Should I even attempt to play catch-up with Resident Evil? This new trailer makes me want to see what I've been missing...

I saw the first Resident Evil. Liked it. Never claimed Paul WS Anderson was a masterful director but he can make a good popcorn flick once in a while. Then I saw RE2 and immediately checked out for the rest of the series. I never saw 3, though I wanted to see what Russell Mulcahy would bring to the film. Then I saw the trailer for 4, the first one in 3D. What I saw looked pretty crappy, but I was curious about the 3D process and how it would be used. Now, I see this trailer and I'm kinda intrigued to see what I've been missing. At first I thought they were retconning the whole thing, which it looks like it may do. However, the one thing that intrigues me about the trailer (and now the rest of the series that I've missed) is how wildly different it looks from the other films. Is this what the series' progress has been like? Like a low-rent Alien Legacy, in that each one has its own weird skewed take on its world? Could be the Fast Five of this series? I may have to see this to find out...