Forgot to provide a heads up on the demo.
I loved it. Yeah, big surprise. Looking at the E3 footage, I was prepared for a half-baked experience, but now I somehow want to play the game. The demo weighs in a meager 840MB and consists a glimpse of all 3 protagonists campaign; Leon, Chris and Jake. Each of these characters have an additional partner to tag along with them; Helena, Piers & Sherry respectively. I started out with Leon' campaign, which takes place in Ivy university campus where it's mainly assisting a man locating his missing daughter, Liz. This level has very little action, but has an amazing atmosphere. The visuals are stunning, least to say. Character detailing and lighting effects were highly detailed. However, the screen-tearing issues prevailed. The inventory system has been re-vamped completely. This is a full 3D circular navigational screen, where you can select your items and weapons on the fly, without having to pause the game and manage them at your leisure. Gameplay hasn't changed much, however, you can now strafe-aim-shoot. Unlike, the static position shooting in RE4.
Leon's campaign seems to have taken the old-school RE approach, with the chilly environments and scare factor. Chris's campaign was more action oriented and mostly surviving the onslaught of the infected. Jake's was more of a "RUN b**ch, RUN!" sort of affair, where you had to keep wading the gigantic Ustanak and finally taking him down at the end. Took me at least an hour to complete all the campaigns, which is pretty impressive, given it's size. The "issues" that I faced was with the aiming system, the camera pans in ridiculously close your character, with his/her body occupying more than half the screen, thus restricting your view. Next, the FOV is really poor for all of them. Now I normally don't throw a fit about FOV in any game, but this was really noticeable. Also, like
dinjo mentioned, no pause screen. Well, technically, you can hit the main menu, but it won't pause the game and your character will still be vulnerable to attacks. Looks like the Demon's Souls fever is catching up with the rest of the Jap developers. The game won't pause even if you hit the dashboard button on your console. So that means no cut-scene pausing either. Immersive experience, my ass. I hate this mechanic, didn't like it in Demon's Souls, don't like it here.
But over-all, I'm impressed with the demo. I'm particularly banking on Leon's campaign to provide a true horror experience.
NOTE: For those who have a good PC, take my advice and wait for the PC version. Albeit, the console version looks pretty good, I have a feeling the PC version will deliver the ultimate experience. Knowing, MT Framework's past history, this has to be a given.