Resident Evil 5

Reunited at street level again, we're back into narrow corridor territory and facing off against a maniac with a turban and chainsaw (miraculously, not as offensive as it sounds). Mr Chainsaw is a one-hit killer. We know this because he did it to us on several occasions - the spray of blood as he sank the blades into our neck matched brilliantly by the suddenly lolling tongue and slack body of Chris as he slumps to the ground. The battle is contrived - there are suddenly a lot of exploding barrels nearby - but the sheer walls of the corridors, and the twisty layout of the map makes it extremely effective. It's time to back up, take aim, and hope we don't run out of space.

At moments like this, Sheva takes a back seat, happier to support you with ammo and health jabs rather than tackle the mini-boss directly. Although she's great in combat, she struggles with providing support in other situations: later, in a section of the second level where we have to move furniture to barricade ourselves in, she jumps at the chance to take people out by sniping through the windows, but isn't able to help with the pushing and shoving. Disconcertingly, in slow moments, she has a habit of moving as close to Redfield as she can and staring, with cow-like devotion, right into his face. We know he's a dreamboat and all, but hopefully this won't be her MO in the finished game.

This aside, there's not that much chemistry between the two leads yet, and certainly no sign of the tender, aching love affair that blossomed between Dom and Marcus in Gears. There's plenty of time for this to change, however: we've seen very little of the game, and the code isn't anywhere near finished, but at the moment, when she isn't in the thick of battle, Sheva can be a bit of a plank.

It's hard to judge how the friendly squabble of co-op will affect the oppressive tone of Resident Evil. The second demo area, however, seems to suggest the game has no problems on this front, even with company in tow. Meeting Place is a pressure-cooker set-piece that manages to overwhelm and terrify in the space of about four minutes. It starts as we move through a corrugated-iron alleyway towards a small shack. There's a party gathered outside to see a beheading, which is always nice, and the racially diverse crowd are eager for blood. We're spotted, and then have to barricade our stronghold, blocking doors and windows, and fighting off attackers until the executioner himself blasts in through a wall. Then it's off into the shanties beyond to try and take him down.

As you might expect, each stage of this is heavily scripted: first the crowd arrives at the shack, then they get in through the ceiling, and then finally the executioner bursts in. What's promising is that although the scripting creates the same set-piece each time, the way it then unfolds can be radically different from one play-through to the next. We replayed the barricade sequence at least five times, and saw notable variances in when the infected chose to attack, how they reacted to gunfire, and whether they opted to swarm in all at once, or approach from multiple angles. Their reactions are often ghoulishly intelligent: when we accidentally triggered an exploding barrel early, one poor loser walked straight into the flames, and then the rest took stock before working out a new path around them. Equally, if a door's been barricaded and the infected come under fire trying to bust through, they'll head for the windows instead. Taken as a whole, the entire sequence may be a set-piece right out of the previous game, but the AI advances makes for a wealth of new strategies - and RE4's AI was hardly backwards.

And even though the hulking executioner appeared to be following a set path at times, there were ample ways to tackle him, too. After a few attempts to finish him off in the streets, which generally ended with us falling victim to his axe attacks or buried alive under crumbled masonry, we finally fled to the rooftops and, like the cowards we are, used the environment against him. Once again, things were slightly controlled - the game allows you to jump to certain rooftops but not others, for example - but there was a variety of different approaches available, from chipping away at him from a distance, to luring him towards electrical generators and giving him a nasty zapping.

Most of RE5 remains under wraps at the moment: there's no word yet on how the weapons purchasing and upgrading will work, no details on which flavours of co-op will be available, and the long-hinted-at cover system hasn't been revealed, if it even exists. But given the relatively distant March 2009 release date, the game's already looking sharp: the AI seems smart, and the levels we saw were filled with details and strategic options. If you were hoping for sweeping changes, then you're likely to be disappointed: this is a series that clung tenaciously to a control scheme long after it was out of date, and is hardly likely to throw everything out again now it's got one that works. Instead, this opts to refine RE4's revolution, and, if the game isn't quite as good as scaring you in the hard African daylight as it was in the misty half-darkness of previous titles, it's still able to bring on a visceral thrill as the crowd gets closer.