"Krauser... What happened to you? You used to be a good guy..."

I've played through this maybe eight times in my life, and I still find it miraculous how well Mikami and co. transferred Resident Evil's 'stop-and-pop' shooting into the 21st century. This is one of the rare games that gives me that indescribable feeling of synergy between player character and controller. It feels so... right to hold down R, aim with the left stick, line up a shot, and press the face button to shoot. They figured out a way to make every bullet matter in a traditional survival-horror sense, while also empowering you with total, tactical control.

But with so many hours put into a game there's a sense of comfortable familiarity here, practically to the point where I found this run mostly non-challenging. I think I died like, three times. This fortunately led to some new insight, though. I used to dread the Ashley escort missions, but this time I found that her sequences added some hectic unpredictability to my regular, breezy encounters. Contrarily, the environmental variety feels stiffer than I recall. The castle is a little long in the tooth, and the island is mostly a miss: an odd mish-mash of half-puzzles and ideas.

The shooting mechanics ultimately overrule it all. Throw in Leon quips, funny-scary antagonists and an inventory management system that massages the OCD-tendencies in my brain, and I'll probably play this another eight times in my life.