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Oh God, it’s like Gears of Resident Evil. I thought that Racoon City Adventures with the Umbrella Friends was going to cover this action-orientated stuff so comprehensively that they could go back to being more horror-orientated in their main franchise. I’m glad Leon’s made a return and it’s going to be f*****g cool having him and Chris in the same title but… Oh God, there’s so much to be said.

What I liked:

• The T-Virus making an appearance
• Leon looks like a platinum badass
• Civilians all over the place
• Holy moly those graphics
• Some pretty cool action-y stuff
• Oh God it’s gonna be fun.
• Plot looks fun
• IS THAT A F*****G TYRANT?
• Looks like no FORCED CO-OP ruining my single player experience (horror games don’t work if you have someone watching your back)

What I disliked:

• Another new male lead? What the hell happened to Billy (my OTP)
• Death of a genre
• More bullets fired in this trailer than the whole of Resident Evil 1 and 2 combined
• Why is everyone a supersoldier now?
• Too many protagonists could make the plot like something from Lost
• Deviation of a series isn’t the same as evolution. This isn’t a Resi game any more- it’s Gears of War with Resi’s characters.
• COOL KUNG-FU? F**k you baldy (even if your sections do look cool).
• Isn’t a cover system redundant if you’re fighting zombies? Oh wait some of them have guns… Yup. Let’s hope these sections don’t dominate the game, or that the cover system is akin to the occasional moments in Resident Evil 4 and 5 when they are convincing, context-sensitive moments.

I'm still undecided, this looks SUPER FUCKING COOL, but since we already have RESIDENT EVIL: THE ACTION EDITION coming out do we really need more of the same? Survival horror is dead. At least the one on 3DS is oddly creepy.

SPECULATION FOR THE SAKE OF SPECULATION

To me the trailer makes it look like the game will be played three different ways, each one tied to their protagonist. This should work pretty well because (for two of the three) we don’t need to establish who they are because we know and love them already. Leon’s sections (with the T-virus) will logically flow more slowly than encounters with the Oroboros, which Chris seems to be facing in droves. His sections are also the only parts which look more military- could this be a better look at the B.S.A.A.? I really hope so, because combating the human threat behind these outbreaks is never really handled in a believable way.

The bald guy looks 100% melee- in that he doesn’t fire a gun throughout the trailer- which could be really, really fun if they get it right. I just really, really hope that the plot doesn’t feel too thin for each section. Yakuza 4 fell into that trap really badly by having four protagonists- you never really got the time to identify with any of the new people and everything was a lot shallower (even if the interconnectivity of the storylines was really clever). I don’t think this is going to be the case though; the bald chap’s sequences looked a lot more personality-driven than the other two, and Capcom have always given me reason to keep the faith.

The game’s release isn’t that far away, and this is looking like a lot of content to cram onto a disc. Let’s just hope they get the balance of play right and actually engage us, because if they do that then this could be the Resident Evil masterwork.

There's some hope left...