Take Resident Evil 5, sprinkle with a few extra bits of content, release at a reasonable price and liberally dose with Barry Burton. There we have RE5: Gold Edition in all its glory.

Say goodbye to your arm, beeeyatch.

Unsurprisingly the game plays exactly the same as it did first time around, which is sure to disappoint those who wanted to see things mixed up so the control scheme didn’t feel so resolutely out of place. Still, it does a job and the ride is just as exciting as before. The additional content sees a couple of ‘behind the scenes’ stories told, first covering Jill and Chris’ investigation into the Spencer Estate and second Jill and Josh’s escape from the Tricell facility, both as seen previously in cutscenes from the original release. These two bits of DLC clock in at around the one-hour mark each, meaning they are fun distractions that can be blasted through in one sitting – in fact, they have to be, as there’s no way of saving progress. Mercenaries mode makes a re-return, this time with the addition of Resident Evil’s greatest character: Barry Burton. Again, it’s another fun, but brief distraction – and the same can be said for the online Versus mode.

But we have to ask the question: why bother even putting in a single-player mode if you can’t be bothered making the AI competent? And why release an updated version of the game if you’re not going to fix anything about problems that were obvious first time around? This isn’t some minor complaint about ‘they picked up my bullets’ – this is a major, near game-breaking fault. When the mission is reliant on your partner surviving, making them utterly incapable of looking after themselves is a cardinal sin. Boss battles become babysitting chores, large-scale encounters become overwhelmed with panic as you realise your partner is probably going to get cornered and there’s nothing they will do about it to help themselves. This is soon replaced by blinding rage when they inevitably get killed, again, sending you back to the last checkpoint. We don’t want the AI to take over and run through the entire game for us, but it needs to be made to a useable standard, otherwise there’s just no point in it.

Played with other people, just as with Resi 5 the first time around, Gold Edition is a very good game and great fun. Alone, it’s a bit of a chore.

What do you get if you cross a dog, with a chocolate cake?