You have a good memory!  That MGS4 book was truly excellent, especially the part at the end that explained the entire story of the series.

I'll probably have to see how the save and continue system works in RE5 before I commit to the book.  If it lets me retry and iterate easily, I may not need the book.  If it's frustrating and requires a lot of replaying, then the book may be helpful.  Since I'm not a series fan of RE the way I am with MGS, I'm playing more for the gameplay than for the story, and I don't need to finish the game as quickly as I needed to with MGS4.

So, I've decided to get RE5, despite my suckage in the series. Angela, are you getting the PS3 version?

From what I've heard, the save/continue system is VERY generous.  The game runs off an auto-save system, so no longer do you need to hunt for save points.  This could be a good thing and bad - good, in that it'll make the game much easier for novice gamers, but bad for folks like you and me, who relishes on participating in those perfect runs.

Actually, those who've already beaten the Japanese version have stated that the game is almost TOO easy on the default Normal difficulty - and that if you're looking for a challenge akin to RE4, you should jump right into Veteran.

I'm committed to the 360 version, I'm afraid.  I'm just about scraping by on my 40GB PS3, and the mandatory 4.8 GB install would come perilously close to putting me over the limit.

What do you have on your harddrive?! I usually delete the install files when I'm done playing the games that require install. If I ever go back, it's easy enough to reinstall.

Well, I still might be asking for some "advice" via email should I need it.

Lotsa DLC-based titles, actually.  Many of which I admittedly haven't been playing, but would hate to have to re-download again should I get that sporadic urge to want to play them again someday.

GT's sixth and final part of their Retrospective series is up.  This one is a thorough wrap-up of the entire story timeline up to RE5:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/46616.html

It's gonna be awesome seeing how these resolutions unfold in RE5.  Let's hope it delivers!

Got the game yesterday and absolutely loving going through the earlier levels even though it's the 3rd time! I was up until 2 am playing and didnt even notice time go by. Today tried some co op with a new friend and it was even more fun plus it's always a bonus to be using Sheva and her impaling move.

Been playing maybe an hour. It's pretty cool, but I really wish interactions with Sheva were more like they were with the AI in RE4. I don't like having to share ammo or health related items, and I kinda wish she weren't there. With that said, she's got an awesome accent, and sometimes in quiet moments, I give her shit just to hear her say "Thanks pahtnah".

Using RE4 control scheme, and it's working a lot better than the default one. Also, I dislike this inventory scheme. It's tough to use when you're in a bind and need health, like, NAO. On the other hand, I guess it could be argued that it's a good thing. It IS supposed to be tense.

Just what the world needs, another Lara Croft clone.

Ugh

Whoever thought that Star Wars-type music would sound appropriate in a RE game should be fired.

God, remember how scary and nightmarish the first stage of resident evil 4 was with the 'Ganado 1' track? That loud, droning, hammering sound that was a lot like track 2 of the original SILENT HILL ost (i think it's called ALL).

I haven't heard this RE5 soundtrack in its entirety yet but so far i think they made a poor choice in not bringing back Misao and Shusaku for this game.

Hokoyama should've turned down the job offer if scary games and music are so unsettling for him.

I have to look more into this Kota Suzuki guy, now.

I'm up to Chapter 2-2 myself, and honestly, I'm not quite feeling the game yet.  My negative points and nitpicks from the demo still stand, and despite some really incredible visuals and nice QTE-driven cutscenes, it's been a generally tepid and uninspired affair.

Much of that has to do with poor pacing and the enemy AI.  For the record, I'm playing on Normal, but so far, enemies behave exactly like the demo - which is to say not nearly as aggressive as they should be.  As Jay stated earlier, they really needed to make compromises in order have the stunted controls and the AI work together.  As a result, enemies will all come rushing up at you, then slow to a crawl, taking several seconds before they even begin their attack - which basically gives you enough time to haul ass to the other side of the screen to collect your bearings.  Every encounter has been pretty much the same, and every time it's happened, it's become less and less enjoyable.  RE4 certainly had better AI; the Ganados were combative to the point where you were always fighting for your life.... and if you ran through a crowd like you did in RE5, it would guarantee you one step closer to death.

The pacing also feels skewered and ill-structured.  Most encounters simply involve having a wide open space and shit-tons of enemies dropping in out of nowhere. Then you run around all nilly-willy until either an event is triggered, or you reach a certain point on the map in order to trigger said event.  Because the way they dump all these enemies on you, it's clear your objective isn't to defeat them, but to simply avoid them long enough to get to trigger another cutscene or kill that mini-boss.  And again, the way the enemy AI reacts, these encounters become more of an annoyance than anything else.

Still relatively early in the game.  Let's see if it gets better.

I think I'm in either chapter 2-2 or 2-3 (playing on Normal), and I'd say it's decent so far.  I've adjusted to the controls, and at this point my biggest gripe is with the autosave system.  I'd really like to be able to version my save files like in RE4, and the the inability to do that is kind of irritating.  Also, I think it's interesting that the game allows you access to the item shop every time you game over or reload, so I exploit this wherever possible if I need to sell some stuff to free up space or need to upgrade.

As for Sheva, I've gotten pretty good at keeping her away from my handgun ammo, and I'm seriously thinking about simply selling her M92 so she CAN'T waste it, but I never have quite enough machine gun ammo (I've trained her to use the MP5 as her primary gun) to be willing to go that far (at least not yet).  I wish she'd wait a little longer before blasting the green herbs, but I have noticed that she will use the weaker herb if your health isn't so far down before she wastes the stronger herb.

Outside of that, I'm really happy with the graphics.  The effects seem beefed up over the demo, and the level of detail is really impressive.  I kind of wish they didn't reuse so many of the design elements from RE4, as there are parts where it looks like RE4HD instead of a new game.  After my first QTE encounter, I was pleased to see that these have been made more forgiving than in RE4, so pressing X to Not Die isn't as much of a pain as it was in RE4.

The linearity of the game (at least so far) is kind of a drag, but perhaps things will open up a bit later on.  I think at this point it's pretty clear that RE5 is not earth shattering like RE4 (one of the best games I've ever played), but it's still pretty good, and here's hoping it gets better as it goes along.

You should start over and max-out the difficulty setting before playing more.

Are you talking about the execution and the guy yelling at the top of his lungs on the megaphone?

I like the way you get bloodstains on your clothes after getting injured, it's a realistic little ATD perk.

The outside company (Flagship was it?) that they hired to re-write it was 'understandably appalled' by Elza Walker's character, i remember reading in egm.

Still not really sure why they said that, but it's always stuck with me for some reason.

I don't know if this is a one time thing or not, but the first part of chapter 3-1 does open up, and it's quite nice to actually be able to explore during that part.  I stopped after arriving at the next section, so we'll what happens next.

Check out this hilarious short cartoon i found, based on the Pubic Assembly scene..

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/483552

Dammit, Shoe. That's awful.

. . . I approve.

heh-heh. I'm going to be werking on my own Public Assembly mini-project soon, i ordered a megaphone off of ebay today.
It's not going to be anything huge, I'm just gonna record myself yelling the guy's speech into the megaphone with 'Ganado 1' blaring in the background so that it sounds like when right after he tells the zombies to attack Chris and Sheva.

If it turns out sounding any good, i'll post it online.

Has anybody tried playing co-op (online or off)?  I'm interested in this game, but I think I would rather have a human partner.  You know, just we can scream "@!#@" when something scary surpises us. :-)

I played for most of friday with someone on my friends list and it definetly proved to be a lot of fun. It makes it more intense when your discussing weak points for bosses and dividing enmies between each other.

Been playing on Veteran and not sure if I could get through the hardest difficulty level on some parts!

If you click on Mr. Megaphone's lips on the Credits screen at the end, you'll get one of the Easter Eggs.

Another one is if you click on the '5' at the title screen, but it's dumb. It's just Wesker saying hello to Chris.

..No idea where the third one is, though.

I'm taking my time with this, mainly due to lack of time, but I've completed Chapters 1 and 2. So far, I'm enjoying the game. I'm playing on Normal, but I'm not really great at RE games so that's why I chose that.

I haven't really delved much into the story, for obvious reasons, but what has been presented so far has been interesting to a degree.

Oh, one last thing before I go. Chainsaw Majini can go to hell and the boss fight at the end of Chapter 2-2 was a pain. The boss fight at the end of Chapter 2-3, however, was quite fun, even if it was easy, and a nice homage to Resident Evil 4.

So yeah, I hate Chainsaw Majini. Figured I'd throw that in one last time.

While I concede that any man trying to off me and my woman with a chainsaw is kind of a dick, I have to say that I don't hate Manjini as much as I hated the Ganados Chainsaws. They were terrifyingly aggressive. Manjini kind of just hesitates before doing his chainsaw swipe, giving me far more time to escape than Ganados ever did. With that said, It took me so long to down Manjini. I wonder if they take more hits than the Ganados Chainsaw did?

Yeah, I guess that was my biggest gripe. I died 4x against the first one. Of course, some were idiotic mistakes on my part, but some of them were "bullet" related. I mean, when I shoot him four times in the head with a shotgun and he still doesn't get "dazed" in time for me to escape, that's just...wrong.

I tried playing the demo in local co-op, but it wasn't much fun since the person I was playing with couldn't come to grips with the dual analog controls.  Also, the screens they give you in local co-op are way too small.

The chainsaw guy is so hard but on he scared the hell out of me when he came back to life in veteran! I so wasn't expecting it and then just started swinging it around like a madman so didn't even have time to react.

Got to say that having being fortunate to receive soundtrack this week it's really nothing like the rest I own.

Charmander699!

'Char! Char! Char!'

I hate to admit it, you know, at the risk of sounding like a douche, but whenever I read Charmed699's name, I ALWAYS think of Charmander. So I LOL'd a little at that.

Don't be ashamed at all!  Charmander is adorable!

He still brings out the kid in meh.

I got the game and am playing on amateur, because I just want to "enjoy the journey."  It's not hard, but I still died several times.

Chapter 2-1 gave me the most trouble when I got to the bridge...I died 8 times before getting that right.  The AI was no help here.

Haven't put much more time into the game myself, but I just got through that part.  I didn't think 2-3's fight was nearly as exciting in execution than RE4's, but I really enjoyed 2-2's fight.  I loved the music for that battle, "Flying Nightmare." 

Kind of what I mean with the whole "watered down" AI.  The tension just ain't there if you can just run past the sucker before he even gets a chance to swipe. Herrkotowski also mentioned the multiple shotguns to the head without so much as a flinch.... the chainsaw Ganados may have been more aggressive, but at least it felt more balanced and proper that a well-placed shot will knock him off his feet just long enough for you to gather your bearings.  I'll need to try Veteran, but I hesitate to do so since I've heard Sheva's AI is all kinds of broken on that mode.

Also, anyone else noticing how much fatalities have really been toned down?  Sadistic though it may sound, seeing all the creative ways Leon could die in RE4 was a joy.  Here, they won't even show a lousy decap.

I finished the game last night and wow, I definitely love this game and soundtrack, even more so than RE4!  Story was well thought-out and I loved how they included so much back story from the whole series, it was some fine reading.  Co-op was fun to try but I actually played the whole game itself on my own.  Plus I thought the difficulty was just right for the mode I played it on (normal).  I'll be going through it again at a higher difficulty for sure though!  Oh and did I mention the music?  EXCELLENT.  Some of it was pretty different for the RE series but it worked perfectly.  Kota Suzuki is a composer to watch, he'll be doing some great things in the future.  I thought Hideki Okugawa's tracks were very strong too, but that's no surprise since he's basically a VGM veteran.

Did any of you get the Collector's Edition?  I popped in the bonus disc last night and watched the "making of" thing.  It's super awesome how they did all the motion capture and actual acting and virtual camera stuff for the cut scenes.  But the part that got to me the most was seeing the Hollywood Studio Symphony perform.  Lead composer Kota Suzuki was shown on camera shedding a tear as they played his compositions and I have to say, that's some of the best VGM-related footage I've ever seen.  Can you imagine being such a young composer like Kota and hearing your music performed live right in front of you by such a massive, professional orchestra?  Wow, what an amazing feeling that has to be!  As for the actual performance, they showed about a minute of footage of the orchestra performing one of the final battle themes.  They even showed some footage of the vocal song being recorded too, which I thought was pretty funny because it was basically done at some guy's house, haha.

-Mike

Blasphemy. Except for the high-def graphics, re4 was better in every aspect.

And the fact that it's the best-selling RE game ever just proves that people will buy into games simply because of controversial subject matter and a big hype machine.

And the blood looks like red paint this time, re4's blood was a lot more authentic.

Unless they get back to real horror next time and quit with the bullshit Bollywood action-movie nonsense, this great series can die out for all i care.