The series has taken some massive turns, not all of them good. Let's start with the older games.
RE:Code Veronica is just kind of a personal childhood favorite, I love RE2 and RE:Remake a lot too. What can be said about almost all of the Resident Evil games before 4 is: great horror atmosphere with a fuckton of memorable moments, tension that came with the survival aspect of item management, fantastic soundtrack, and ridiculous voice acting, which was just a staple of older games. The only thing that might have been a tiny smudge was the controls, I'm fine with tank controls but the original RE was kind of ... pain.
Then we have RE4. The perfect balance, not straying far from its survival-horror roots, yet being one of the best 3rd person shooters (IMO). I've only played the Wii/PC HD version so, I can only speak for those control and I have to say, they feel great. I think most people don't like the
but I feel as though they handled this pretty well, literally solving it with dumpsters and keeping them glued to yo ass.
I feel like 5 and 6 lost the series' charm and became like.. a really dumb summer action movie type of game. The kind you find entertainment but will forget after you're done with it. I won't say the series got fucked as hard as Silent Hill after SH4
(which is, in my opinion, a great game despite its...many flaws), but something definitely went wrong with RE5 and 6. They decided to just make.. a standard action game, because that's what was popular. And call it Resident Evil because money. Though RE6 I just can't forgive because they used my bae Leon and turned him into dogshit.
Resident Evil 7... hm... what is there to say? There's been a reform, horror games are alive again thanks to well received titles likes FNaF and the Silent Hills PT demo, and with that another camera POV change in the series. I really do hope the tides turn and Capcom makes a good game. From what I gather from the demo, they're putting more emphasis on the horror, which is fine. I can't say it's good,the horror style atm is more like a haunted house you walk through, literally like what Jon was in lmao. The story seems like its there, and we don't know what combat is like, or what the threat is (human murderer? zombies? bug zombies? leech zombies??)