Resident Evil fans are sure in for a treat this year with Resident Evil 6 being released at the end of the year and Operation Raccoon City set to be released on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on March the twenty third (and the latest installment in the Paul W. S. Anderson film series, if you care about any of them).
But to start the year off, Capcom have released Resident Evil Revelations for the 3DS and with more horror games needed for the handheld, this is a warm welcome and is a worthy purchase for fans of the series.
Set between Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5, the city of Terragrigia had been destroyed by the bioterrorist group II Veltro with Bio Organic Weapons and resulted in the entire area to be evacuated. But the bioterrorist group then took over the city’s prized ocean liner, the SS Queen Zenobia, and infected one fifth of the ocean with a new virus derived from the T-virus known as the T-Abyss virus.
The Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance (BSAA) sent Jill Valentine and her partner Parker Luciani to the ship in order to find the missing Chris Redfield and stop II Veltro from infecting the world’s ocean.
But you soon find out that Chris is actually looking for the terrorists in European Mountains and has teamed up with another BSAA agent named Jessica Sherawat.
The series has always been known to be ridiculous at times, but the story was a bit confusing to start with. But as soon as I understood what was happening and got used to the game, it became an engaging plot filled with some intense scenes, creepy monsters and some of the best visuals currently on the console.
Some 3DS owners have probably already got an idea of how the game works with the free demo that was available at the eShop and the whole game plays in the tradition of having easy to use controls with new weapons and items to use during your eight to ten hour play through.
The game is split into two specific gameplay elements that works really well and adds variety to the game. When you play as Chris and Jessica on the mountains, it plays out very much in an action-packed shooter as you take on infected wolves and go through obstacles. Meanwhile, the levels on the SS Queen Zenobia is in the traditional suspenseful horror that the older games were and you must defend yourself on limited ammo and some herbal plants against the T-Abyss monsters that are based on deadly marine creatures.
But while the mountain levels are action-packed, they don’t offer much variety or colour as the levels on the ocean. The ocean levels see you go through so many different rooms, from dark control rooms to glorious restaurants that really makes the experience that much more interesting, especially when there are times when you will have to go through water to reach a particular destination. It’s a bit of a pity that they couldn’t add monstrous sharks or giant sea creatures in these water-filled sequences to add that much more to the game.
Gameplay is great most of the time as the controls are easy to operate after getting used to the buttons and going through the first ten minutes in the game that makes it a bit surprising that Nintendo bothered to release the Circle Pad accessory as the game plays fine without it. It does make it a bit bothersome at times that you can’t move backwards or forwards when using a gun and because it then puts the camera in a point-of-view perspective, you can only move right to left to aim and shoot at enemies. While it only gets annoying at times, it can work well to build intensity on the cruise levels when monsters are attacking you in tight corridors.
And that is all just on the single player story mode! The developers also added several missions that you can take on to get new guns and weapons, from either taking down a particular number of enemies or try to find fifteen handprints with a high-tech scanner. The plus side to these is that you can get more missions through SpotPass and Street Pass. You can also unlock Raid mode that acts as a replacement to Mercenaries, in which you have to try and get the best score in a short amount of time and it is still a shame that Capcom could not include Mercenaries 3D as a package, but there is still enough in this game to satisfy gamers.
With the mix of action and horror gameplay, a lengthy single player mode and a great looking game from start to finish, Resident Evil Revelations has started the year off to great expectations of what we can expect on the 3DS. Even if you have not played any previous games in the series, this is a good place to give it a go.
[Rating:4/5]
