Resident Evil: Revelations

Resident Evil: Revelations is a strange game, in a way. Coming off the increased focus on action elements after Resident Evil 5 [バイオハザード5], and a little ways ahead of Resident Evil 6, this game makes an attempt to shift back into the atmospheric survival-horror of the first three or six games (everything before Resident Evil 4). Notably, this game was originally released for the 3DS, a machine considerably weaker than the home-consoles of the era, but stronger than the original DS, on which Capcom only released an enhanced port of the original Resident Evil [バイオハザード]. This game is thus far more ambitious than one might expect, which leads to some minor issues when playing the PS3 port.

The biggest thing that bothered me was how Terragrigia looked in certain cutscenes. The sky was too white and the water too blue, that the whole thing felt like a Dreamcast or early PS2 FMV, which makes sense because that's about the power-level of the 3DS, but it's too low-quality for a PS3 game, and it reminds me of playing Vita-original Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth [デジモンストーリー　サイバースルゥース] on my PS4, where the graphics and level-design look way more appropriate for a handheld title than for a home-console, if you'll pardon my comparison to a game that came out after RE:R. Another thing, certainly more significant to the game's aesthetic, is how samey the game's major Ooze enemies tend to look. To draw another comparison to a later game, I am reminded of the Molded in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, released half a decade after Revelations, but which I played several times before ever getting to this game. In 7, the main enemies are zombie-like creatures created by a magical super-science black mold. Most people infected by the mold have pretty much the exact same appearance, likely because Capcom didn't want to dedicate resources to creating too many unique models.

So there are regular Molded who bite you, and armored Molded with sword arms to slash you, crawling Molded to pounce at you like the zombie dogs in older REgames, Fat Molded who have tankier defenses, and white Molded, who are tankier still. RE:R's T-Abyss virus precedes 7's E-series Mold, but operates in much the same capacity. The idea here is that someone created a marine virus called The Abyss to infect the ocean, and combined it with the T-virus to make the spread easier. The result is squishier jelly-zombies. So most humans infected by T-Abyss turn into regular Ooze, whose squishy bodies make them dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge your attacks. They are also able to squeeze themselves into tight crawlspaces, allowing the game to justify swarming mobs to come seemingly out of nowhere when the game decides to force a fight-or-flight response (just as later Molded could just peel themselves off of moldy walls, but otherwise remain unkillable when their models aren't yet active). An important ability of the Ooze is that they can liquefy and harden their bones after moving them around their bodies, giving basic Ooze some spiky club-like arms, and allowing Pincer Ooze to get their scissor arms, or Tricorne Ooze to shoot regenerating bone-harpoons at you (which stretches my suspension of disbelief, but I guess it's not too different from the instantaneous budding of G-embryos in Resident Evil 2). There's also Chunk Ooze, the most annoying shit in this game, who are just filled with extraneous gas to allow suicide-bombing, which doesn't fit the "moving bones" powers of the other Ooze, but isn't otherwise a stretch of the imagine. And as with past games, we have a few (semi-)intentionally-engineered B.O.W.s, created by infecting certain organisms with the T-Abyss. Wall Blisters are super-snails. Ghiozzo are super-goldfish (who look and act more like piranhas, but I'm going with what EvilResource says). No idea what the fuck Sea Creepers are supposed to be, but they look kinda like horseshoe crabs (actually, these bitches are far more annoying than Chunks). Globsters are just living teratomas or something. Fenrirs are your obligatory dog enemies. Farfarellos are stupid because I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be Abyss Hunters, but they just look like slightly-different Hunters who can go invisible, and may as well just be called "Hunter Delta," to follow the naming of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis [バイオハザード3 ラストエスケープ] critters. Malacoda could pass for aquatic Plagas, though the connection isn't made in-game. The Draghignazzo is some kind of turtle/hermitcrab monster. Scarmigliones are shark-knights, who are kind of stupid in theory, but they're one of my favorite monsters now, so I'll allow it. I guess Scagdead's are an analog to Lickers, being an advanced T-mutation, but I hate having to keep my distance around these tanky cunts, and their organic buzzsaw arm makes zero sense (I understand RE6 tries to pull a flesh-saw monster as well?). There are also two human Oozes with unique transformations, one playing a Mr. X / Nemesis stalker role, and the other being the final boss.

On that note, I do feel like I must write about Norman as the final boss. I did enjoy the fight more or less, after I "got gud" at least, which took a few attempts. I predict he will be extremely annoying in Infernal Mode, so maybe I'll puss out and try to save a Rocket Launcher to not have to deal with that shit. But what really concerns me is: a) some of his abilities, and b) the way the fight plays out. It seems the monster's main thing is some kind of deep-sea bioluminescence in its face that can momentarily blind Jill and Chris, making it appear as though the creature is teleporting or generating a clone. I'm assuming these abilities are meant to be illusions in-story, but the fight makes it look like he's doing ninja shit. Furthermore, the battle feels like it's maybe more appropriate for Devil May Cry [デビル メイ クライ] or even Monster Hunter [モンスターハンター], as the battle feels more "involved" (for want of a better word) than other fights in Resident Evil. The strategy is to blast his face until he "teleports" closer to you, at which point the "eyelid" of his heart-tumor will open, allowing you to hit him harder, and likely stun him out of his claw attack. When he creates a "clone," there is a "tell" for the real monster, as it will exhale purple fog shortly before its heart-eyelid opens. The player is thus caught in a particular pattern to fight the boss, and the fight progresses in stages wherein he introduces new techniques. This is different from previous games' final bosses, which either break phases up into different transformations, usually separated by moments for the player to run to an entirely new room, or by the basic "run away from danger, turn around, and keep shooting until a Rocket Launcher appears" strategy used for many bosses, or what amounts essentially to a longform QTE interactive cutscene with the triggers you have to hit for RE5's final boss. It wouldn't really make much sense for someone to drop a Rocket Launcher into the arena here (as it is underwater), and indeed RLs were already used as the gimmick for the previous boss fight, but... I don't know. I liked the fight, but it just felt very "different" from how I'm used to these games' climaxes.

Another minor note on combat: this game has the franchise's weakest Hunters, which it makes up for in sheer numbers, leading to some surprisingly fun encounters, that unfortunately got old fast. There is thus no variety in the Terragrigia Raid Mode levels (at least not the first; I haven't played the second yet...).

The arguable high-point of this game is "Raid Mode," basically this game's take on Mercenaries. You have several characters available, most of whom have different skins, and each skin has its own unique abilities, that basically amount to increased reload speed for specific guns, or strengthened melee attacks, or even regenerating health. As with past Battle/Mercenaries modes, most characters/skins have to be unlocked, and the simplest way to unlock everything is to just keep playing the mode. There are 21 to 62 stages, depending on how you view it: 20 regular stages based on locations in the game, 1 bonus stage ("Ghost Ship"), three difficulties for the main 20 stages, and PS4/XBone/Switch/PC(?) versions add a super version of Ghost Ship. While the Campaign tries to build atmosphere like the older PS1/DC/GC games, Raid Mode goes balls deep on the RE4/5 action influence, and tasks you with running and gunning your way through each stage, getting bonus points for killing everything, not getting hit, and intentionally gimping your player level (which can be manually lowered, weakening some of your guns, but increasing rewards upon stage completion). There is a Shop where you can buy new guns, attachments, and supplies, but you can also find shit scattered throughout stages or dropped by enemies. The guns are more or less the same models as in the Campaign, but they have different levels, stats, and occasional bonus abilities like some Diablo II stuff. This provides a fun little gameplay-loop wherein you keep challenging stages to build your player level, while gaining access to higher-level guns, and using them to be more efficient in your continual grind, not unlike Capcom's Monster Hunter, though there is no weapon-crafting here. Raid Mode is just fun as shit, and there's a strong likelihood that my main motivation for finishing the Campaign was more to unlock the other Raid stages than necessarily to see the full story.

The game's Campaign is actually quite nice, but it makes the game's title seem nonsensical. There aren't many "revelations" to be had. The game takes place before RE5, during which time we're already somewhat familiar with the BSAA organization for which Jill and Chris have begun working. The game kinda-sorta shows how the BSAA gained more power to become a legitimate counter-terror operation, but this backstory was ultimately unnecessary. The plot ends up feeling more like Metal Gear [メタルギア] than Resident Evil at times (making the cruise ship setting recall the tanker from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty), with one of the bad guy's scheme, and some spies, and a fake terrorist organization used as a ruse. I'm reminded of Resident Evil: Code Veronica [バイオハザード コード：ベロニカ], where the game itself was adequate survival-horror, but cutscenes were riding The Matrix's dick something fierce. Many earlier RE games had Spencer, Ashford, and Marcus doing nefarious shit in the background, but the information was limited to the Files the player uncovers in their adventure. This game does use Files to set up Veltro, the genesis of T-Abyss, explanation behind some B.O.W.s, and Jack Norman as eventual final boss, but the real villain is Morgan Lansdale, whom we see a lot of in cutscenes throughout the game, not unlike how 4 and 5 handled their antagonists, making use of cutscenes the player sees, but which the player-characters are far away from. There's also a minor twist I feel was stolen from Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors [9時間9人9の扉] (Chris and Jessica found the wrong ship).

To carry back to the Metal Gear and DMC comparisons, some of the character design feels too "Japanese" compared to prior RE games. This isn't a bad thing by any means, just it makes RE:R stand out in an odd way. I've long held the opinion that I like MG(S) and RE so much because they're inarguably "Japanese," they have that je ne sais quoi that applies to games produced by the homeland of anime, but which aim for a broader Western audience. Characters and settings are American, but everything's just a little too weird compared to our nation's Call of Duty and that sort of shit. Metal Gear makes reference to James Bond and '80s action flicks, but it's about giant bipedal tanks and NANOMACHINES, SON!. Resident Evil has cops fighting zombies, but George Romero would not have come up with Hunters or Tyrants for his own movies. Leon and Claire from RE2 are Leon(ardo) DiCaprio and Claire Danes from Romeo + Juliet, but Leon wears a normal-ish cop uniform rather than a Hawaiian shirt. Jill and Chris look "normal" here, but other characters are kind of more... elaborate. Keith and Quint are basically normal, but BSAA leader O'Brian looks like a more realistic version of Gumshoe from Ace Attorney [逆転裁判] with his weird hair and his too-green coat. Jill is joined by a new partner, Parker, who is a bit chubbier than we'd expect of a counter-terror agent, and whose accent makes him seem like he's supposed to be actually Italian rather than simply Italian-American, yet it raises the question of why an Italian couple would name their son "Parker" (and he's called "Paakaa" in the Japanese audio, so it's not like a name was made-up for American release). Raymond has the brightest hair I've ever seen, in a hue my friend Michael in middle school would have called "goatse red." Morgan Lansdale is mostly "normal," but something about his hair feels "off," and reminds me of Arkham from Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening [デビル メイ クライ 3], who is bald, but who looks like he's meant to be more mundane than the white-haired hero, but who still ends up feeling too stylized in a way I can't pin down (I mean, besides the scars and creepy eyes). Otherwise, this is by far the "horniest" Resident Evil rivalling even the vampire lasses in Resident Evil Village. Rachael's wetsuit is open to reveal her massive breasts, and it seems like Raid Mode's camera focuses much more on her ass than it does Jill, who I believe is actually closer to the camera, and thus harder to peep on. I haven't unlocked Jessica in Raid Mode, but I'm sure she'll be similarly distracting, as her wetsuit is just missing a leg, showing off her hip and part of her ass in a way that feels like a counter-terror organization probably wouldn't allow. Less overt, her younger FBC self has garish purple tights that seem inappropriate for a federal organization's uniform (and, while less lewd overall than her wetsuit, the purple tights appeal very much to my own tights fetish; we later see Jessica in regular pantyhose out of uniform, which is actually more interesting to me, personally...). Jessica's snow uniform isn't weird at all, aside from her hair still hanging in front of her face, which must be a nuisance when trying to aim a gun. The game also has a spiritual descendant of Alexia Ashford, in Ooze Rachael, whose tig bitties are still on display, and who teases you with a singsongy voice as you pursue her, building further onto a fetish I kind of wish I didn't have....

Anyway, good game, though the overall package isn't as great as the earliest releases. I plan to play this more, especially Raid Mode, but I feel it may be inappropriate to bump my score higher, as I feel the game sits snuggly in the middle-tier of RE games. Upper-middle, maybe. I forgot to mention above, but a major side-effect of its portable roots is that the game is broken into twelve "episodes," each consisting of one to three chapters, all between five and twenty minutes long. The idea is that you'd be playing your 3DS in small sittings on the train or something, so wouldn't have time for longer chapters. This doesn't translate well to a home-console setting. I finished the game in three or four sittings, which meant I was playing a couple Episodes at a time, between bouts of Raid Mode grinding. Indeed, if I had the 3DS version, I'd likely play at home and in large temporal chunks as well, but whatever. I thoroughly enjoyed the Queen Zenobia setting, but I wish I had more freedom to explore rather than the game chopping the ship into bits for some chapters, or otherwise allowing further exploration by letting you willfully ignore your current objective in order to backtrack on purpose. I'd probably rate the game higher if it just plopped you into the ship and said "Here, go explore, fuck you," like past games did with the Spencer Mansion, Raccoon Police Department HQ, Raccoon City's streets, Rockfort Island, and Marcus's Training Facility and adjacent buildings. RE:R's structure resembles the way chapters cut up Europe and Africa in 4 and 5, which makes sense considering the time of this game's release, but I guess my "real" problem now is that this game lacks the chapter select of RE5 (which is also a mark I take against 4). Regardless, the rusty post-Gothic aesthetic of the ship builds good atmosphere, and the Ooze mostly contribute to same. The game does like to force action-y sections like its two immediate predecessors, and the clusterfuck of enemy spawns works to add to the chaos (but I have no idea how the 3DS could take it all...), and it's usually pretty fun as well, though there are times when it feels like the game is being an asshole (having Ooze Rachael chase you into a Scagdead, or the first Scagdead fight that's accompanied by seemingly-endless Ooze spawns, or really anything with a Scagdead, and most parts with Chunks). The music is also pretty nice throughout, though I do prefer the MIDI stuff from the PS1 trilogy. Guns feel nice, and upgrades are neat, though I can't use the Charge attachment because the chirping sound when a gun starts charging just annoys the fuck out of me, and I'd rather take the lower DPS than deal with it (lol).

Taking possible cues from Capcom's earlier Mega Man Battle Network [ロックマンエグゼ] franchise, it looks like this game throws up hashmarks on the title screen with each Campaign completion, for a total of five. I can certainly see myself wrapping up my current (second) run and going for three more to get all the marks. I actually simply did not own Resident Evil: Revelations 2 until a week or so ago, as I finally got a good sale on PSN, but the caveat was that the PS4 version was bundled with the PS4 version of the first Revelations. I see the $14.99 for Rev2 Deluxe Edition as being a good enough deal as it is, but this way I also have free DLC for Rev1, and in the interest of saving money for the PS3 DLC, I think I may just play the whole game on PS4 eventually. I was also thinking of grabbing the 3DS originally, so even though this isn't exactly my favorite game, I'm kinda-sorta envisioning fifteen (15) Campaign plays....