Resident Evil: Revelations

It's been a long time since my last Resident Evil game, so here's a brief recap of the series so far for anyone who doesn't know- it's a survival horror series whose first 3 games came out on the original PlayStation and just got cranked out one per year; they were critically acclaimed at the time but revisiting them all 15 years later it's tough to forgive the awful 'tank' controls- your character controls more like a car than an actual person. The next two games (Code: Veronica and Zero) came out on the next generation consoles and were pretty good too but the formula for the games was quickly growing stale and fans of the series were getting tired of more of the same. Things got radically changed for the sixth game in the series, Resident Evil 4, one of my favorite games of all time. Resident Evil 4 was much lighter on puzzles and had a heavier focus on action, and its much-improved controls gave it unanimous critical acclaim. Then came Resident Evil 5 which shifted the setting to Africa, and it was mostly good, but in my opinion it suffered from taking itself way too seriously and generated a whole racism controversy that was an ugly point for the series. I had played and logged all of these games (except 4 and 5, which I played pre-Back-Blog), and since then two more installments have come out- the criticially panned Resident Evil 6, and the more acclaimed 3DS-exclusive Resident Evil Revelations. I'll begrudgingly play the former at some point, but here are my opinions on the latter.

 

Honestly, it was great. Revelations is a return to the slower-paced origins of the series in which exploring, puzzle-solving and backtracking are the name of the game rather than the more linear action of Resident Evil 4 and 5 (and probably 6). But it's also probably the best game in the series in that style, with much better controls than the old games and obviously the graphics and sound and all that are just light-years ahead of the old games, even on a portable system. The abandoned cruise-liner was a great choice of setting for the game as it uses the claustrophobia of a ship to its advantage, constantly pitting you against big enemies in small, cramped spaces. And of course now and then you get a huge set-piece that looks like it's pushing the limits of what the 3DS is capable of, with the penultimate boss being my personal favorite. There are a couple small gripes- one, you're given a scanner that supposedly makes you stronger as you scan more and more enemies but it seemed poorly implemented, and second there's not too much variety in non-boss enemies- I guess Capcom had to skimp somewhere. Still though overall I really enjoyed my time with Resident Evil Revelations and I'll probably play through it again someday.