Alright, so my impressions. I have played each scenario four times, twice with a single partner as both characters, once in single player, once with a random. I have to say, some people are painting a worse picture than it actually is. A lot of 'issues' people are having I can tell you right now is because they haven't properly adjusted the game settings for them and in general haven't gotten over the learning curve. The game is actually a lot different than I was expecting, both for the better and the worse.
First of all, the game is really different from RE4 and RE5. I think I need to highlight this point since I came in expecting essentially RE4 or RE5, but it ended up being a lot more different than I anticipated. I'll get into why in a bit but I need to touch on something.
The controls are better than RE4 and RE5, they just take some customizing and adjusting. At first, I didn't like them at all. They felt too janky and floaty to me. However, I soon found that the controls are extremely customizable on the main menu. Adjusting camera and aiming speed, switch around some options on how you point your gun and learning what all the buttons do (there are actually a lot of things you need to learn) helped to make my experience with the game much more enjoyable and actually controlled rather solidly after which. I can guarantee you most people who are complaining about controls haven't played enough or adjusted them for themselves properly. I had several people tell me how the controls sucked, but when I played with them and taught and showed them things, their opinions did a 180.
The campaigns actually feel really different. I was expecting them to only feel a tad so, but they legitimately don't feel the same to each other. Leon's is a slower-paced atmospheric campaign with less supplies and more focused on survival. Chris's campaign is combat-focused, much more fast-paced and essentially feels like Resident Evil 5 but with a lot of improvements. Jake is different, but I actually found his demo to be the most enjoyable and splits between slower-paced exploration and more tense scenes. One problem I had was that the demo seems to be on Easy difficulty setting, and you cannot change it.
Leon's demo unfortunately is a bit hard to replay as you mainly just explore a fairly linear environment, escorting the dad and his daughter isn't really fun, and nothing really happens until the end. One or two jump scares did get me though. This was actually my least favorite demo, but I could see the finished product being my favorite campaign. It should be noted me and my online partner ran out of ammo before we killed all the zombies in the first room of enemies.
Chris's demo was honestly a lot more fun than I was anticipating. I was prepared to hate it, but it actually was a lot of fun. Not scary, but fun. One thing that is going to piss off a lot of people, there's a melee button now and as Chris I could literally punch the hell out of enemies. I was laughing about it at first but it actually was pretty fun and with tougher enemies or swarms you can't be mindless about it. I also am assuming since the demo seems to be set to easy mode it'll be harder to pummel enemies on harder difficulties. Lots of changes in combat scenarios that kept things interesting, and the added depth to combat, better enemy AI and the enemies 'transforming', as well as a better designed area in my opinion, lead to a pretty good time once we came to terms that this was essentially combat focused. Both me and my partner ended up actually having a lot of fun.
Jake's demo is short, but my partner and I found it the most fun. Good variety and change of pace that was pretty fun. The start was a bit of a hurdle as you have to figure out what to do quickly or you die, but after you understand and get into it I did like exploring the building and fighting the mini-boss. There's al ot more I want to say but I think it's best below.
Some things to note:
-Blue Medallions are back: At least found one in Jake's scenario.
-Popping Pills: Green+Red herbs make pills. You press RB to pop pills. Either once for a single pill, or press it a few times in succession to pop a few to heal. The dying animation and execution in this is much better than RE5.
-Sliding is actually pretty fun. It isn't overpowered either, but can be helpful and actually a welcome addition.
-I never thought I'd say this, but the melee combat is actually a bit of fun once you can come to terms with it even existing and get the hang of it. Jake has a deeper version of melee, where he can choose 'hand-to-hand' for his weapon slot. Sherry has a Stun Rod which works differently but essentially her hand-to-hand combat. I do hope melee is nerfed more on harder difficulties though.
-This game is going to polarize people: It is a better game than RE5, I have no doubt in my mind about that. But it's very different and I think some may come to embrace the change and find the game is fun, and others will hate it.
It is less cliched third person shooter than I was expecting... But it still needs a lot of polish. I hope the next half a year deals with that. The problems I had with it after some time with it come from mostly a few lack of polish issues and simply what the game is, as a Resident Evil game. It does a lot of things that sound really stupid on paper. But while I at first hated to admit it, what sounds terrible on paper was actually a lot of fun in execution in my experience. The game has a strange learning curve and I found the more I played it, the more I liked the game. At first I will be honest, I didn't like it at all. I was sort of mortified with my initial impressions. But when I actually started to understand what I was doing as well as accepting it, I actually started having a lot of fun.
This game is going to polarizing, and I expect GAF to be all over about it with a big sense of hate since of what it is and that learning curve, but I am coming with it both thinking it is better and worse than I was expecting. Better in execution and how fun it is, worse in concept and polish (though it is a demo).
