Quite simply, this is one of the best games ever made. It doesn't follow in the footsteps of the previous Res Evil games in that it's much, much more action-oriented, which you first notice due to the over-the-shoulder perspective and manual aiming. This is a huge departure from the previous style of gameplay, which was a big risk.

It paid off.

Using this point of view, you take direct control of Leon from Res Evil 2, who's trying to save the President's Daughter who was kidnapped. Enter a religious cult who take control of followers by parasites, turning them into mindless not-zombies, and you've got an army of people to mow down.

Weapons are upgradeable, and progressing through the game reveals more weapons to buy which can then be upgraded, meaning that the money you get has to be carefully allocated in order to get maximum usage from it.

A word to the wise on difficulty - on normal difficulty this game is quite hard. On Professional it is no longer fun to play. The most enjoyable experience is actually on the easy difficulty - you don't have to conserve much ammo and money is fairly plentiful so you can experiment. Normal is a little more like the original res evil style, where ammo conservation is required, but sometimes you have to kill.

The game is very, very replayable, mainly due to the fact that it can be completed in under 15 hours on easy if you know what you're doing. After you finish, you restart with all your weapons, making subsequent runthroughs much easier. You also unlock two minigames when you finish, both of which unlock uberweapons to buy in the main campaign, which makes the game very easy, but is also quite an achievement in itself.

Overall, a very, very solid game.