My thought on this game after playing for a day, Leon and Jake's campaigns, is that it's definitely a Japanese take on an "uncharted" - meaning it's mechanically dense and more skill based than a typical, similar, western game. There's some form of irony buried in there, I dunno.
Thing is, I like it; when games with QTEs and such often get a little boring after a short while. Even the QTE sections and their interface, I must admit, have more thought put into them than is typical, and are actually kind of hard. Plus many (tho not all) are not simply pass-fail but pass-suffer damage-alternate outcome.
In terms of action and combat, I couldn't go back easily to a past RE without missing most of it. The remarkable thing, that I was talking about with a co-op partner, seems to be this: the game feels as if they've finally nailed giving the player a character who is mobile, capable, and can do all the things you'd think a real human in shape to put up a fight, would be capable of doing. But, the nature of the enemies, encounter construction, and pacing are such that the horror element is preserved and you still feel very vulnerable and in constant peril. Talking about Leon's campaign here, at the very least... it does IMO bring back a lot of the 'chills' and sense of dread of early RE games. Plus the zombie panic mood from RE2.
Mind you, I liked RE5 and I don't mind evolving the series because to me, RE was never about just RE1. IMO, RE1 intentionally betrayed its apparent supernatural horror story mood halfway through the game, when you find out everything is actually mad science, and it shifts tone to the industrial basement of the manor. To me, Resident Evil is about batshit insane sci fi and monsters, biological heebee-jeebees, with apocalyptic scenarios. No one set of wrapping is required to make it feel true to that
