Resident Evil reloaded:

The characters:

Kevin Ryman: A Raccon police officer. He has superior athletic abilities and he is an expert marksman. He starts with a 45 Automatic as a personal item.

Mark Wilkins:A Racoon City security employee, who has served in Vietnam tries to live peacefully at the outskirts of the city(the zombie hordes have definitely other plans for him).Well build, and robust he masters his handgun found in his personal item box.

George Hamilton: The character meant to do the healing stuff, a top notch surgeon in this case should do the trick. When others members are found in difficulty, help(hemostats,herbs,sprays) are the tools used by Mark to heal his comrades. His personal item is a medical kit.

Cindy Lenox: The female version of George,without any university degrees .She's a waitress filled with good will and charm. She never losses her cool even in extreme situations. Her personal item values a herb case,enough to help when zombies tested you from close distance.

David King: A man of few words ,sharp eyesight,he's the weaponry master (able to combine certain materials and produce more effective and powerfully weapons).His personal item is a toolbox which contains(a folding knife,monkey wrench,junk parts,vinyl tapes) with which David delivers the goods(the particularized weapons).

Alyssa Ashcroft: A pushy and insistent reporter who works for a local news paper,likes to engross oneself with information off all kinds. She has as her personal item(a picking tool) who helps her ease around things.

Jim Chapman: Friendly and cheerfully but with moments of cowardliness. His "good night " replica while lying down to pretend dead says it all.He possess good intuition and the skill needed to solve puzzles.

Yoko Suzuki: A very skillful student regarding computers aspects. Quiet and reserved personality but the keen and inquisitive mind of her makes her somehow needed in all this killing and violence scenes. She has as a personal item a knapsack which increases her carrying capabilities.

The scenarios(six of them):

The first "Outbreak Revisited",is a training one(in which the player gets accustomed with the basic moves,attack techniques,communication and interaction issues between the player character and the A.I. controlled ones,zombies,etc...;and some new features added to the mechanics of gameplay.The next 4 scenarios must be completed before passing to the last scenario,which is hidden and comes as a bonus.

The second "Wild Things" or as the S.C.A.R.S members are concluding."We were foolish enough to think the zoo might provide refuge,but all that greeted us were approaching footsteps that shook the earth".The player begins at the entrance of Raccon City Zoo and in order to get inside,the player is supposed to retrieve a pair of Bolt cutters or a notebook from inside the nearby restaurant called "Elephant Restaurant".From that point on(Raccon's city Zoo visitor) you will encounter all types of wild beasts:lions,hyenas,alligators and the Zoo's main attraction Oscar the Elephant. You will get your hands on a variety of weapons(shotguns,rifles,revolvers) needed for the final confrontation with Oscar or a zombiefied lion depending on your type of playing.

The third "Underbelly"or simply summed up by the protagonists"In the station we caught our breath,but it wasn't long before we could feel them watching. All we could do then was await the inevitable".On the course of escaping via a subway,a Giant Flea kidnaps one of the survivors,your mission is (you guessed) re increment the "gang" members by one. Although this scenario(kidnapping and rescuing is very common),in this game it makes sense,due to the cooperative nature of the game.

The fourth "Flashback" or as the narrative part follows"An abandoned building in a foggy forest. All around us were the echoes of same forgotten tragedy. Enveloped in evil,we pressed onward".This scenario is based around Arklay forest,and begins with the player placed in a remote cabin deep inside the forest. Shortly after an old man tells them of some nearby town and the route to follow to get there. After guiding the survivors for most of the way,the old man disappears leaving them groping for salvation,they came across an abandoned hospital,and the work needed to be done there is delaying and altering the path to salvation.

The fifth "Desperate times" or as their desperate minds try to reveal to us: "As wave after wave of undead surrounded the city's last bastion of justice and hope,the time had to come for the ultimate decision".The Racoon Police Departament is the battle ground in this scenario. Help and backups were needed so Rita (a surviving officer from the R.P.D.) tries to do these actions for her comrades,but in order to get out and seek the needed help, Plates has to be found .Only then she can get out of the station and search for help. The time is scarce for the player to retreat for the escape,so quick feet are needed to stay out of the zombie horde who are trying to overrun the precinct. It seems that Rita 's biological clock works just fine cause she gets in time to rescue the exhausted survivors,with some casualties(Marvin is left behind "as a source of calories for the hungry zombies"due to the wounds sustained from the attacking zombies)

I guess the most important is the walk and shoot mode,a well deserved addition(very necessary when low on ammunition,or surrounded and in battle with superior level bosses),other gameplay new features:picking up items while crawling,different and new ways of defending or attacking for each character.Another one is the no lag when item menu or map menu is displayed in comparison with past titles. The personal item is a new feature also,which plays well in the particularization process of each character. A new "sorry" command was also added to the already complicated and poor way of communication in the game. The new "nightmare" mode for the supposed masters of this game is irrelevant,i say this because you will only get far less ammunition and more zombies to kill, and get frustrated and stressed out at one point. A real nightmare mode will have to consider intelligent A.I.,not just hordes of zombies moving in an unidirectional pattern.

Gameplay:80

It has it 's goods( the game makes a statement that this is the game to be played between the horror-survival genres counterparts) but flaws too,that need some attention(especially the aiming and shooting mode,also with small regards sometimes to the camera angles).The game feeling is there but the gameplay suffers a bit from the above flaws. Way to many and time costing maneuvers used for communication with A.I. controlled characters. Those cumulated with an already complex mechanism of movement,aiming,shooting may discourage an unexperienced player. Another flaw that is sure to bring the players to desperation in some instances is the save mode(same old stupid system,meaning you will have to find a typewriter to save your progress,and there aren't many in a scenario...one or two at most).Other bothering issue that hasn't been solved yet(from the past titles) is the long periods of black screen to which the player is forced to look when he makes the transition from one room to another(at least 10 seconds).The game isn't to long,as a matter of fact if you don't stop admiring the beautifully rendered environments and picking all the stuff ,and mind your business(that is pursuing the "credits screen" when a game is finished) you will actually finish quite quick the game,under 12 hours. As for the replayability,i can't say i felt the urge to play the scenarios all over again within a week. With Resident Evil 4,things changed for the better,so we don' t feel ignored anymore by the Capcom guys.

Well animated and textured characters, and of course the artistic guys from Capcom didn't dissapointed again with the movie like environments .There's no point in wondering if the surrounding environment is based on real life structures. It's a definitely YES that real world structures were simulated in the game. And that's not bad,there is a odd feeling of satisfaction knowing you are playing in a virtual environment which has an equivalent in the real world. The lighting and shading effects are there at the top(in a way kinda compulsory due to the nature of the game).

Multiplayer:80

Capcom offers online support for multiplayer mode,which i must say i never dreamed to of becoming a reality when i played Resident Evil 1,2.There are a number of servers available,each of these servers contains areas of play modes,these areas have different rule settings(easy,normal,hard,nightmare,secret,free,survival,elimination).The player has at his disposal the five scenarios from the single player mode when a certain area is selected for playing. Surely the multiplayer prolongs the number of hours dedicated to this title,because at one point you will get sick of killing A.I. controlled zombies in cooperation with A.I. controlled characters. So it 's a welcomed bonus.

Audio:92

Well choreographed and immersive sounds,continues and improves from where the series predecessors left. Creepy sounds(fully instrumental,and this is normal;otherwise we wouldn't have been the only uninfested humans in the game) and very well selected sound effects will make one pump up the volume for sure.

Hardware:87

Not too fastidious on the console hardware. We don't get to see large loading times(at most 20-25 seconds when a scenario is loaded,other than that the game is fast and it flows) or any stuttering during the playing of the game.

Overall impression:

All in all this is a good and fun way to start you "zombie killing rampage" if you are new to the Resident Evil series and the genres similar titles like Silent Hill,Alone in the dark,etc...But for the Resident Evil fans it's only an expansion,a good one ,but insufficient and it might bother and offend some of the uncompromising Resident Evil fans due to some inadvertences in the original storyline,and game levels modifications(missing floors,doors).Hope that the Capcom studios will bring an even more compelling follower to the present Resident Evil titles. Work on Resident Evil 5 has already shown some impressive screenshots on Sony's Playstation 3 console,(can wait to get my hands on it),while the Resident Evil 4 has seen some radical new features in comparison to it's predecessors(the biggest must be the new aiming and shooting mode,similar to the Splinter Cell game,and the second one: a whole new storyline which brings the action across the ocean, to Europe),so the premises are there for the Resident Evil 5 to make a big impact in the horror-survival genre gaming community.