As the saying goes: there’s a time and a place for everything. Contrary to what fans would have you believe, Resident Evil’s time has already passed and its place is not on a handheld gaming platform. This is the best way to sum up Resident Evil: Revelations—Capcom’s attempt to mirror a home console experience on a handheld device. It suffers from too much ambition; striving desperately to spook you through creepy atmosphere whilst keeping you on the edge of your seat through action-heavy set-piece moments. The combination of these erratic elements sewn together with a miserable plot sucks all the air out of what could’ve been a fantastic side-story. Instead we’re left with a lifeless, underdeveloped mess of a campaign with no valid reason of why it should exist in the first place.
Save for a couple of impressive lighting effects here and unsettling sound design there, Resident Evil: Revelations takes the—albeit ridiculous—Resident Evil 5 approach of storytelling and game design. Less puzzle solving and atmosphere; more action and shooting. This is because Revelations is split into two separate directions that inconsistently shifts between them abundantly. On one side you play as Jill Valentine. Here you’ll trek through a dark and spooky abandoned cruise ship in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. The horror aspects—if somewhat muted by the size of the platform you play it on—are done with classic Resident Evil method. Pick up a key here; solve a puzzle there; shoot some zombies in the face.
These tense—and dare I say, pretty cool—moments are unfortunately haphazardly interrupted by action-heavy, control taxing stages played by either Chris Redfield or other minor characters. Not only are these aspects simply not much fun to play, but they reply heavily on precise aiming and tactical shooting in order to survive. This is made difficult by the 3DS’s lack of shooting controls on a pure mechanical level. Simply put: the 3DS is not a machine made for big pet-piece shooting. It can be fixed by purchasing an add-on, sure, but this is why most of what makes up the action of Resident Evil: Revelations is simply not fun—the action doesn’t suit the platform.
Both Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield—as well as their partners Parker and Jessica, respectively—are sent to investigate different parts of the globe after Veltro, a sinister company blamed for the Terragrigia Panic and the ultimate destruction of the floating city, have supposedly resurrected after a years absence. Narratively speaking, the random jumps between the groups make some sense. After all, it wouldn’t be a Resident Evil games without them together at some point. Though it’s a nonsensical plot presented like a television show—jumping from episode to episode with full recaps in between. Goofy characters make up the cast and bad dialog and poor voice acting round out a somewhat horrific overarching narrative.
Revelations’ gameplay is comparable to previous Resident Evil games before it. The camera rests behind the character’s back while aiming is done with the shoulder buttons. Oddly enough the game defaults to a first-person perspective when aiming, this ultimately lead me to change back the classic 3rd-person aim setting. Most of the item management and quick selecting of weapons is done with the D-Pad and the bottom touch screen. Pressing right will cycle between your guns while press left will cycle between grenades.
New to Revelations is the new item scanner machine. Quickly pressing Up on the D-Pad will select the device (like a weapon). When aimed the scanner will, well, scan the environment for hidden items like ammo and herbs. Personally I thought it never ended up being anything other than a contrivance to artificially lengthen the campaign. The touch screen, too, is used for small mini-games for hacking electronic doors, but like the scanner it all felt contrived and unneeded. And oh god, those swimming parts... Don’t get me started on that garbage.
Typical to what we’ve come to expect from Capcom nowadays, Revelations is chalk full of mutating monsters and BOWs. The enemy variety is fairly small, only consisting of either ranged or more powerful versions of the standard enemy design. Other classic enemy types (like the hunters) come into play as well through flashback scenarios, too. There are also a fair share of boss fights, as well, ranging from gigantic beasts to other more methodical creatures. One creature in particular can stalk Jill through the ship, causing you to constantly be aware of her whereabouts.
The campaign from start to finish took me about 9 hours to complete and depending on how much you die it can jump from anywhere between 8 and 10. Besides some of the creepy atmosphere or the intense firefights the majority of my time was disappointing. Disappointing because it could have been so much more. Capcom could have either stuck with slow methodical pace that made the first Resident Evil games so much fun, or goes balls-out and rely on action-heavy shooting throughout the entire game. Instead we’re left with a half-assed attempt at satisfying both needs.
Luckily Capcom included a new Raid Mode, which is unlocked after you finish the campaign.
Raid Mode vaguely resembles the Mercenaries Mode seen in Resident Evil 3 (not to be confused with the Mercenaries Mode in RE4 and RE5). Here you can select from a collection of characters represented from the campaign. After choosing a load-out from a group of weapons and attachments, you can set out to complete timed stages that rate you for how fast you completed them and how good your accuracy was. These stages are stripped right out of the campaign (including both the geometry and enemies).
It’s easily the best characteristic of the game and a good reason to muscle through the campaign in order to unlock all of the stages. This mode can be played by yourself but you can also join another player either locally or online (and luckily with random people, not just you buddies). There’s also a fun progression system layered on top which levels up your character. You also gain “BP” to spend on more weapons or accessories. It even includes light loot elements and in-game achievements which unlock other weapons for the campaign and costumes for characters. It’s a great mode, taking the better action aspects of the campaign and putting them into a fun, jump-in-jump-out format to quickly pass time on the go.
Resident Evil: Revelations, too, is an impressive piece of software in terms of visual design. Clocking in at nearly 2 gigs, Revelations boasts an incredible amount of detail throughout both the campaign’s plethora of environments and the cast of—though oddly designed—character models. The 3D works great, too, even if some of the textures lose a but of quality with the 3D cranked up. Unfortunately there’s some poor load times on elevator rides and some compressed looking cutscenes hold it back. The bottom screen too has a weird delay which takes about a second to meet up with the action of the top screen (especially annoying when looking at the map). But for a showpiece of how powerful the 3DS can be, look no further. This is one hell of a good looking game.
If not for some neat implementations of the quick, in-and-out sessions of Raid Mode, Resident Evil: Revelations would be a game I would consider avoiding at all costs. The limitations of a handheld console become way too apparent while trekking through Revelations’ 8 hours campaign, and though the game definitely looks like a console-quality game, it’s not quite there. Little nitpicks aside, the majority of Revelations’ campaign can be summed up as disappointing because not only does it feel like it could’ve been something special, but because it has the workings of a better game built right in (Raid Mode). It’s completely inexcusable that something with such great potential could be this messy and disorganized, but at least the hours spent shooting your way through Raid Mode is enough to ease the pain of such a middling experience.