Racist Overtones in Resident Evil 5?

The release of videogame Resident Evil 5 is still six months away, but a new trailer for the game is causing a bit of a furor thanks to a write-up by Newsweek game critic N'Gai Croal. In his article, Croal pointed out what he considered to be disturbing racial imagery. The Capcom game takes place in Haiti, and the trailer shows a white protagonist mowing down black zombies.
Croal gave an interview to MTV's gaming blog Multiplayer. Here's a bit of what he had to say:

“There was stuff like even before the point in the trailer where the crowd turned into zombies. There sort of being, in sort of post-modern parlance, they’re sort of ‘othered.’ They’re hidden in shadows, you can barely see their eyes, and the perspective of the trailer is not even someone who’s coming to help the people. It’s like they’re all dangerous; they all need to be killed. It’s not even like one cute African — or Haitian or Caribbean — child could be saved. They’re all dangerous men, women and children. They all have to be killed. And given the history, given the not so distant post-colonial history, you would say to yourself, why would you uncritically put up those images?

"It would be like saying you were going to do some sort of zombie movie that appeared to be set in Europe in the 1940s with skinny, emaciated, Hasidic-looking people. If you put up that imagery people would be saying, ‘Are you crazy?’ Well, that’s what this stuff looks like.”

Here's the trailer in question, for those interested in making their own judgments:



First, let me get three things out of the way: 1.) I can't believe there have already been four Resident Evil games. 2.) Can we all agree that trailers for videogames are a bit ridiculous? 3.) Is anyone else disturbed that Newsweek magazine has a "game critic"? or that 4.) he sounds like he's about 14?

OK, now that I've gotten that stuff out of the way, I will say that I can see how someone might be a little put off by what they see in this trailer. Particularly, someone who may not be a fan of horror. Someone, say, who has never seen Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2--or almost any zombie film made prior to Night of the Living Dead, for that matter. There is the potential for this trailer to be viewed in racial terms, I'm not denying that. But I don't believe that was the intention of the makers of the game at all.

Race is a tough issue in these days of political correctness. There's a lot of overreacting that goes on, but that doesn't mean every complaint is an overreaction. I'm very curious to read how you fine readers feel about this, so please leave a comment if you can.