Resident Evil Revelations follows Jill Valentine with series newcomer and her computer-controlled Parker Luciani. In search of Chris Redfield, they find themselves aboard a cruise ship infested with virus-toting mutants. The character design of these zombie-like creatures actually was pretty good overall and helped keep the engaging feeling of the game. Unfortunately, being stuck aboard a relatively small ship made things a bit repetitive in nature.
In a way to combat this feeling of claustrophobia, the game design had you bouncing back and forth between playable characters in different locations and at different times. I’m sure this may have looked good on paper and tried to mimic interweaving storylines (think of the film Crash). But in reality, the story felt extremely disjointed and hard to follow until well into the game, at least to this gamer. Still, fortunately the gameplay of Resident Evil Revelations was enjoyable enough to want to push forward and solve the mystery behind the mutants.
RE Revelations does play very well in terms of bringing you back to how the original games felt and played out from a combat standpoint, despite being immersed in a 3D world. The camera followed well, and there were chests to store weapons which brought back fond memories of days gone by. Weapon upgrades could also be found throughout the environment which added things like extra stopping power, longer magazines, and faster reloads, among others.
Some of these upgrades and things like ammunition and keys may be out in the open, but more often than not, you would have to search for them with your scanner. The scanner did feel a bit gimmicky as you would have to constantly switch to it in search of items and secret handprints (if you choose to find them all), but after a while, it became second nature. You also use the scanner to get information about live or fallen enemies. If it sounds familiar, it is… think Metroid Prime.
One thing I feel has gone missing in recent RE games is the search and pursuit of how to solve puzzles… that feeling of being completely stumped because you missed one clue and the feeling of complete and utter satisfaction when you problem solve effectively. Instead, Resident Evil Revelations and others may have moments of "get this before you can do that," but all in all the game is pretty linear in nature. At one point, even the characters in one of the cut-scenes acknowledged the back and forth action of searching that takes place in an attempt at humor. Bring back puzzles that require some thought and I’ll be the first to praise the game.
