Take a Ride on the Ooze Cruise

Josh, one of the few generally cheerful co-workers at my store, handed me his copy of Resident Evil Revelations for the 3DS with the belief that I would enjoy the experience.

I don't know. Maybe?

I don't generally play Survival Horror titles, because the gameplay irritates me and the content has a tendency to feed bad ideas to my right brain. "Survival" is just a nice way of saying "clumsy stealth" with your character still trying to avoid getting into fights, but everything is set up so that it's impossible to not alert every enemy you come across. In the case of Resident Evil, it adds another irritation I prefer to steer clear from: backtracking. I hate having to find a single key at one end of an area just to unlock a room on the other end of the area, because no one ever makes a copy of an important key, but everyone makes certain to lock every door in every room of every floor of every building with unique mechanisms, meaning it would require a janitor to walk around with a 20-pound ring on his side to be able to do his job, and that'll never happen because it would mean making a copy of every fucking key!

Wait, are the chains and padlock nailed to the front of the door? Does that really do anything?

Throw some jump scares and spooky music into a plot that is simple in nature, but has been stretched out into a pointlessly complicated mess, and we have this shitty sub-genre. Resident Evil is the first game to fall under this category, but most include Sweet Home and Alone in the Dark, since they were some of the first to make an effort to add horror to the gaming industry. Sweet Home looks like Dragon Warrior, so I'm not sure why I would be afraid of one and not of the other, and the monsters in Alone in the Dark are so terrible looking that it's hard to feel any sort of fear at the sight of them. There's an awful lot of books to read in that game, too. Granted, the scariest part of The Exorcist was when Regan quietly sat in her bed and finished the last few chapters of Breakfast of Champions, but I can't rely upon the demonic power of Captain Howdy to maintain my literary focus while bogies sluggishly make their way towards the detective. On the bright side, the music is somewhat catchy. That doesn't sound right for a Horror title, but I don't care. Most soundtracks for Horror games lose their effect after about thirty minutes. Even the Silent Hill OSTs wear thin as one listens to 90+ tracks of dark, industrial music. The one truly magnificent piece is Esperándote, a tango that made the "bad" ending more rewarding than it should have been.

I find this particular cover to be more frightening than any song on the list.

As far as I'm concerned, the only time a song in a video game is truly scary is when it's that oddball track in an otherwise cheerful or energetic collection of tunes, like the battle theme for Earthbound's Giygas, River Twygz Bed in Super Paper Mario, or Pokemon Red and Blue's Lavender Town.

Fortunately for me, Revelations (Revelaitons?) leans heavily towards action. I can't see why this side-quest in Jill's career is labeled as a Survival Horror. Playable characters are well-trained, well-armed agents, accompanied by AI-controlled partners, and are pitted against these ridiculously weak ooze creatures. 

Males turned into members of the Z-Putty Patrol, while women changed into aquatic, banshee-looking things which seems like a rather convenient metamorphosis to occur on a flooded ship, especially considering that they all must have died near water or else I'd have seen a few floppin' on the floors.

Even the jump scares are few and far between. While the older games are more focused on actual survival, bullets are not nearly as scarce in this one. Heck, by comparison, they're all over the place, and if that's still not enough, several clips can also be obtained through scanning with the Genesis device.  Along with ammo, a player can also scan creatures to obtain a bonus herb whenever he reaches 100%. The closer he scans a living enemy, the higher the percentage value he'll earn, and it pays more to change up what is scanned. Targeting the same type of monster (and there's not a strong variety in this game) will lower the effect. Lastly, there's thirty hand prints that can be located throughout all the chapters to gain access to an herb, a pair of guns, and three achievements for the remastered versions. Still, despite Capcom's push to have the player use this device, I found it to be bothersome as it consistently brought the action to a halt. If it wasn't necessary in some areas, I probably wouldn't touch the Genesis at all, unless it had the ability to spawn a group of deformed Muppets that sang Land of Confusion.

The sight of these would've injected some real Horror into the game.

What justifies the need for the ammo surplus is the shitty dodging mechanic. Relying upon it is like flipping a coin. Most of the time I avoided an attack, it was out of sheer luck. The player is better off keeping his distance and simply unloading on his enemies, especially Rachel.

Once she turns, shoot your load on her as quickly as you can, and as much of it in her face as possible!

The controls in general are an atrocity. One joystick seems to operate the legs and the other, I guess, is in charge of the arms. What's wrong with Z-Targeting these pricks? Aren't I suppose to be a special ops agent in this game? It feels like I'm in control of a cadet, considering how easily my character misses. I think a plausible middle ground would be to include a button for auto-targeting an enemy's chest, while not holding that button would allow one to aim for a boss's weak spot or to rack up head shots against the trash. Speaking of trash, the last fight is pointless. Jill should have just shot Jack Norman in the head while he was rambling, instead of allowing him to mutate himself in front of them. I know the Tyrant is something of a tradition in the franchise, but they seem to have peaked with Nemesis. Norman's a fun boss battle, but he lacks the ability to intimidate. It doesn't help that he looks like Walter White.

Jesse, we need to cook more T-Virus!

Regardless of my whining, Revelations is a great-looking game and it's fun, if only because I shot the fuck out of everything that moved. I found it to be a pain in the ass to play on a handheld, because of the small screen of the 3DS, but I'm certain I would have enjoyed it considerably more if I had an HD version of it playing on my television screen, so I can't really fault it for that. Also, there are moments where all I did was defend myself against an onslaught of creatures and those battles had my heart racing with excitement. I'm no fan of Survival Horror, but I do love a good 3rd-Person Shooter game.

Quit staring at my ass.