Resident Evil Revelations
PlayStation 3
Like most hardcore fans of the franchise, I was extremely let down by both Resident Evils 5 and 6. RE4 was such an amazing game. Not only the best Resident Evil game out there, but perhaps one of the greatest games ever made, period. It was the beginning of a new direction for the classic franchise. I think everyone expected its follow ups to be awesome.... but they were not.
Not scary enough, convoluted story lines, too much action, cheap partner gimmicks - the series took a big step backward just as it looked it had nowhere to go but forward. While we await a seventh entry to the series to arrive and correct its predecessors' sins, there is a game that disappointed fans can check out in the meantime: Resident Evil Revelations.
This game was originally released as a 3DS title a few years ago. Not owning a 3DS, I never got the chance to play it. I thought it looked pretty decent though. Lo and behold I find out a few months ago that the game had been brought to the PlayStation 3 without my knowledge. It took me a while to get my hands on a copy of the game, but thanks to my awesome Gamefly subscription, I was finally able to play this game that I've been interested in for several years now.
Resident Evil Revelations doesn't completely make up for the Resident Evil 5 and 6 fiascos, but it does a decent enough job. I thoroughly enjoyed this game much more than either of those two games.
This title makes an attempt to go back and recreate what made RE4 so great. It's a slower paced game. I like the location. It mainly takes place on a creepy abandoned cruise ship in the middle of the sea. There is a lot of walking through dark corridors with flashlights - waiting for the jump scare. The game is infinitely more scary than RE 5 or 6. There is action, but it is nothing like those other games where all you do is simply blow stuff away all the time.
That said, I still found that this was nowhere near as cool as RE4. It is like the game tried to find a balance between horror and action, but came up a little short in both areas. Yes, the atmosphere of the game is creepy (for full effect, play this in the dark with headphones on), but after an hour or two of playing it becomes clear that you don't really have a lot to be afraid of. There is a lot of backtracking and revisiting empty areas you have already been to before. The enemies you do encounter just to me aren't that menacing. And that makes a huge difference. I mean, I like that they TRIED to make this game scary, but something seemed to be missing for me the whole time I played this.
The action is decent. if you've played any of the last several Resident Evil games, you should be familiar with the control scheme and the inventory system. But again there seems to be something missing for me. It doesn't seem to matter where you shoot your enemy or what tactics you employ. Every fight seems to be the same thing: just unload as much ammo as you can into your enemy and hope he dies. Part of the what made RE4 so cool for me is that it mattered where you shot your enemy. Shoot him in the leg, he goes down on one knee. Shoot him in the hand, he drops his weapon. Shoot him in the head - your chances for an automatic kill go way up.
But here, all you fight are formless gray humanoid objects and the occasional raging out of control virus beast with lots of claws and teeth. You only tactic is to just simply unload on them. And that to me made combat a little boring.
The game's music and sound effects are top notch. The voice acting still isn't the series' strongest point, but it is not offensively terrible either. Graphically, the game looks really, really good. Even more impressive is the fact that this was designed as a 3DS game - what? Four years ago? The characters, the lighting effects, the sway of the ship, the room designs. Everything looks pretty good to me.
The story line was much better than the one in either Resident Evil 5 or 6. It focuses on an floating city that was destroyed several years ago by bio terrorists. Signs of the terrorists have begun to surface again, and clues lead your characters to this abandoned cruise ship to check things out. It starts out easy to follow but becomes kind of a convoluted mess as the game goes along. Why can't they just keep the story lines to these games nice and simple, like the good old days? I found myself caring less and less about what was going on the deeper I got into the game. I was playing this for the game play.
Despite the fact that the game wasn't that scary, despite the fact that I had some problems with the combat system, despite the fact that I didn't really care much for the game's story - I still had a good time. I enjoyed exploring the abandoned ship. I enjoyed the occasional side mission where you'd get to control other characters. Most of these side missions are action based, but they are pretty straightforward and a nice change of pace from your usual exploring. The pace of the game is pretty fast, and the way the game's chapter system is set up makes you want to keep coming back to play longer.
Plus there are a few little wrinkles thrown in every once in a while to make things interesting. It is not all simply walking around, looking for keys, and shooting stuff. There are some "on rails" shooting segments. A few areas in the game where you can swim. And of course, this is a Resident Evil game so expect some big, over the top boss battles to pop up from time to time.
The game is not flawless by any stretch of the imagination. Nor is it the worthy follow up that Resident Evil 4 demanded. But it is a start. I found this title to be much better than both Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6. If Capcom can build upon what this game did right - and take into account what made RE4 such an epic game to begin with - it will be back on the right track with the franchise again.
This is a fun game. I probably will never play it again, so it wasn't THAT amazing. Maybe I only enjoyed it because I was so starved for a good RE game, but the point is that I still enjoyed it.
So if you are looking for something fast and fun to play and you love the RE series, you should definitely check this out. I know that there is a Resident Evil Revelations 2 out there, so I am eager to see if that is any good as well. You know if I play it, a review will be coming.
Overall:
B-
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