter 2009 release date.

Yes ladies and gents, a new Resident Evil game has been announced for PS3 and XBox360 and first details have appeared from the Famitsu magazine:

Via GamesAreFun

• The controls will be based off of Resident Evil 4′s control scheme.
• Enemies will have much more character and personality. Takeuchi notes Ganado from RE4 as an example.
• Many of the staff who worked on the original Resident Evil will be making a return to work on this title.
• Don’t expect this out anytime soon; Takeuchi stated that any project that aims to surpass the standards set by RE4 would more than likely take three to five years to complete.

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