Resident Evil Revelations review Survival horror games are at their best when they funnel you into confined spaces. This has held true for every game in the Resident Evil series, from the claustrophobic corridors of the original to the darkened, monster-rammed alcoves of the Spencer Estate. The smaller the spaces, the more potent the scares.
So it is that Resident Evil Revelations is set primarily aboard the Queen Zenobia, a cruise ship adrift in the Mediterranean. It's quintessentially a Resident Evil location, a mix of opulent halls, baize-festooned casinos, grimy metallic crew quarters and partially flooded, unlit engine rooms.
The place is filled with locked doors and broken elevators, mutated fish-men and mysterious agents of a terrorist organisation bent on dispersing their T-Abyss virus into the world's oceans.
The plot is sufficiently removed from the rest of the series as to be straightforward enough for the passing Resident Evil fan: while investigating the apparent return of a bio-terrorist group called Veltro, anti-bio-terrorist mercenary Jill Valentine and her partner Parker (a sort of chubby Kurt Russell) board the Zenobia in search of their mysteriously missing ally, Chris Redfield.
Ship Of Ghouls
Of course, all is not as it seems: the boat has become a sort of floating haunted house and Mister Redfield is nowhere to be found. He is, in fact, off elsewhere in the 'European Mountains' with his new partner Jessica (who, given her genuine utterance of "me and my sweet ass are on their way", we can only assume is some sort of a satirical deconstruction of contemporary sexism in gaming).
In these sections, which are more action-focused than those set on the Queen Zenobia, you play as Chris, uncovering plot details and fending off vicious attacks from infected wolves and other Veltro abominations using your broad shoulders and guns.
A few tangential scenes also allow you to play as Parker (who catapults Revelations' kooky, off-the-cuff misogyny to Carry On levels by at one point, blaming Jessica for attracting monsters because she's "such a flirt") prior to his joining the organisation of which Jill and Chris are part.
You'll also play as the inimitable Grinder and Jackass in a few sections, Revelations' cringe-worthy comedy duo. These guys reel off some the game's most wonderfully quotable and questionably translated lines, including one incredible - if sadly unprintable - misunderstanding of a common Brit-phrase.
But for the most part you'll be in the skin-tight, push-up wetsuit of Jill Valentine as she navigates the dusky bilges of the badly lit cruise ship armed with scant ammunition, screaming in fright at every whispering ventilation shaft and darting shadow.
Where Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D was, in effect, a sideshow, Resident Evil Revelations is a full and comprehensive Resident Evil adventure, one closer to the series as it appears on consoles than any preceding handheld outings.
The confines of the Queen Zenobia are a throwback to the walled-in atmosphere of the first handful of games, if anything, and while the game does make some concessions to the platform, it's a staggering feat of miniaturisation that Capcom has crammed such a full-featured Resident Evil game on to the 3DS. Those concessions include discrete chapters of plot, each preceded by its own serial-style "Previously on Resident Evil..." voiceover that recaps the events of the previous chapter, which is ideal for a game designed to be picked up and put down as your train journeys and bowel movements dictate. The campaign will take you about 10 hours to complete: another reason it falls in line with the full-fledged Resident Evils of consoles.
This chapter-based approach to progression also leads to a lessened emphasis on puzzle solving. The Queen Zenobia is still a cryptic place: somebody's gone to the trouble of removing cogs, locking random, ostentatious doors and placing matching, ostentatious keys on the opposite side of the ship, but the time between discovering a barred pathway and discovering the means to open it has been reduced.
These are bite-sized puzzles. Puzzlettes. They change the pace of the game to match the typical handheld gamer's attention span, but, crucially, they don't touch the classic Resident Evil meta-treat of re-exploring previously discovered areas armed with a new set of keys, unlocking previously locked doors to uncover secret weapons and ammunition caches. If you want to get your mitts on the Magnum, for instance, you'll have to keep tabs on those inaccessible areas.
That's not your only means of bolstering your armoury, either. Resident Evil Revelations comes preloaded with several Missions, miniature challenges that ask you, among many things, to kill 150 enemies to unlock the PC356 handgun, or discover 15 handprints to unlock the PSG1 rifle, or dodge 20 times to unlock a new set of custom gun parts.
These gun parts, which are also found strewn about the ship, can be slotted into any of your three equipped weapons, improving firing rates, damage, accuracy, reload times and so on. They're also awarded at the end of every Raid run, enabling you to improve your lot and unlock ever better gun modifications, which becomes frighteningly addictive.
The Missions bundled with the game aren't the entire set, either: you'll be able to discover new Missions through StreetPass and SpotPass, providing an incentive to return to the campaign. Imagine cracking open your 3DS to find you've been challenged to beat a certain chapter of the game without firing a single round.
Mission Creep
The Missions also reward you for completing chapters of the campaign by unlocking Raid levels. These levels are short, score-based, arcade-style runs in which you'll balance accuracy and efficiency while set upon by superpowered versions of regular enemies.
Of course, it would've been an audacious gyp on Capcom's part to chuck the entirety of Mercenaries 3D in here - and we faintly resent now having two Resident Evil cartridges that feel like they should perhaps be one - but Raid has an appeal all its own, a worthy successor to the Mercenaries series of mini-games and one that we hope endures future generations of Resi. It's playable in both single and co-op modes, too, and has its own unique Missions to attempt once you're done setting high scores.
Back in the single-player campaign, all of these Missions will, by the final third of the game, have furnished you with some impressive shooters.
The pistol tends to become a decent weapon to fall back on, given the relative abundance of ammunition for the thing, but you'll progress to more powerful handguns, shotguns and automatic weapons as you play.
They're all restricted by scarcity of ammunition, and each comes with its advantages and disadvantages: the shotgun is powerful, but takes an age to reload; the machine guns are weak, but with a rapid rate of fire and devastating spread. Dodging becomes a necessary skill when rooms begin to fill with increasing numbers of enemies, as the evasive technique can be employed even while reloading, but it's a difficult trick to pull off under pressure, requiring perfect timing and some luck.
Control-wise, Resident Evil Revelations makes great use of the single analogue pad and face buttons. The pad turns your character left and right, as well as moving them backwards and forwards, while holding the left shoulder button enables you to strafe. Holding the right shoulder button pulls the camera into a first-person perspective, enabling you to fire off rounds with the Y button.
The left shoulder button still allows for strafing movement in this first-person mode too, so you're never rooted helplessly to the spot while firing (there are some optional gyro controls in the first-person view too, but at the risk of putting too fine a point on it, they suck a fat one).
Resident Evil Revelations is a stark reminder that decent, functional shooter controls are possible on the 3DS without the need for the Circle Pad Pro add-on. Though of course, your character still turns around as if she's stood on a slowly rotating microwave plate, with all the apparent nonchalance of someone not about to have their spine pulled out of their backside by a mutated, murderous fish-man - but that's a Resident Evil hallmark and is to be forgiven. Down and B still does an instant 180 turn anyway, so shush.
Motion Sickness
It's always been this immobility that creates such a harrowing sense of inescapable vulnerability in Resident Evil Revelations. As ammo stocks dwindle, the sight of another lurching form is cause for creeping tension and there are more than enough moments of heart-stopping terror when shambling monsters drop out of air ducts behind you. Even the sound of nearby enemies will set your teeth, nay your entire face, on edge, especially if you have an enough of an appetite for self-destruction to set the difficulty any higher than normal.
The short, off-boat bits featuring Chris Redfield and the Chuckle Brothers are certainly less scare-centric and more explosive - you get a rocket launcher in one and use a mounted machine gun in the other - but, if anything, they serve to emphasise the dense and weighty atmosphere aboard the Queen Zenobia.
This is by far the scariest game on 3DS. Well, to be absolutely fair, it's one of perhaps two or three scary games on 3DS. But we don't see it being toppled for some time, not unless The Exorcist pops up on Nintendo Video next to Oscar's Oasis and 3D Magic Tricks #72.
Blistering Barnacles
Enemies themselves come in a range of flavours, all of them nakedly mutated and unsettling. There's an aquatic theme, from the staggering, lamprey-faced and spiny-armed dudes to the great, barnacle-infested boss character. There are elite, lobster-styled foes with armoured carapaces surrounding fleshy weak points, who, when beaten, reveal an electrically charged interior that then runs around on two legs, confused, angry and profoundly dangerous.
They each take varying degrees of punishment before finally succumbing to their injuries, melting down into an unsatisfying puddle of gore. Which you then scan using your handheld Genesis scanner.
Revelations is the sequel Resident Evil 4 deserved, and sits proudly alongside the main series by virtue of its full single-player campaign and expansive, highly replayable Raid mode. And where the heavily directed Resident Evil 4 successfully warped the series formula by giving it an outdoorsy, Sunday-hike sort of feel, Revelations instead drags the series back to its boxed-in roots and does away with the misfiring features of the abortive Resident Evil 5.
It's perhaps the most convincing, foreboding-drenched setting Resident Evil has ever presented us with, and as the plot progresses the location is used to ever-increasing effect, revealing more of itself as you push deeper into its wet, metallic heart.
Parts of the Queen Zenobia will surprise and delight, others are starkly reminiscent of old series haunts, but Resident Evil Revelations keeps a tight hold on what made the original games so utterly special. That it exudes such overbearing tension from such a tiny screen is a triumph. This is the first must-buy title of 2012.
Dark, terrifying and brilliantly exciting, Revelations is a triumph on 3DS.
90%
I pre-ordered this can't wait to play it, looks epic. Nintendo are giving it's fans great games I for one am happy to own a 3ds I was a little skeptical at first but based on the fantasic games I've played (Zelda,Mario 3d land, mario kart 7, sonic generations and PES2012) and ones I really want to play resident evil revelations METAL GEAR SOLID 3D it's shapping up to a great time to be a nintendo fan.
I think nintendo can't beat playstation in the handheld gaming department.
Really want to get this. I enjoyed Mercenaries,okay it wasn't a brilliant game,but it's pick up and play availability made it my most used 3DS game with a total play time of over 30 hours. I just hope the online in this is good,because Mercenaries was a bit messy,though the last time I used it,it was pretty good. I just hope there isn't any giant spiders,bugs or fish,in this game or I'll have nightmares.
I might get this with the Circle Pad Pro,but that depends whether there's a bundle or a special discount when you buy the game and Pad together,in Game or somewhere. But then again I quite like the controls the way they are,I might just leave it till Kid Icarus or Metal Gear.
Only 90%!? Definatley the best 3rd party 3DS games, the graphics are superb, best for the system(out of the games I have) and it really feels like you're playing a movie! I've jumped a few times already and i'm only on Episode 2. It is also a real challenge (e.g running out of ammo after like 3 seconds) a true survival horror! Deserves about 96%, alot better than any mario game could be!
*THIS IS BASED ON PERSONAL CHOICE, SORRY IF I OFFENED SOME DEDICATED MARIO FAN OR SOMETHING, BUT I LIKE MARIO TOO*
just received my zavvi bundle release day hah a its so bliddy scary went into my room turned the lights off wahhhh Chris kill those dogs Jill dodge. if honest its easier to use the camera without the circle pad pro but am still using it. really want to unlock raid mode
Im a few hours in and i must say i'm enjoying it immensely. It's given me a couple of really nasty scares. The woman you chase throughout he air ducts made me jump so much the 3DS flew out of my hands! Brilliant stuff, and my favourite 3DS game since Ocarina of Time 3D. Really don't understand why Edge gave this a 6.
