This is coming from a guy who never played Resident Evil before and only tried RE6 demo, so take it with a pinch of salt.
I don't know if RE has always been this way but it didn't seem very survival horror to me. In fact of all the levels, I think there was only one 1 second where I even had a slight rush and that was inside the narrow hallway on Leon's level when you are waiting for the door to open. Nothing scary though.
Other than that the gameplay itself seemed like a bit of a watered down gears of war, but with somewhat clunky controls. I imagine they would fix that for the main game. Graphics seemed pretty decent but the environments are not amazing (as in Alan Wake) like you would expect from a survival horror. I don't know, maybe the series fans will enjoy it, but I personally didn't really feel like it was anything too spectacular. I would rather go play GOW3 instead if I was looking for that kind of shoot em up gameplay.
