A while back I set myself a goal of catching up on the Resident Evil games I’d missed before the Resident Evil 4 Remake lands next month. As such, I finally dug Resident Evil: Revelations from the depths of my Steam library, having popped it in there about a decade ago as part of some Humble Bundle.
I wasn’t expecting much. Revelations debuted on the 3DS in 2012 and, perhaps unfairly, that primed me for a graphically limited and straightforward experience firmly in the shadow of its main series bigger brothers.
But, with my Steam Deck fully charged and a long day of train travel ahead of me, I booted it up early in the morning, and by the time I’d returned home I’d seen the credits (about five minutes before I got off a bus outside my house to be precise).
While Revelations is ‘Diet Resident Evil‘ it’s still got it where it counts, delivering a fun, exciting, and well-paced adventure with some surprisingly tense moments. Set between Resident Evil 4 and 5 you play as Jill Valentine, with the story set in the aftermath of a futuristic city full of monsters being obliterated by a solar-powered satellite (which uh, doesn’t ever seem to be mentioned in other games).
As always in this franchise, the hows and whys aren’t particularly important. You’re on an abandoned cruise ship teeming with monsters, you have limited ammo, and you have to get to the bottom of what’s going on. And that’s enough to see the game through five or six hours of action.
The basic gameplay template is Resident Evil 4, though sadly this game’s gooey Ooze monsters aren’t nearly as fun to battle as that game’s villagers. But the game gets most of the way there, particularly when you’re charging up a badass spin kick to whomp them right in the kisser.
There are a few things here I want to praise (though are a bit spoilery). First up, there’s an all-time incredible mid-game plot twist when you realize the plot features two identical cruise ships drifting through the Mediterranean that are both full of monsters. The cherry on top is the jaw-dropping late game uh, revelation, that there’s a third identical cruise ship in play here. Hats off to Capcom for their audacity.
I also have to applaud Capcom for sneaking Columbo into the game. Your BSAA boss, Clive O’Brien looks, talks, and even kinda acts like Columbo. I knew the iconic TV detective was big in Japan, but if I’d known there was a Resident Evil game starring a thinly veiled Columbo analog I would have jumped on Revelations much sooner:
And finally, for once in the series Revelations delivers a final boss that actually puts up a decent fight. One of the series’ longest-running problems is that when you reach the final boss all those magnum rounds and grenades you’ve been hoarding suddenly need to be used up, usually making them go down pretty quickly. Revelations‘ final boss actually requires skill, reflexes, and observation to beat, all of which means the game goes out on a high.
With Revelations wrapped up, I’ve just got Revelations 2 and the Village DLC to beat before the RE4 Remake drops, at which point I’ll be caught up on Resident Evil for the first time since the 1990s.
Living the biohazard dream over here!
Pixel Hunted 