Resident Evil: Revelations HD
Platform: Sony PlayStation 3
Developer: Capcom
Rating out of 10: 3
Resident Evil: Revelations is a multi-platform re-release of 2012's 3DS hit Resident Evil game. An HD remake of a 12-month old game is tough to sell, even more so when it's a remake of a portable game. And Revelation's lacklustre baby brother, Resident Evil 6, certainly hasn't helped sell any T-shirts.
Resident Evil 6 showed just how far the franchise had shifted away from cult-classic zombie survival horror and has left Capcom vulnerable, forced to fend off the undead-fan horde while developers search desperately for a cure, which definitely isn't aboard the Queen Zenobia - Revelation's stranded ship and locale.
This port is far from glamorous. The gameplay isn't revolutionary, enemy design is uninspired, visuals aren't great at all and it doesn't reveal anything about where the series is going. It doesn't affect the canon or introduce any brilliant new ideas to the formula; it sticks with dodgy camera angles, zombie bullet sponges and incredibly stupid allied AI.
The game takes place aboard the before-mentioned Queen Zenobia and continues the story of the T-Abyss virus. Series stalwarts Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine are joined by another two of Capcom's 'special' employees, Parker Luciani and Jessica Sherawat, who certainly must have learnt a thing or two from Resident Evil 5's Sheva Alomar about being useless.
Capcom was adamant that the game would bridge the lore-gap between Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 but after completing the game, it's a lot easier to just pretend you understand everything rather than bother to connect any of the plots.
Revelations feels as though it's out of its element. It's obvious from the first five minutes that this was never intended to find its way onto the console and left me wondering why the publisher even bothered.
The game stumbles from one bite-sized chapter to the next, pulling the focus away from the cruise ship setting, while swapping out one dull character for another.
The graphics, which look stunning on the 3DS screen, are dated when blown up and stretched. Character models are slightly better but the environments are flat, plagued by grainy textures and jagged pixels.
The controls are irregular and outright annoying. R3/L3 don't do anything while the circle button is only there to remind you that you're playing the game on a PlayStation (I imagine big money changed hands between Capcom and Sony for that one). Sensitivity is either too high or too low, never where it should be, and the bloody ship sways every time you shoot.
Weapons feel sluggish, mostly due to the game's horrendous aiming mechanic and on top of it all, Jill only packed one pair of jeans, so naturally you can only carry three weapons at a time.
Even movement feels restricted because more often than not you find yourself sharing a tight corridor with a talking cardboard box (Jessica) or an overweight Russell Crow (Parker). The fact that the game is far scarier when you're left to your own devices only serves to emphasise how useless your ally truly is, and how poor of a choice it was to include one in the first place.
Overall, Resident Evil: Revelations was a great handheld game, one that pushed the boundaries and standards of the Nintendo 3DS but its HD port is quite literally a mutant sea-slug infested sinking ship.
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