Game Review: Resident Evil: Revelations (3DS)

After 10 hours and 49 minutes (and three two restarts due to technical difficulties), I was able to complete the main campaign  mode in Resident Evil: Revelations on the 3DS last night (November 21, 2016).  When you break the game down, with the exception of the often sponginess of most if not all of the bosses, I really liked the game and the story it told.  I should also mention that I went into this game, not having played a Resident Evil game since I finished Resident Evil 4 way back in 2006, even though I know that Resident Evil 5 had come out two years prior to the release of RE:R, but I wanted to play the games in chronological order.  Just wanted to throw that out there that anything revealed in RE5 that may have been referenced to here, went completely over my head, but now, down to brass tacks time.

To note, I did not play RE:R with the Circle Pad Pro, which I had completely forgotten about until I went into the control settings and the game asked if I was playing with one.  I played with control setting B, which I found to be the most comfortable and because I liked being able to strafe which made taking corners more tactically aware (hypothetically anyway).  I also inverted the y-axis (no surprise there) and had aiming done in third person rather than first person, which seemed more natural and less jarring since the game is played all in third person.

Jill facing down one of the aptly named "Oozes."

The biggest thing that stuck out to me about Resident Evil: Revelations, was that the story was told from the perspective of multiple characters, with just about half being playable, and over the course of 2004 and 2005 (within the Resident Evil timeline).  The easiest way to describe Resident Evil: Revelations, and the way that it felt to me, was that it was very similar in feel to a Mission Impossible movie (specifically I and III) or series of episodes from ALIAS with a Resident Evil skin; yes, I am an avid fan of J.J. Abrams.  Even the story moves from the present day (present day being 2005 in the RE timeline) to a few weeks in the past, to a year in the past with control over a different character (Parker), as well as taking control over Chris Redfield while he investigates in northern Europe (presumably in Finland with a name like Valkoinen Mökki).  Eventually multiple storylines converge and is the case with most/all RE games, mutated shit hits the fan and spread everywhere.

Now while RE:R is classified as a survival horror, I would say that this only really applies to the first few stages of the game while Jill and Parker are exploring the massive ship, Queen Zenobia.  During these early stages, the player is still trying to figure out the sense of the game, how much ammunition is going to be found scattered throughout the ship (just ignore why there is so much scattered around though), as well as the always-great-to-see potted green herbs.  About a third of the way through the game, it takes a turn from survival horror and becomes firmly rooted in the action horror genre as more and more enemies burst out of the woodwork and bosses become massive sponges for bullets and grenades.

As is the case with many games, this unique boss became a semi-regular monster encountered many more times in the later game, because reasons.

I actually think that the boss battles were where I had the least amount of fun.  Granted the design of the bosses were often well done and even a couple had some interesting backstories that only added flavor to the world and were only found after the battle was over.  The rest of the battle design, felt like it was a straight up John Woo action movie, which would be great if I wanted to play an action game, but I wanted to play a Resident Evil game.

Okay, I will be honest.  I am still chasing that original Resident Evil high of being terrified about running out of bullets, and infrequent slow moving zombies.

The last two bosses in particular were difficult enough for me that I had to stop playing and went back the following day just because I was so annoyed with everything involved with losing a boss fight multiple times in-a-row.  I just felt that a fair amount of these bosses were designed to deplete Jill of what ammunition she had and what limited number of green herbs she was able to carry; each playable character could only carry a maximum of five herbs, but they did heal the health back up to 100%.  But, at the end of each boss battle, I had little ammunition left and more often than not, I was out of green herbs.  I did not feel that there was a lot of strategy involved, they were there for the game to be difficult and to drain character resources.

Screen taken not from the 3DS version as you can tell from the map in the corner.

One area that I felt that the game lacking was in the puzzle department.  There were a number of keys and a handful of connect-the-dot-type puzzles, but nothing that reminded me of the backtracking needed to complete some puzzles in the first two games in this series.  While I did appreciate the various locked doors with various emblems denoting that they could only be opened with a certain key, it almost felt like they were an after thought, but that could just be me kvetching for the sake of kvetching.  
All-in-all, I really enjoyed Resident Evil: Revelations, and while the 10 hours 49 minutes might have been on the short side for a main campaign, I am not sure how much more the 3DS cartridge would have been able to hold considering that the game came out four years ago and how good the graphics were.  AND the music too!  The quality of the music rather surprised me, in that it was much better than I come to expect not only from a Resident Evil game, but also from a 3DS game.  I may have to look into picking up the soundtrack in any form that I can find it in (which now may have to include a rip of the game's audio), but major kudos to Kota Suzuki, Ichiro Kohmoto, and Takeshi Miurta for composing music that was at times overly dramatic, but always great to have in the background for both relieving and building tension.

I should also mention that I did dabble a bit in the Raid Mode, which is basically the "Mercenaries" mode that was present in previous Resident Evil games.  Of what that I played in Raid Mode was probably because I wanted to game to continue on a bit, but then I decided to move on to another game, so I guess you could say that this mode in the game did not capture my attention as much as it might other people who want straight up action in the Resident Evil universe with no storyline.

I also wanted to mention that I am a bit saddened that Capcom decided not to release Resident Evil: Revelations 2 on the 3DS considering how well RE:R was received by most critics and gamers, but that will not stop me from playing the game on my computer sometime in the near future.  Kudos to Capcom for creating an action game with some survival horror elements firmly rooted in the Resident Evil universe.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Clawing At The Ceiling Of His Grave