Expert denies Resident Evil 5 racism claims

But debate rages on

Despite some commentators noting with unease that Capcom's new survival-horror title Resident Evil 5 contains "classic" racist imagery, a senior anthropologist from the University of Kent has said it would be a mistake to brand the game as actually 'racist'.

According to Videogamer.com, expert Glenn Bowman has said it would be "silly" to describe the game as racist, as the title could have been set anywhere, although the game has the "potential" to be more risky, we're told.

"It is about using Africa as threat, but they've got to use somewhere as threat," Bowman explained.

"And as far as I know from what you've told me the last game used rural Spain as threat. Basically if you want to make a frightening scene you take whatever characteristics of that scene are salient and turn them align.

"So you get vicious Spaniards who I suspect are running around with knives or whatever. Here you get infected Africans. Maybe they'll make the next game happen in Finland and you'll have a whole series of Inuits and the like being really scary and running around with Walrus heads on. I think it's silly to call it racist."

This debate is unlikely to go away, however, as the game heads into stores.

By Luke Guttridge