I remember the first time I played RE. I had just received my first PS1 as a 13th birthday gift from my father. I took my happy ass to Blockbuster because the game I got with my Playstation sucked (I think it was called 'Kileak'). I ended up renting RE and it was revolutionary. Been a fan ever since.
Resident Evil 4 set the bar extremely high for 5. It was lengthy, graphically superior to anything I had ever seen on the PS2, and the most fun I'd ever had since GTA3. It was the kind of game you anticipate playing all day while you were at school or work.
So naturally I had RE5 preordered. The limited edition no less. What a joke by the way.
When they said it came with a Chris Redfield action figure I didn't know it would be comparable to those plastic little green army men you played with as a child. What bull crap. I am embarrassed to even put it in my collection of RE memorabilia.
Glad I paid an extra $30.00 for it (feel the sarcasm). I should mention it actually also came with a 'Tricell' tote bag, Africa key chain and a stupid sew on patch. So you can see why the action figure was supposed to be the coolest item I was looking forward to. Hella lame.
OK so I am not going to bitch too much about the dreadful controls like most people like to.
It's standard Resident Evil. It wouldn't be the same suspense feel if you could just run away all the time, instead of engaging the enemy. Though I will say somehow the RE4 controls seemed smoother and didn't bother me as much.
The game starts out in Africa if you didn't already know and I must say I absolutely hate the first chapter. Daytime? Are you kidding me? Not an overcast day either. More like, I have beads of sweat dripping into my eyes and it burns kind of daytime. I didn't think they (Capcom) would be careless enough to actually use that horrible demo.
Who's the douchebag mole working within Capcom who wanted to sabotage sales?
Not a good way to start a new saga in the coveted RE franchise.
By Chapter 2 the game really started to take off. Fantastic fun the whole way through. Almost everything I would have expected from a new RE. 
Some major improvements are clearly there and I love being able to switch guns by tapping either up, down, left or right on the d-pad.
Finally it also doesn't seem like the knife is completely useless!
Great QTE episodes throughout the game and the melee attacks are a great way of conserving ammo.
The story line is as always, AWESOME. That's if you even care about the story. This always has been the icing on the cake for me with RE.
I found the solo player to be quite frustrating playing with that bitch Shiva.
The AI makes her seem like she has the memory of a goldfish. She also is constantly on my ass wasting all our health even though we were only slightly injured (eventually figured out I need to regulate what she carries on her person).
I did find joy however in the Xbox Live experience. This is where the game truly shines.
Playing with a buddy so we could coordinate who was going to snipe from the high and who was going to blast them with a shotty from the low was awesome.
After I discovered the awesome experience when playing online I was having a lot of fun with it. The more I progressed through the game, the more the chapters became darker, enemies more intelligent, and boss battles more exciting (except the lame final battle).
The MAIN reason this game received less than an admirable rating is because of the length. I blasted through the game in just two days. Are you fucking kidding me Capcom? I could NOT believe how short it seemed. You should have heard the sound of disbelief coming from our headsets. We were cursing like a couple of drunken sailors. Utterly disappointing. I honestly think it took us less than 14 hours all the way through. We weren't even blasting through the game either. Plenty of deaths between us to slow us down.
I expected this game to blow me away much like RE4 did. We can safely say. No game of the year award this time around Capcom. Time to start planning to get your act back together. You blew it.