First Impressions: Resident Evil: Revelations 2 - Episode 3: Judgement [Barry & Natalia] (NS)

Hello, good day, and welcome.  This is Part 2 of my impressions of Episode 3: Judgement in Resident Evil: Revelations 2 released by Capcom in 2015 and in 2017 on the Nintendo Switch.  Just to get it out of the way, I played in Handheld Mode the entire time and while at times the game looked grainy, this was mainly due to a grainy-film filter that is by default in the game with currently no option to change.

Being unable to run or use a weapon here basically told me that I was
going to be completely safe while Barry was carrying Natalia. 

So we return to Barry Burton and Natalia Korda's chapter, where we previously left off with the revelation that Alex Wesker has been the voice broadcast through the wristbands that Claire and Moira wear and has been the one tracking the movements of all of the characters.  This chapter opens up kind of how I feared, but the attack by Mutated-Alex and her horde of Revenants all happens in a cinematic, so that was quite a relief.  I did enjoy how this chapter started out though once you start playing, in that during the escape, Natalia injured her leg/foot and needs to be carried by Barry.  You end up backtracking through the sewer stage that Claire and Moira had just traversed in their chapter of Episode Three, but now, six months later, the nasty ass-water has receded so no hidden creatures were bursting out of the water like before.

What confused me a bit in this section, having just finished C&M's chapter, was why after spending the entirety of B&N's previous two chapters trying to get to the Red Tower were they backtracking away from where Natalia said she last saw Moira alive?  I know that it was a self-preservation tactic because there was no way either B&N were going to survive that onslaught.  There is also the statement that Alex makes, saying that she ". . .buried them under a mountain of fear and despair," to which Barry concludes (along with the knowledge of what Natalia said at the beginning), "You killed her."  I mean, my first thought (sitting safely at home and not face-to-face with a horrid abomination) was that what Alex said sounded a lot like metaphor and not actually what happened.  Had Alex said something more along the lines of, "Her corpse is rotting under a mountain of fear and despair," I would have been more inclined to actually believe that Moira would have died at the end of C&M's Episode Four.

But this is where we are at so that is what I was playing with.  One thing that frustrated me about the sewer stage was when I was controller Natalia and the computer was taking control of Barry, there would be times when Barry just would not shoot at enemies.  Now, I would frequently control Natalia so that I could spot items hidden on the ground, but also because I had spent in-game BP currency to buy the "Unholstered" skill which "Allows Claire and Barry to fire weapons when not being controlled. AI will not use up ammo but firepower is lowered."  So I would expect Barry to fire his weapon at approaching enemies, but in more than one instance in the sewers, he would just stand around not doing anything until the creature was right next to him and then swipe his his knife.  I noticed this happening too a bit in previous episodes, but not to the extent that it happened here.  In some later sections when Barry and Natalia were split up but still in the same room and Natalia was being pursued by Afflicted and Barry had a line of sight on them (because I could switch to Barry and kill the Afflicted), computer-Barry would still stand around like nothing was going on. Even having Natalia pointing at the approaching creature did nothing to kick Barry into action. Maybe the game was just designed against people like me who take advantage of this skill so that I do not run out of ammunition by the inevitable boss battle at the end of the area/chapter

The "thing" in Natalia's way was a sawhorse-blockade and not attacking
her.  Jeez, kids these days are so needy

One interesting thing that I did learn in this sewer section is something that I feel should have been introduced earlier, or it was and I just missed it (maybe in Little Miss?) had to do with the Glasps, because of course, they are here too.  Scattered throughout a newly accessible area of the sewers were gas canisters that when shot at would explod and create a cloud of smoke identical to the smokescreen bottles.  I do not know why I specifically shot the gas canister when the Glasp was around, but upon doing so, I found out that that makes them visible to Barry.  Holy hell, had I known this earlier I probably would have over 50 rounds of ammunition still in my inventory.

Shortly after dealing with the Glasps and a number of large sluice gates, B&K exited the sewers out into a large mining quarry that had been talked about through journals going back to the first episode.  This area was populated primarily of Revenants who were all pretty easy to take out with Barry's stealth kills (except one who noticed Barry from quite a long way away and then sprinted faster than I had previously seen them move, which was pretty unnerving.  The mine area was predominantly one large puzzle, having to find a battery (a battery the size of a crate that has to be carried with both hands) and carry it through different areas in order to power up an elevator to get to higher ground in order to pass through (but to pass through to what or where I was not 100% clear) to whatever was on the other side.

There was one boss-creature that reappeared a few times in the mines and looking at the creature's bio, I think that there might have been some de-working of the character model for the Switch port.  This creature, called the Durga, was supposed to be made up of a lot of Revenants all conglomerated together in a heaping mass.  While there were a lot of consistent elements such as multiple faces over the body and the scorpion-tail-like appendage, I did not notice the many flailing arms that helped to give the Durga its name.  Supposedly, as the Durga loses limbs, it becomes faster and a lot more aggressive, which means that I probably could not just have strafed around a garbage pile taking pop-shots at it while it could not reach me.  After a certain amount of damage is dealt to the Durga, it flees only to return at the end of the stage as the end-level boss.

When the Durga does come back at the end, the battle and the area were kind of odd.  By the look of this boss-fight area, it looked like you were supposed to take (another?) battery to power up a pair of doors to flee the area, and to do so, you would have to kill the Durga.  For me though, I was able to carry the battery then drop it to draw the Durga away, then sprint back to the battery and carry it further.  I genuinely thought that that was what you were supposed to do, ultimately leading to the doors cutting the Durga in half and thereby killing it.  What ended up happening was I got the battery installed, opened the doors, jumped down a ledge which then lead to the ending cinematic.  I apparently bypassed the stage boss battle.

Again, I found myself enjoying the Barry & Natalia stages more than the Claire & Moira stages, possibly because Natalia is seen more as an assist rather than someone who could help in a battle (Moira's flashlight/crowbar versus Natalia's finger pointing/brick throwing), and there is more of an emphasis for Barry on being able to stealth kill the Revenants where as I rarely see this tactic come across in C&M's chapter.  And during large fights, I have found that Natalia is able to do a better job at avoiding monsters than Moira, which could either be a result of different AI programming for both the monsters and Natalia, or maybe Moira is just a larger target?  Either way, feeling proficient enough to not die at all during this chapter made the experience a lot more enjoyable, which is to be expected.  The only downside, which I already touched on was being slightly confused as to Barry's motivation to completely flee from their objective for the last two chapters with only vague mentioning of Moira's demise.  Hopefully the final chapter will feel more complete by the end of the game.



~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian

Instrumental

P.S.

And lastly, here is my final end of chapter scorecard for Barry & Natalia.  It wasn't until the screen came up that I realized I hadn't died.  I was also surprised that I killed five or fewer enemies with Barry's stealth attack as I could have sworn that I killed more.  I can specifically recall at least four, but that there were not a lot more than I could have killed this way.  I know of one Revenant that I accidentally triggered who moved with alarming speed who proceeded to chase B&N halfway across the mine area before I felt there was enough room to switch to Natalia to find the weak spot then back to Barry to exploit said weak spot.