Remember when Resident Evil jumped the shark with a brave fourth title and yet it turned out to be an impressive and fun game? Resident Evil Revelations is pretty much a RE4 wannabe…

TL;DR – It’s slightly better than 5, but way worse than 4.


RE4 is how you do innovation while remaining somewhat faithful to the original formula. The perfect combination between horror and shooter (which of course is not exactly the best for survival horror purists, however it’s still a nice attempt to reimagine what made the game good in the first place: the wacky, B-movie writing and the over-the-top monsters).

RE Revelations however takes itself too seriously, and it desperately tries to replicate 4’s success. Sometimes it exceeds expectations, but oftentimes it’s the complete opposite.

It seems that the majority of games which weren’t directed by Shinji Mikami suffer a lot from this point of view. The writing, setting, pace, gameplay, horror factor, etc. are a mixed bag: when it excels at one or more of these aspects, rest assured there’s something else that’ll be mediocre, if not utter shit.

And that’s exactly the problem Revelations has: it’s mediocre. It does lots of things unexpectedly well considering what it wants to be, but other than that… It’s a carbon copy, a handicapped child born from an incest between RE4 and RE5. However, if the latter is an obnoxious peak of action shooter — not even action horror — Revelations can still be redeemed.

That’s right: it’s not a complete pile of shit. Somewhere underneath the manure there’s a gem that awaits to be played and appreciated for what it is.

The monster design is hit-or-miss.
This one for example is pretty cool, but there are others that felt uninspired.

PROs

🟢 Functional combat. Bonus points because you can dodge attacks akin to good ol’ RE3. Also, you can modify weapons which is a welcomed addition that fits the series tone.

🟢 Interesting bosses and enemies. Some designs are gruesome and spectacular, others feel pretty lazy. As a rule of thumb, if you’re fighting the bosses then it’s always pretty fun, with some rare exceptions.

🟢 Hidden collectibles. Because seeing numbers go up is always a good thing and it generally makes my pp go up too.

🟢 The main setting is pretty cool. Although you’ll switch between maps as the game progresses (which to be fair can be quite disorienting and I didn’t like that aspect very much), the main level is pretty cool. Resident Evil: Dead Aim did the ship thing way better than Revelations but hey! At least it’s not a darn city again (it’s a good concept but it becomes monotonous after a while).

🟢 Raid mode is a clever way to get more replay value by recycling levels and put a bunch of enemies in it, arena-style. It’s like The Mercenaries but slightly more entertaining.

Would fuck to be honest

CONs

🔴 The Genesis. Seriously, what were they thinking. It ruins the pace like nothing else and the idea behind it isn’t really that appealing… But now I’m getting ahead of myself; what is the Genesis, you may ask. To simply put, the Genesis is a gadget that lets you scan your surroundings.

With this tool you can, most importantly, find hidden items (which makes the survival aspect way more trivial since now you pretty much have double the items in the map… Oh but wait. It’s been 15 years since Resident Evil was a survival horror, now it’s anything but that). So yeah, have fun walking two steps then using the Genesis. Rinse and repeat.

🔴 Uninspired plot and plot twists… Although you should take that for granted for todays standards and for the newest entries in the series overall. To be fair, there’s way worse so no need to be too harsh about it.

🌴 AUTISM-O-METER 🌴

Functional Combat | +3🟢POINTS
Interesting Bosses/Enemies | +2🟢POINTS
Hidden Collectibles | +1🟢POINTS
Raid Mode | +5🟢POINT
The Genesis | +5🔴POINTS
Uninspired Plot and Plot Twists | +3🔴POINTS

TOTAL
🟢 = 11 POINTS
🔴 = 8 POINTS

VERDICT
Resident Evil Revelations is decent