The best features of the Resident Evil series now combined with a great multiplayer mode.
In this game you can take control of either the veteran Chris Redfield, from the first game of the series, or Sheva Alomar, a member of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance. The only information you have at the beggining of the game is that Jill Valentine is dead, but there seems to be some extra information in Kijuju, an isolated city located in Africa. Chris goes there to try to figure out what might have happened to Jill, but ends up facing a much bigger problem, which involves the african biologic organization Tricell and the seemingly "deceased" Umbrella Corporation. And so the adventure begins.
Certainly the biggest characteristic of this game is it being multiplayer. This is not the first game in the series that allows a multiplayer experience, but this one is certainly the one that worked the best. You can either play by yourself by choosing your character and the AI will take care of the other player, or with a friend. If you choose the second option, you can either play online with your friend or locally, on a split-screen mode.
The controls response is very fluid, much likely Resident Evil 4's controls. You have a couple of different button combinations, just in case you don't get along with the default controls. FPS fans might find the controls quite easy to memorize. No big news in the controls: in the original configuration, holding LT makes your character aim, RT shoots accordingly to the equipped weapon. Holding LB aims with a knife, LT is used to attack. When the RT is not being held, holding LT shows your partner's location. A button recharges your weapon when you've got LT pressed, while holding the A button and pressing the directionals will make your character run. B button is mainly used to call your partner. X, A and B buttons also work as action buttons.
One significant change is in the menus. Pressing Y will call a item menu, which can carry 9 items per character. Pressing RB with the menu in screen will either show or hide your partner's inventory, allowing you to exchange items and ammunition. Key items will no longer get space in your inventory. The right directional moves the camera. The controls response is fast and fluid, just like its predecessor. At least in my co-op gameplays, I could find very little or almost no delays or lags in the game.
Lots of actions will require that both Chris and Sheva are present, such as opening certain doors, pulling levers and switches and stuff. Your human partner would easily understand that, but when you're playing by yourself you have to order your partner to do a certain action. Also, when you're hit and are about to die, you enter in the "Dying" state, which doesn't allow you to do anything AT ALL, only walk around and call for help, which turns you vulnerable to any sort of attack. You only die if your partner is unable to help you. According to the difficulty level, the time you spend in "Dying" mode gets shorter. The same thing happens to your partner. If s/he enters in "Dying" state, just get close to them and press the action button shown in the display to either revive or heal your partner.
The IA response overall is pretty good, but in certain cases it seems to be messed up, specially after you've given it an order and for some reason gets in dying state. This doesn't seem to be much of a problem, but you'll feel the impact of this as you increase the game's difficulty.
The game seems also shorter in therms of story, but the large amount of extras, the awesome gameplay, the excellent co-operative game experience and the DLC Versus may keep you entertained for a very, very long time.