Resident Evil has always been hit and miss. Recently I enjoyed the HD remake of the original Resident Evil and I really, really liked Revelations on the Nintendo 3DS. In my opinion 6 was dreadful though and Revelations 2 which is upon us now is episodic, meaning I can only tell you about the first chapter of the game which sees Claire Redfield and Moira Burton trying to escape from a prison island and Barry Burton making a return as he leads a creepy little girl in a nightie he finds on the island in pursuit of his daughter and Chris’ sister. To be honest it doesn’t make a lot of sense yet but I’m sure things will start to come together as the story continues.
The textures and graphics overall are disappointing but the corny lines, intense combat and creepy surroundings are welcome. The game also expands on the co-op gameplay, with offline and online co-op available on console versions but disappointingly, you can’t play co-op in the same room if you’re a PC gamer. The mechanic works a little differently here. Claire Redfield has an arsenal of guns, however Moira doesn’t like guns and so has a flashlight and a crowbar. You can switch between characters on the fly if you’re playing solo so you can do things like blind an enemy with the flashlight and then shoot them in the head or perform a melee attack with Claire. Barry’s campaign has the big guy packing the firepower whilst Natalia can creep about and see BOWs through walls, identifying their weak points and pointing out treasure and items. There are also rudimentary puzzles to solve featuring the usual fetch quests and mini games when it comes to opening chests.
Workbenches are also dotted around the levels so, just like in Revelations, you can power up weapons. You’ll also be able to upgrade your characters as you earn skill points, which adds a great level of progression. You can then go back and play levels again to earn more points with the weapons you’ve already collected. This level of replayability as you go for those S ranks is yet again quite moreish.
Raid mode is back again so if you’re waiting for the next chapter in the series you can spam your way through that as you fight wave after wave or enemies and earn as many points as you can.
It’s tricky to give this a rating. I’ll be sure to give the full game a rating once all the episodes have been released but for now, this first short chapter in the series gets a good 7 out of 10.
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