Everything I expected and more. "mildly long review"
The controls are suprisingly easy to get the hang of, and are nearly perfect. The one thing that put me off at first was that you can not move while aiming any of your weapons (i'm a big FPS payer), but after a while it is no longer a hinderance to the gameplay. The best part is the CO-OP story mode, you pretty much have to play this game with another person, or else your so called 'helper' is pretty much worthless (you will spend more time saving her than playing the game). The cutscenes with button commands are interesting but not too difficult to keep up with.
The in game graphics in this game are some of the best I have seen on the PS3 so far, everything looks fantastic especially water (which most other games fail miserably at). The entire game is like playing one long beautiful cutscene, and at no point have I been dissapointed by the graphics. Probably my favourite part of this game to watch are the deaths, which I promise you will witness several times per level, especially any chainsaw related one.
The Co-op play is astounding, it makes for some really fun gameplay and at no point does this make the game easy. This actually increases the difficulty especially when dealing with items and ammo, we spent a lot of time organizing the items as far as who has what and swapping items in play makes boss battles interesting and difficult. We went with me having a handgun and shotgun, and my friend used machine gun and rifle. It seemed I would always find his ammo and he would find mine which made swapping a constant thing. This may sound like a negative aspect of the game but really it adds so much strategy and you must cooperate, lone wolf behavior will result in a pretty quick and gruesome death.
With superior graphics, excellent gameplay, and an astounding co-op story mode Resident Evil 5 is a must have for the Playstation 3.