Resident Evil: Revelations Catch-All

Resident Evil Revelations has been out for the 3DS since last year, but in May it's getting a release for real consoles , the Wii U in May, and PC also in May (but no one will buy it until Christmas when it's a failed product being hocked for $0.45). It's supposedly a much more survival horror-focused entry in the franchise than the last few games, and not only that, but it's supposedly pretty good.

Anyone who played it on 3DS care to comment? Anyone looking forward to the HD version at all? I just got the portable version, so I'll post some thoughts as I play.

I would love to get a "real survival horror" Resident Evil, and I'd like to hear people's impressions. Do we know what sort of upgrades the game will get in the port, if any?

So far they've announced graphical updates (HD assets, a new lighting system), "a terrifying new enemy", more difficulty levels, and an expanded Raid Mode.

If it actually looks something like a proper HD game and not a portable game with 3 new textures, I could be interested.

I'm really looking forward to this. To me it looks like what Resident Evil 6 should have been.

From what I've heard, the ship feels very "mansion-like," in that it's an enclosed space and part of the tension is that you can't escape. People are complaining that the monsters still aren't really "zombies," but I think they look pretty cool. Closer to Silent Hill or Dead Space monsters than zombies.

Is 850px × 480px really HD?

The 3DS version is excellent. Had a LOT of fun with it. Especially the Raid mode stuff which is a lot of fun.

It's fairly linear and not as puzzle focused as the early games - but it's got a much slower, more deliberate pace than recent big console efforts. Does a great job of building tension in places as well.

Definitely going to double dip on this as well since there's a PC version.

Scratched wrote:

Is 850px × 480px really HD?

Is that the size of the screenshots? I've seen them floating around the internet in all different sizes. I just linked to the first gallery I found without a bajillion ads.

I played the first hour or so last night: long enough to get through the introduction and the first episode. I'm really impressed with it so far. It feels like a nice, fully-featured game, not scaled-down for the handheld in any way. The graphics are some of the best I've seen on the 3DS, and the art direction is nice. The cruise ship setting is well-realized, and while the monsters aren't traditional zombies, they're kinda compelling in a gross-out kind of way.

Best of all, it feels like an horror game and not an action one. It's not quite to the level of the original Resident Evil where you're counting individual bullets, but it's far more focused on tension and horror than anything I saw in Resident Evil 5. Item caches are easy to find at this point; I don't know if that'll continue or if it's just a first level thing. However, you're constrained to carrying just 30 bullets and it takes 8-10 to take an enemy down. The tight, dark corridors don't give you much leeway to run away, either, giving everything a nice, claustrophobic feel.

I'm playing without a circle pad pro, which means no aiming and moving at the same time. I'm one of the people who doesn't mind that kind of constraint being placed on the player, so it's been a perfectly satisfying experience, control-wise. If anything, I worry that being able to circle strafe enemies with dual-analog controls would compromise some of the tension I'm enjoying in the game, but I'm sure that option on the HD consoles will make a lot of people happy.

Edit:

Oh, and here's a new trailer for the Infernal Mode difficulty for the HD port.

I've been pretty hooked on the 3DS version for a little while now, and enjoy it a great deal. It changes between the survival horror and action (mostly flashbacks, or what other characters have been up to) enough to keep things feeling really fresh.

The ship does indeed feel like a mansion, almost to a ridiculous degree! I like the scanner mechanic that has been looted from elsewhere (I want to say Metroid Prime, if it turned up there first) but it is more for getting items than anything else, so it is almost optional. There are a couple of times where you need it. Using it scan enemies doesn't net you anything other than a few more percent on a meter. When it is full, you get a health item, and then it starts again, so at every encounter, you have a choice as to whether you risk damage whilst scanning, or just let fly.

Incidentally, most encounters can be dodged in the ship, if you are that way inclined.

The story is complete hokum, and I have very little idea of what is going on. There are monsters, it is down to terrorists, maybe, I dunno. Don't much care, either!

spider_j wrote:

The story is complete hokum, and I have very little idea of what is going on. There are monsters, it is down to terrorists, maybe, I dunno. Don't much care, either!

I read some plot outlines of the series on a wiki a while ago, and it seems RE went down that rabbit hole a long time ago.

Down it, vomited back up, mutated into a shambling monstrosity with tentacles and ate the rabbit, actually.

All the crazy Raccoon City stuff aside, they're having a hell of a time explaining Resident Evil 4 have completely different enemies than any of the other games.

On the Revelations front, I'm having a hell of a time getting the hang of dodging. Which would be really handy for when they take away all my weapons. Any tips?

I think the Queen Zenobia might be my favorite survival horror setting since System Shock 2's Van Braun. It hits a lot of the same notes of being a lived-in place that's now empty and dead. The mansion from Resident Evil felt more like a prop to me, and Dead Space's Ishimura was too uniformly industrial. It's also nice that you can't escape the cruise ship, so there's not the problem of feeling artificially bordered in by piles of rock or lame roadblocks.

Still working my way through. I'm up to chapter nine now, and while I'm enjoying the game overall, I'm getting a little tired of the side stories.

Each episode is basically divided into two parts: time on the ship playing as Jill Valentine, and time somewhere else playing as an assortment of characters. The time when you're playing as Jill is a blast. Like I mentioned, the Queen Zenobia is a great setting, and there's a Metroid-like progression through it as you collect different keys that unlock areas you passed by previously but couldn't yet access. There's just enough backtracking to familiarize you with the space without it becoming tedious.

There's also a nice system in place for upgrading your weapons. As you explore, you'll collect Custom Parts that let you increase a weapon's firepower, its firing rate, its capacity, its stopping power, and so forth. There are also Illegal Custom Parts that let you fire multiple shots with a single trigger pull or reduce the spread of the shotgun. Each weapon you find has a certain number of upgrade slots on it that fit one Custom Part, so you can mix and match them to customize your weapons for how you like to play. (You can also only carry three weapons at a time. You change your weapons and Custom Parts at weapon lockers around the ship.)

So that's fun: exploring the ship, becoming familiar with it, and progressively improving Jill's selection of weapons. But in the other part of each episode, you're somewhere new, so the crawl through the ship is abandoned, and you have a new selection of weapons, so that part is ditched, too. And you're saddled with characters who vary between uninteresting and unlikeable. You've got the nerd who geeks out when he sees the model of computer he's always wanted; you've got the not-entirely-not-racist black guy; and there's always bland beefcake Chris Redfield.

I get the feeling these parts were included to mix up the pace. They're more action-oriented with bigger set pieces, more enemies, and burlier weapons. But they're just not interesting. I wish I could skip them, but instead they drag down any momentum the game has built up to that point. Which is a shame, because I otherwise really love it.

Scratched wrote:
spider_j wrote:

The story is complete hokum, and I have very little idea of what is going on. There are monsters, it is down to terrorists, maybe, I dunno. Don't much care, either!

I read some plot outlines of the series on a wiki a while ago, and it seems RE went down that rabbit hole a long time ago.

Don't bother trying to make sense of this one's story. It makes no logical sense.

That said, it's still a great game to play. I'll have more to say when I'm not about to clock out of work.

Wii U features trailer:

Wow... The uh... "give monsters voice" thing looks reaaaallll dumb. I hope I can turn that off.

You mean that dude's head can pop out of the TV?

So I've put about three hours into the PC version now (with X360 controller) and I'm ready to give some impressions. First, Ronald Reagan... wait, no.

Stuff I like:
- The monster design is magnificent. I know they're not zombies but I like them way better than the usual zombies or Las Plagas critters. Except the wolves. They just look like they exploded. I also love how the bosses sound. Listening to the first boss groan, "Mayday" as I approached, then hearing him insist he's human despite being a two-headed walking blob with a buzzsaw hand was really a nice, creepy touch.
- Raid Mode finally got the whole "Mercenaries" thing right, by which I mean I actually have a reason to play it. I've never been one to chase after high scores, but buying new weapons is enough of a carrot to keep me going back. I can also jump in a play a round in a few minutes, so it's a good way to kill time.
- The recap at the beginning of each episode is nice.
- It looks pretty good.

IMAGE(http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/541834765488028288/2F4CA81F8A034AD68E6F6C9CA1B5A11A4E4AC368/1024x576.resizedimage)

The characters look way better than the environments but considering it used to be a portable, the graphics are more than adequate.
- The game emphasizes dodging, due to its tight corridors and aggressive enemies. It's been a while since an RE game asked much of me other than "keep shooting."

Stuff I'm not sure about:
- The weapon progression doesn't feel as interesting or satisfying as in RE5. For the most part, I feel like I'm not making a whole lot of decisions. The weapon mods are fun but I can always swap them around for free so there isn't any weight to putting them on one gun over another. The weapons themselves feel very weak. In RE games, I'm used to having my main pistol powerful enough to handle most basic enemies. In this one, I'm packing the most powerful pistol I've found and it still takes 8 bullets to take down the weakest enemies. I might warm to the system in general once I start finding better mods. Some of the rarer ones seem pretty interesting.
- The bosses are very difficult, even on normal difficulty. Even given the weakness of my arsenal, they seem to take way too long to kill. It adds to the challenge and it's interesting to see (and hear) how bosses change through the fight, but it's still a bit much.
- They didn't really make it clear to me that I'd be returning to the same areas again and again, so the first few episodes I banged my head against the wall wondering how to get through locked doors (and how to get that shotgun).
- The scanning mechanic is clunky and doesn't make a lot of sense. I assume it felt more natural with the second screen on the 3DS but on the PC version I just feel like I need to bring it up every few steps to check if my hidden goodie light is lit. I very often manage to scan things through doors and walls. I don't understand why I get free herbs for analyzing enemies. I'd prefer if it were like in BioShock, where scanning enemies made me more effective at killing them or gave me other perks.
- I like the feel of the setting, but the Queen Zenobia doesn't make much sense to me. It looks like an industrial ship, almost like the tanker from RE5. Except it has a casino? It's described as a luxury liner but I just don't see it. I haven't even seen quarters for more than a dozen people so I'm kind of wondering how they expected to fill an entire room full of slot machines. Even so, it's still fun to wander around. A little cramped, but I kind of like that.

Stuff I don't like:
- Even for a Resident Evil game, the story is drawn out and bad. I've started to skip cutscenes.
- Even for a Resident Evil game, the writing and VA is bad. Some of the worst I've heard in years. I'm tempted to switch over to Japanese but then I'd miss what the bosses have to say during the fights and I think that alone is worth suffering through lifeless exposition and obnoxious accents.
- Raymond. He reminds me of someone, but I'm not sure who. I don't like anything about him.
- Quint and Keith. These two are the game's comic relief, and given the poor writing that just means they're annoying and not at all funny. They're introduced as desk workers and computer techs, so it's downright baffling that they're suddenly heavily armed and sent into combat, alone.
- Jessica. I have never heard so much juvenile, poorly timed, forced sexuality from a female character. Jesus, woman, if you're trudging through a frozen wasteland with your co-worker who has just been mauled by a pack of wolves that are bristling with their own exposed ribs, maybe you ought to save the aggressive flirtation for later. He's probably not in the goddamned mood.
- Loading times. I'm not sure how these are on the other platforms but given how smooth the game runs, it feels like I spend a little too much time watching wheels spin on doors.

So far I'd say I'm enjoying myself and I definitely plan on playing more. It isn't quite what I was hoping RE6 would be, but it's a lot closer than what RE6 actually turned out to be.

Listening to the first boss groan, "Mayday" as I approached, then hearing him insist he's human despite being a two-headed walking blob with a buzzsaw hand was really a nice, creepy touch.

At first I was all "wait, how the Hell did I miss THAT? Did they edit it in there?"

And then...

I'm tempted to switch over to Japanese but then I'd miss what the bosses have to say during the fights and I think that alone is worth suffering through lifeless exposition and obnoxious accents.

Ah, now it makes sense. I don't even know what the English voice acting sounds like because I swapped to Japanese as early as I could.

And if you think the Queen Zenobia doesn't make sense now, then you're going to want to flip a table later. Some of the plot twists in this game are the worst. Skipping the cut-scenes really is the best decision. Sure, you'll be really confused, but I played through this game 2.5 times and it still has me baffled.

And the lower screen was mostly used for an overhead map and showing your equipment load-outs, so the scanning likely works the same.

As for the guns, I kind of agree with you. I feel like they keep trying to reinvent weapon customization, between this and 6, and it doesn't feel as good as RE4 and RE5.

However, I'd say that enemies taking so much ammunition is because they want to offer the possibility of skipping enemies. This is partially why dodging an enemy has you slide behind them. That way if you are running down a narrow corridor and are encountered by one, you can simply dodge and keep running. They tried to bring back some of the "classic" gameplay in that, I believe.

Eventually it won't be as much of an issue and will turn into an action game like any other, though.

I liked the weapon upgrade system. It's nice that you're limited to a small number of slots but can freely swap things around to find combinations you like. It also gets more interesting as you collect more upgrades: is it better to have a higher stun rate on the shotgun or to narrow its scatter pattern or to have two shots per trigger pull? (It's the same reason I like having just three weapon slots and six basic weapon types.) There doesn't seem to be an obvious optimal combination of upgrades for each weapon, so I suspect my weapons look a lot different from yours and match my playstyle better.

Also, specific to the 3DS version: I like that you can buy weapons in Raid Mode using Play Coins. It's a nice way to get off the ground if you don't have a lot of currency. Also, I like getting extra missions and supply drops via StreetPass. A couple of those have come in really handy for me.

I probably shouldn't have made a separate thread for the sequel some weeks ago, but I did.