I played on: 3DS
I paid: £13.99
Available on: PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, 3DS, WiiU, Nintendo Switch, PC
Notes: Screenshots taken from the PS and Nintendo Stores.
Resident Evil Revelations was set to be an all-new story canon to the main series told through the impressive portable 3DS. Later an HD version was released for most consoles including the PS3, PS4 and even the Nintendo Switch. I played the 3DS version for this review because that’s the console it was originally designed for.
Although most of Revelations takes place during 2005 the story really starts a year earlier in 2004. The fictional city of Terragrigia in the Mediterranean gets attacked by a terrorist group known as Veltro. The city is quickly overrun by Hunters as seen in Resident Evil 1 and 3. An American Anti-bioterrorist group called the FBC is sent in to try and eliminate the threat with little success. This leads the American government to destroy Terragrigia in a similar fashion to Raccoon City before it. One year later and it seems that Veltro is back. The BSAA is formed by Raccoon City survivors Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine after the collapse of Umbrella. Jill and her partner Parker are investigating a cruise ship called the Queen Zenobia. Chris has gone missing and the Zenobia is his last known location. The plot expands outward and becomes an interesting web of conspiracies. This story is told in 12 acts. One of the few problems with this story is that each act feels the needs to end with a cliffhanger. This leads to a lot of twists that ultimately just confuse the narrative. Besides this slight issue, I love that the story acts as a bridge between Resident Evil Code Veronica and 5. It gives a proper introduction to organisations that would become central to the RE universe from this point forward.
Similar to the story the gameplay also acts as a bridge between games. This time it’s the classic survival horror of the early games and the action focus of later games after Resident Evil 4. For most of the game, you slowly explore and unlock parts of the Queen Zenobia in classic Resident Evil fashion. Every so often you will play as 1 of 2 other teams. You have Chris and his partner Jessica as well as newcomers Quint and Keith. When playing as these teams things feel more action focused, with plentiful ammo and monsters to shoot with it. Slow exploration takes a back seat and is replaced with linear progression. I don’t mean this in a bad way, I enjoy the change of pace and think it helps create a nice blend of gameplay styles. While I wouldn’t call Revelations scary at any points it does use its presentation to create a wonderful horror atmosphere. The episodes are all really well paced with most taking around 30-60 minutes to finish during casual play. Generous autosaves mean that if you need to turn the game off while out and about on the 3DS you can do so without worrying about losing progress. I put a few hours into Revelations while on a train and found it worked perfectly on the go. The little handheld really offers decent controls and beautiful visuals.
As previously stated I played this on the 3DS and it looked wonderful besides a few very minor issues such as characters not moving their mouths during in-game dialogue. The HD version on most consoles fixes these issues and improves the visuals all around. If you wanna play this game at home I would pick up the console version. Don’t feel like you’re losing out if you play this on the 3DS, however, because you’re not. The soundtrack and music are also rather impressive giving Revelations top of the line presentation across the board.
Despite a few minor flaws, I do think that this is a great addition to the Resident Evil series and one that fans will love. It’s not as great as the original or Resident Evil 4 but it’s also far from terrible. Overall this is a solid game and one I enjoyed more than I thought I would. Resident Evil fans should not miss this one out!
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