On Resident Evil Revelations

So in case you were wondering, we got the walkway finished yesterday, and it is even more resplendent than I imagined. If that's even POSSIBLE!

Anyway today I'm going to talk a bit about Resident Evil Revelations. It originally came out on 3DS about a year ago I think, and was pretty well-received. It's a game kind of in the style of the newer games in the series (4,5), but I think they wanted to put back more of an emphasis on horror. Now, in a bizarre move, Capcom has ported the game to all current consoles and PC, and it's coming out next week. Last night I played the demo (which released for all platforms yesterday, I played it on Steam) and watched a Capcom stream of one of the game's unique side-modes, and so I'll talk about my impressions now.

First, I'll talk about the demo. I liked it! Though I am one of the seemingly few people who enjoyed Resident Evil 5 (still have to go back and beat that game on Veteran, blerg), so your mileage may vary. The demo was short, maybe about 20 minutes long, but it felt very much like RE5, so it was fun for me to get back into that kind of game. And I definitely felt that they were trying to make it more scary - the environments were dark and claustrophobic, and though I only fought one kind of monster, it was pretty damn creepy.

The graphics are pretty good, I would say. Definitely not up to the standards of high-end PC games these days, but when you consider that it was originally a handheld game, it becomes pretty damn impressive. I haven't seen the original game on a 3DS in person, but it apparently looked pretty amazing (and having seen what the 3DS can do in other games, I don't doubt it). And obviously the textures and models have been up-scaled from the original game to make them look even better - I definitely found them to be more than acceptable.

The gameplay was pretty good too. Definitely modeled after Resident Evil 4 and 5, you've got your standard 3rd person shooter mechanics - you can even move while aiming now!. Though it definitely seems to be designed to play with a controller - again I played on PC with a keyboard and mouse, and the aiming and camera felt a bit awkward. It wasn't too bad, though, I was still able to make shots, it just felt a little weird compared to other FPSs. The rest of the controls felt pretty natural though - R to reload, and the like.

One unique (for RE anyway) aspect of gameplay that I'll mention is...I think it was called the Genesis. This is a feature that's pretty similar to the Scan Visor from Metroid Prime, if you're familiar with that series (if you're not, you should be - they're great games!). When you 'equip' the Genesis thingy, you can look around the environment in a first-person perspective, and points of interest are highlighted which you can click on to scan.

I'm a bit torn on this feature, as there were some cool things to scan, like your enemies, and bloody handprints (in the demo I don't know what that does, but in the full game I'm sure they have some significance), but there are also lots of hidden items that you can uncover. I mean LOTS. Usually these hidden items are ammo, meaning that in the demo, my clip was almost constantly full. Not that that's a huge issue, but it does take some of the scariness away when you're walking around with a fully loaded arsenal. There are probably some more interesting uses of the Genesis not featured in the demo, though, so overall I think it's a neat feature.

I guess I'll quickly mention the story now, but I don't have much to say about it. I kind of feel like Resident Evil is one of those series where you kind of just take the story as it comes, for what it is. It's like, something happens, and you go 'oh, okay, that happened. Cool.' and just go with it. The title of the game is 'Revelations' though, so I imagine there are some interesting and dramatic things that happen. I'll just give this one an official 'mite b cool'.

So now on to the other main feature of the game I learned about, Raid Mode. This mode, which I expect is unlocked after you complete the main story, allows you to play through all the stages of the game at different difficulties, but with a twist - RPG elements! So as you go through the stages, you gain XP by killing enemies, shooting hidden emblems, and probably other things too. By leveling up you can..probably unlock things? I guess I should have paid more attention to the stream.

You will also be able to find loot drops from enemies and around the environment, which include new weapons and weapon enhancements. There looked to be a LOT of weapon enhancements, from standard damage increases, to increased loot drop percentage from enemies, to gaining a movement-speed increase after using an herb. It looked like there were tons of ways to customize the weapons exactly to your liking.

This feature seems especially neat to me, because in RE5 I loved replaying the levels, but once I'd gotten enough money to unlock all the guns and upgrades, it started to feel a bit pointless. So with this new mode, the XP grind and randomized loot would add a ton of replayability, assuming that the levels are fun to play in the first place. There are some new characters and costumes to unlock too, and I'm really just a sucker for stuff like that. Oh yeah, and that reminds me...

The last thing that I like about this new release of the game is that Rachel will be a playable character in Raid Mode. Who's Rachel? Well, waaay back when the game was announced for 3DS, she was a character that was shown in previews, to much public outcry. Why the cufuffle? Well, let's take a look at her.

Haha, oh Japan.

Well other people didn't like it much, but to me this character design is hilarious. It's not just the zipped-down skin-tight catsuit, it's more the hair almost completely obscuring her face. It's as if the designers are just going 'here ya go, it's a pair of boobs!' and not even caring. Her design is just so ludicrous and unabashed that I can't help but love it.

So anyway, yeah, to me this game is looking pretty cool. I dunno if I'll pay 50 bucks to get it at launch, but I expect I'll pick it up at some point at least. I'll probably grab RE6 at some point too, it's getting discounted pretty heavily these days, haha.