I had the chance to snag a copy of re5 early and I've been playing it for a good half an hour or so now, so I thoght I would just drop my general impression of the game so far.

When the demo came out, I was a little unimpressed. I'm a huge Resident Evil fan, the only reason I got a playstation was for re2, but for some reason the demo just wasn't doing it for me. I don't know if it was the controls, or the fact that I had someone along with me for the ride, but something just didn't fit. After playing around with the full game though, my impressions of the game have increased towards the positive side of things.

One of the things that I didn't think I would like is the story. I'm actually digging it so far and I think that was one of the problems with the demo, is that I had no idea what the hell was going on. Given a little bit of background, things are starting to click for me. The voice acting is also pretty decent. I mean, let's be honest here, the voice work for re4 was god awful. re5 manages to pull it off well and I haven't laughed yet, which is a good sign.

One of the things that I was worried about is that re5 would lose some of the horror aspect of past games and just become a general shooter. So far that hasn't happened. There's one part where I was walking through town and I see someone get snagged off the street out of the corner of my eye. I walk a few more paces and there's no one around, just this eerie silence. It was pretty creepy, espicially since it was daylight in the game and sunny here as well. I like the chaos and horror against the backdrop of a hot sunny day in africa, it's a nice juxtaposition, rather than having it be dark and gloomy.

I'm playing it on veteran and it's pretty hard, I've already died once. I'm hoping it might be a bit easier with another real live human sitting next to me, but who knows. Regardless, I'm always a fan of a challenging game.

My one gripe right now are the blood and bullet effects. In re4 I would hit a "zombie" and feel it. I'm not sure if it's the glossy graphics in re5, but when I hit a zombie it just looks kind of.. I don't know, just not real. It looks fake, but not in a good way. It doesn't seem like I'm hitting them at all. I think part of that is how the blood looks.

So far I'm having a fun time and can't wait to play it with someone else and uncover more of the story. It's definatly a different approach than past games and it will be interesting to see how I feel once I'm finished. The main draw of the game for me is the co-op. Not enough games these days have a solid co-op, so I'm looking forward to blasting some zombies with some buddies.

I miss typewriters.