F1ach: I was put off initially by the reviews, but eventually just said wth and bought it and I really love it so far. I havent finished it yet, I have played Leons campaign twice (once as Leon and once as Helena), I just finished Jakes campaign this morning, that was a blast from the opening to the end, compared to the more explorative Leon/Helena campaign.
There is huge diversity in gameplay styles and monsters so far. The game has so many things going for it, 3(x2) campaigns, different combat styles, lots of collectibles and an RPG type feature with the skills you can purchase and of course then there is the Ada campaign after you finish the others, also theres Merc's as well. There are parts where the campaigns intersect and when it happens the first time it's OK, but when it happens again, it adds more depth as you have more background information on whats going on and why they are meeting in these areas. The game even collects all the in game movies and presents them in the correct timeline as a kind of movie-like series of cutscenes.
So far I have played leon 10 hrs, helena 7 hours, Jake 7 hours, with Chris, Piers and Sherry plus Ada and mercs left to go through, so its a pretty long game.
There are some on rails sections I have played that would ordinarily annoyed me, but they are a blast in this game (literally), the qte's can be annoying to be honest, but checkpoints are very frequent, so its no great hardship, but they do add a serious degree of intensity.
I only found one annoying thing, in a firefight, if it gets hectic, you can inadvertently click the right stick, causing the reticle to shift sides on the screen, afaik this can be turned off, but I havent been able to find how to do it, but, its no biggie. There is an interesting option regarding "aiming", you can choose to aim where your character is facing or where the camera is facing, that can be handy to know starting off.
There is a certain order to play the game story-wise, but I started off as Leon and I think that because thats a bit more relaxed as a combat campaign, its a handy tutorial campaign, to let you get used to the controls.
One of my favourite games this year.
