Game Review: Resident Evil Revelations

I finished this game on stream last Friday and boy, do I have a lot to say about this game. Did I like this game more than the other Resident Evil games? Or did I like it (a lot) less? Let’s find out together, shall we? Be aware: massive spoilers!

Source image

Set mainly in Europe, Revelations sees the player characters through ravaged cities, ports, and snowy mountains. Jill Valentin eand Parker Luciani are sent out by BSAA head Clive R. O’Brian to search for Chris Redfield and his new partner, Jessica Sherawat, who have reportedly gone missing during a mission. Meanwhile, Chris and Jessica are operating in a snowy mountain region, searching for evidence of the return of Il Veltro, a bio-terrorist organisation responsible for the attack and subsequent outbreak in Terragrigia, an artificial aquapolis that was utterly destroyed on orders from Morgan Lansdale, director of the Federal Bioterrorism Commission.

Source image

You play the majority of the game as Jill, but during different episodes, you’re also playing as Parker, Chris, and Keith Lumley, a random guy who’s also a member of the BSAA alongside Quint Cetcham. I admit, the first time I played Keith, I was rather confused. What the hell would this add to the story, and who was he? Though I quickly grew quite attached to him, and Quint, of course. As for the other playable characters, god I love Parker. I don’t know, he’s just very charismatic, protective, sweet, basically an amazing partner. I know Chris, and I don’t know if I like or dislike him, but he was pretty pleasant in this game. And Jill. She’s just Jill, you know? Don’t really feel a lot for her. I admit that I loved playing as different characters, both in flashback scenes, and during scenes in different places tying back to Jill’s main journey. I think it really helped to keep the player focused and invested in the story, even when you played from different perspectives. It didn’t bother me at all.

Source image

The only thing you see on your screen while playing is what’s shown in the top right corner: a tiny version of the map of the current area you’re in. Below that, a tiny pill showing you how much health you’ve got. Okay, technically, another thing gets added to the screen if you find grenades and other devices to stop the zombies with, but if you don’t have them, those are the only two things you’ll see. In the right corner down below, you’d only see which weapon you’ve equipped and which ones you can equip if you use the D-Pad on your controller, or when you’re in combat. It was pretty nice to not have too much on your screen that could potentially distract you, yet it’s a little weird not seeing your weapon on screen constantly and only when it really matters.

Source image

What I loved about this game is the huge amount of variety in guns. You had all kinds of pistols, shotguns and rifles, even machine guns and hawks ready to use at any given moment. Only problem? You could only have three on you, and you could only access this menu when you found a gun box. Besides that, to upgrade your guns, you had to find weapon parts scattered throughout the world, either normal or illegal parts containing something like a charged shot. You could add 3 up to 5 upgrades to a gun, depending on what kind of gun you were applying it to, and some certain upgrades could only be added to certain gun categories. I did like that you could play around and could switch upgrades around, meaning you didn’t have to ditch anything or have anything finalised. The thing that did annoy me though, was whenever you found a new weapon, you dropped the current one you were holding when trying to pick up the new one. But I found a trick for that along the way. You have to find a gun box, empty one of your weapon slots, and pick up the new gun. Then you’ve still got the old one you had, and have the new one added to your arsenal as well. But if you don’t know this trick, you either lose a powerful gun, or leave a powerful one behind.

Source image

A new feature was the ability to scan enemies and handprints. God, that scanning feature is an awful one. When you try to scan enemies, it takes longer to scan them properly before they attack you. Really wish they had made like a pause option of some kind. You know, that whenever you scan, the game pauses for a bit until you stop scanning. Finding hidden items is a good addition to this scanning feature though, considering you find a lot more ammo and health that way. There are two trophies to be earned from using the scanner: scanning all enemies and handprints. You should follow a guide for both because it’s very easy to miss a handprint, and it’s also a lot easier to just follow one for the enemies. If you get the scanning up to 100%, you get free health, which is an amazing addition to the scanning too. One downside to that, though, is that once you’re full on health, and the scanning is up to 100%, you can’t scan anything unless you use health and use the scanning to log your 100% in. Be aware of that whenever you scan a new type of enemy, being close to 100%, and having full health at your disposal.

Source image

The worst thing of the game: the map. And then specifically the one as shown in the image above. It was super hard to operate as when you try to normally zoom in, it would zoom out, and turning it would turn it the opposite way of what you intended to do. Absolutely terrible. Worst part? It was very hard to determine where you was, where you were going, and which hallways would lead where. The map was so inaccessible that I barely tried to use it. I’d rather be lost then having to yell at the map for not doing what I want it to do. There were also so many areas, that it was hard to pinpoint where a certain area was that you had to gain access to via a different area. As confusing as that last sentence might be, that’s how confusing the map is. Maybe that’ll help to understand my point.

Source image

Was it a good game? It was pretty enjoyable, yes, but definitely not in my top 5 of the Resident Evil series. I think it’ll sadly end up at the bottom somewhere. The storyline was pretty okay, don’t get me wrong, but it was also a bit whackey and confusing as you first went to find two people of your team on a ship, then you get stuck and have to fight off zombies when a sudden terrorist organisation comes back into play. Then once you realise your people aren’t on the ship, your mission changes and it goes all over the place. At the end, it does become clearer, but it’s still quite chaotic. Then again, Resident Evil is more known for its survival, so why should I look this close at the plot? Let’s focus on something that I truly hated: the dodge mechanism. It’s basically the same as a different game I once complained about, with the same kind of bad dodge system. You have to time it just right, and move alongside the button smash, but a lot of the time you just get hit straight in the face. The zombies were pretty okay, though some were very hard to kill, which is normal in a zombie/survival game. However, there’s one zombie named Rachel who’s basically impossible to kill, unless you play new game + with the good kind of weapons. It doesn’t matter what you throw at her, it doesn’t do much damage. Just a very annoying enemy who’s not even a real boss fight, but surely acts like one when trying to hurt her. I did like that it was divided into episodes, and the episodes into parts. I did hate that you couldn’t save within the game and had to wait until you had finished a certain episode to be certain it was safe to close the game. I’m used to there being points to save in Resident Evil games, but this one didn’t have any apart from the one at the end of a part of an episode or at the end of the episode itself.

End conclusion: yes, I do recommend this game. I shall give Resident Evil Revelations, 3,5 out of 5 stars!

Love, Skye Lewis ❤

You can also follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, and TikTok