Both Resident Evil 4 and Code Veronica will appear in their most recently released form, including all the extra features seen in Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition and Code Veronica X on the PS2. Although it is still unclear if the titles will be available for purchase separately or bundled together.

Operation Racoon City is an unexpected diversion for the series, outsourced to Western developer Slant Six Games, and is in fact a multiplayer team based 3rd person shooter, much like you might describe the SOCOM series Slant Six are known for. If anything, it sounds like an ideal match-up which will hopefully result in much more than a Resident Evil themed Left 4 Dead clone.

Three factions are expected to be available for play, but the main campaign is expected to be based on an Umbrella Security Services clean-up crew – dispatched to clean up the Racoon City outbreak featured in Resident Evil 2 (1998). They'll be going up against US Spec Ops and rogue Bio-Organic Weapons (read: big zombies), all while trying to avoid infection from the outbreak horde.

Players can also expect to run into various Resident Evil characters, such as RE2/4 protagonist Leon Kennedy. Bizarrely, Capcom have suggested that players may be able to kill Leon and other canonical cast members. What that would mean for Ashley in RE4 we can only guess.

The overall tone of the game is suspected to be quite dark, which is not surprising as you'll effectively be tasked as doing the dirty work of the evil Umbrella Corp, and destroying anything, and anyone that gets in your way.

With Slant Six at the helm, and 4-player co-op play guaranteed, this should a Resident Evil instalment to look forward to. Despite sounding like a bit of a deviation from past releases, the Resident Evil series has proved itself resilient to genre experimentation, and Operation Racoon City could deliver the best multiplayer experience to date.