Yesterday, Resident Evil Revelations 2 came out on the Playstation & X-box consoles, as well as PC. I just finished it, and since I’m a big fan of the franchise and video games in general, I’ve decided to do a little review! Keep in mind that this post will contain spoilers, so if you haven’t played it yet, and are planning to, then please bookmark this page and come back! Also, this review is based purely on my thoughts and feelings. You might agree or disagree, which is totally fine! Everyone is right to their own opinion, and this post is from my point of view. Nothing professional, just for fun! Okay, let’s get started:

( I N T R O )
Resident Evil Revelations 2 (or Biohazard Revelations 2 as it is called in Japan), is the 10th installment of the RE franchise by Capcom. It’s a follow up to Resident Evil Revelations and set between RE5 and RE6. It’s episodic and has a total of 4 episodes with 2 extra episodes on the side. There’s also a Raid Mode and a local co-op.

( S T O R Y )
In part one, the story starts with a party or get together for the members of TerraSave. TerraSave is an organization that helps victims of chemical and biological weapons. One of the members of this group is Claire Redfield, who is pretty famous in the RE franchise (she was in RE2 and RECV). Now she’s back, older (apparently she’s 36?) and wiser. She meets up and talks to their newest member, Moira Burton, who’s also known as the daughter of Barry Burton (yeah, the sandwich guy). During this little party, the lights suddenly go out as the doors and windows gets kicked in by unknown assailants. Everyone, including Claire and Moira, gets knocked out and taken to an island. Claire wakes up in a dirty prison cell, dressed in a mysterious bracelet. She soon finds Moira (unharmed but with the same bracelet) and that’s where the game starts. It’s up to them to figure out where they are, who put them there, and how to get home.

In part two, you play as Barry Burton (from RE1) as he is looking for his missing daughter, Moira. He takes a boat to her last known location and ends up on the island as well. There he meets a little girl called Natalia. Natalia is special, having mystical powers that no one’s ever seen before. Since Barry doesn’t want her to get harmed, they team up together to look for his daughter. They soon figure out that the island is extremely dangerous, filled with horrific creatures and monsters infected by some kind of new virus.

( G A M E P L A Y )
In episode 1, there are two main characters that you play, Claire & Barry. They handle the heavy weapons (knives, handguns, shotguns, molotov etc). Then there’s the support, Moira and Natalia. Moira uses a flashlight to find objects. She can also temporary blind the monsters with it. Later on, she gets a crowbar that she can use to open certain doors and also to protect herself from the creatures. Natalia can pick up bricks and throw at monsters, causing them to fall over for a few seconds, giving Barry the chance to knife them to death. She also has this ability that reminds me a lot of Joel’s hearing sense from The Last of Us. If she gets into crouching mode, she can see glowing shadows and point out where the monsters are hiding. You also need the support cast for opening certain chests (it opens after a mini-game).

In single player mode, you can switch between Claire and Moira, and then between Barry and Natalia. In some places, you might need to play a certain character for a longer time, in other places, it’s up entirely to you. In co-op mode, you can play together with someone else in split-screen, but for now it’s only offline, sadly.

The control of the characters feels like the first RE Revelation, with a slight improvement. The movements are pretty fluid and it doesn’t feel weird in anyway, at least not on the PS3.

( P R O S )
+ To be able to play Claire & Barry again! God, I’ve missed them!
+ The humor between Claire & Moira.
+ That you can switch between characters, as well as the awesome co-op.
+ The voice acting! It’s fantastic!
+ The sounds (especially during some of the darker parts in the game. It makes you hesitate and wonder when the next monster will popup!).
+ I loved that there’s sneak and peek in Barry’s part, making it into a more of a stealth mission then with Claire that’s more straight forward.

( C O N S )
- Apparently the PC port is awful. It’s lagging, it crashes and the frame rate is horrible. Also, they took away the ability for co-op, both in the campaign and the raid mode. Boo, Capcom, Boo!
- There’s something missing when it comes to the monsters. They aren’t very scary, nor very hard to kill. There’s not a lot of variation either, sadly (I wish that Mikami Shinji-san would come back!).
- The environment is a bit dull and there’s not a lot of details. Even if you explore the hell out of everything, you won’t find a lot of stuff or surprises.
- The stupid, little bugs: I don’t know if this happened on the PS4 or the other consoles, but when I started the game on my PS3 I only managed to get to the intro screen. When I pressed a button to continue, the loading screen showed up, and then everything froze. It kept loading and loading and after 15 minutes I knew something was wrong. I tried to re-install and re-start but nothing helped. Turned out I had to log out of my PSN account in order to continue. When I did that, the game worked like a charm. It’s such a stupid thing though! I hope that someone reported this and that they’ll give us a patch so it gets fixed. Same for the buggy PC port.
- All that damn DLC.

( T H O U G H T S )
1. The RE Revelations 2 intro… isn’t that the same song as in Revelation?
2. Playing Raid Mode level 1, I quickly realized that the map I was playing had the same scenery as a part of Jake’s campaign in RE6. Are they re-using everything, I wonder?
3. Why did they make the game episodic?
4. The things that are happening to Claire and Moire kinda reminds me of the Japanese movie Battle Royale (that came looooong before The Hunger Games). It’s about a class of students that gets kidnapped and forced to participate in a game where you have to kill the others and be the last man standing. In Revelations 2, there’s an overseer who is watching every step Claire and Moira takes. It’s the same in Battle Royale. Claire and Moira are wearing mysterious bracelets that certainly will come to have an important role later. In the BR movie, the students are wearing electronic collars that will explode and kill the ones who fail or refuse to join the game. In both the RE game and the BR movie, they have to fight to survive. Maybe the movie was an inspiration? After all, both of the products are Japanese!
5. Best phrase in the game: “I was almost a Claire sandwich.”!!!

( L A S T L Y )
I had high hopes for this game, and so far, so good. I’m not disappointed. Is it a perfect game? Hell, no, it has a few bugs and issues, and a few things like scenery and monsters that could be better. But I think that it’s a step towards the right direction (specially after RE6), and depending on the rest of the episodes, it has the potential to become a really great game. I enjoyed it from start to finish, and the cliffhanger made me want more right away. I’m really looking forward to the next episode.

I usually don’t give the games I play scores, since I find that it’s very hard to do. But if I really had to, then I’m gonna say 7/10, with the possibility of a change, depending on the following episodes.

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There, I hope you like my little review. Nothing fancy, just my thoughts and feelings of something that I recently enjoyed. If you want more things like this, please drop me a comment or tweet me at @ayafortuna, so that I know that you enjoyed it! (Also sorry for the English errors and mistakes. It’s not my first language, after all.)

Until next time!
Cheers /
Ayaya