Resident Evil: Revelations

Resident Evil: Revelations is a game of two halves: the first one offers a claustrophobic environment immersed in a carefully built horror atmosphere, while the second offers mediocre action sequences with endless amounts of similar, shallow enemies.

The story begins when Jill Valentine and Parker Luciani – two agents working for a counter-terrorism group – are tasked with investigating a vessel adrift on the high seas, a luxury ship named “The Queen Zenobia”. Bizarre carcasses carrying a devastating virus have appeared on a nearby beach, you see, and their colleagues, Chris and Jessica, have gone missing – and their last known location, if you can believe it, is on the Queen Zenobia. But when Jill and Parker arrive on the ship, they discover that an old terrorist group called Veltro has, much like Palpatine, somehow returned, and they wish to spread a terrible virus into the world, causing terrible mutations in most living beings.

The setting is the highlight of Revelations. The Queen Zenobia functions as a haunted mansion, with narrow hallways and tiny rooms packed full of monsters, corpses, blood and goo, and, of course, locked doors and secret passages. Its locales are varied, too: there’s a casino, a hidden lab, luxurious lounges bathed in golden light, and the flooded bilge even functions as the obligatory sewers level.

The design of these areas is also typical Resident Evil. In the bilge, for example, we must find a missing cog to unlock a contraption that hides a key to a machine: it’s contrived, for sure, but feels like a classic game with its strange puzzles that prevent the adventure from becoming too mindless and linear. While we explore these places, the camera also slowly and softly moves up and down to simulate the heave and sway of the ship.

The 3DS version (any portable version, really) works great for Revelations, as the small screen decreases the size of the environments, the scope, increasing the feeling of confinement. The Queen Zenobia is supposed to feel claustrophobic, and these versions amplify this feeling.

The game’s first moments greatly succeed in building tension. The first monster we find appears behind a case – its details are obscured by it – and it immediately runs away. We follow its movements through the vents, with rats appearing out of broken machinery to provide some jump scares. And when we finally get to a room tinged with blood, a cutscene plays out with Jill and Parker investigating a corpse while the camera frames the action from strange angles, as if from the perspective of a thing lurking in the shadows. The sequence naturally concludes with the monster’s point of view – which covers the frame with an aggressive red tinge – as it approaches its unsuspecting prey.

In other words, this sequence is build-up done right: parts of the monster are first hidden behind a case so to make its reveal suspenseful, the sequence builds and releases tension with the noise in the vents and the jump scare with the rats, and it concludes with the monster appearing in all its glory in a scene that frames the main characters in a vulnerable position.

There’s usually great build-up to the boss fights as well: there’s this time when we arrive at a suspiciously large open area – for the game’s standards, at least – and we can immediately hear a voice repeating a mayday message. But it’s a distorted, growling voice, which is coming from inside a locked room. The area is full of healing herbs and the game has just given us a new weapon, so we know that the source of the voice is a monster, and we can also easily guess that the fight will be harder than normal. All this increases tension as we approach the door and see the chains blocking it, knowing that we will have to free the monster ourselves to get to the key it holds.

However, when it’s finally time to shoot at the monsters, the horror mostly dissipates. The creatures in Resident Evil: Revelations seem to be made of sponge, rarely reacting to our shots. The fact that we’re firing at them, but they keep coming at us anyway, could heighten the horror aspect and make the scarcity of ammunition even more felt, but for that to work, we must see that we are indeed hitting them and doing damage. But here, the creatures barely react to our shots: the moments when they’ll stagger, or their limbs will respond to what’s hitting them, are too rare.

This means that it’s always a surprise when the monsters finally die, as some of them can absorb tons of bullets – especially from weaker weapons – and we have no visual indication of their health. It’s no wonder that in Raid Mode, where we just shoot lots of monsters in arenas, the game adds health bars and damage indicators: without these elements, after all, there’s almost no feedback to the action.

The first hours of Revelations are Resident Evil at its most Resident Evil: they’re scary, but also incredibly goofy. Right after dispatching the first gooey monsters, Jill comes across a room with what appears to be Chris inside – tied to a chair – and she immediately begins to search for a key to the room. The problem is that the bare-chested person inside the room is clearly not a person, but a doll: Jill, nonetheless, is fooled by this ruse – even though the doll displays a clear line on its neck connecting the head to the body – and falls into a trap. It’s funny, it’s silly, but it works: it still creates tension, because we know we’re heading into trouble.

The scene that introduces one of the first bosses in the game follows suit: Jill arrives at her destination, but the body of the woman she was looking for is missing. In its place, there’s a diary revealing that the woman had been infected before her death. Sure enough, her disfigured, monstrous form appears out of the room, says something creepy, and goes away – but we know that she’s going to be waiting for us in the next room. It’s a tense moment, but this exchange immediately follows:

Jill: Found the target, but she’s a zombie.

Parker: Isn’t that always the case?

When it’s alternating between horror and goofiness, Revelations works. Unfortunately, there are times when it decides to double down on the comedy aspect and focus on action. The scenes in which we follow agents Keith and Quint – who are exploring a snowy region – are the most egregious part of the game for this reason.

First, there’s the matter that their episodes are about action alone, being designed around arenas filled with waves of enemies: since combat is not Revelations’ strongest suit, these sequences fall flat. Secondly, the comedy is either too silly (one of them warns that they should be quiet while the other promptly stumbles and knocks over several objects) or downright creepy: Quint reveals that he stalks one of his female colleagues, for example, trying to find out where she lives… and this is played for laughs.

It’s a pity, then, that Revelations often leaves Jill and Parker – and The Queen Zenobia along with them – to put the spotlight on other characters in a generic setting that has nothing to offer compared to the haunted ship. Even when we are following Chris and his partner Jessica, things still don’t quite work because the focus is solely on action.

It doesn’t help that characterization is thin across the board. There’s a scene in which Chris is exploring the same snowy region with Jessica, and while he’s the tough guy, she just complains about everything: her feet hurt, she didn’t expect them to be out there for too long, the cave is too cold, and so on. Chris, meanwhile, just bears everything silently, providing some laconic answers now and then: “You should’ve worn your thermal underwear,” he says to her with a rough, serious voice that reinforces the absurdity of it all. There’s also a moment when they’re being attacked by mutated dogs, and Jessica says, “See, that’s why I like Chihuahuas,” which doesn’t make a lick of sense for anyone who has ever met a Chihuahua.

The story tries to hide its simplicity with a contrived structure, which keeps jumping from one point of view to the next, and from the past to the present. Its twists are still fairly predictable – the villain has villain signed all over him from his first scene – but Revelations – despite its title – doesn’t rely on surprises to work, as its story is much more concerned with theme than with plot twists.

Revelations’ story is about terrorism and how it is a very lucrative business for those who fight against it: it’s not a coincidence that the villain is from the United States, and one of the characters highlights this information just a bit after the “big reveal” in the final chapter. Meanwhile, characters like Jill and Parker are framed as pawns: they’re soldiers, expendable tools sent to fight the wars of others. They’re used by the powerful and wealthy, who want nothing more than increase their power and wealth even more. As opposed to the people in charge, Parker is a soldier who believes wholeheartedly in the cause, but that just makes manipulating him easier.

Finally, it is worth noting a mechanic of scanning the environment for items or scanning enemies for points, which are automatically exchanged for herbs after a certain amount. This leads to a risk-reward dynamic, since to scan something, we must equip the scanner and use it like a gun, which leaves our character vulnerable. And it also makes us constantly wonder if scanning a monster that is coming right for us is worth the extra points that we get compared to scanning its corpse, when it’s no longer a threat.

Resident Evil: Revelations is a game of many ups and downs, then. The game excels at building tension and crafting an interesting setting, but unfortunately, good chunks of it take place elsewhere and focus on mindless, unsatisfying action.

January 16, 2025.