by: Michael Barnes

Resident Evil: Revelations for the 3DS is a real shocker but not in a dog-through-the-window way. It’s a surprise in the “holy crap, this game is actually great” way. After a couple of fumbling attempts to push the storied franchise into a more action-oriented direction and suggestions that future games may follow suit, the slow-burn pace and suspenseful atmosphere that characterize the game are a welcome and unexpected return to form.

Although the story occurs between the events of the fourth and fifth game in the central continuity, the game itself feels more like a successor to the first three titles apart from some more recent ideas such as a turret sequence, more extensive cinematics, a scanning/collection sub-game, and having an AI partner along for most of the adventure.

Mainstays Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine are the stars of the show, but the cast is rounded out by several new characters that are all pretty terrible. It’s a shame that the game is as good as it is yet there’s no Ada Wong or Jack Krauser among the supporting players. Over the course of the story, Jill and Chris find themselves embroiled in a typical Resident Evil sci-fi bioterror plotline with a couple of shocking reveals and one plot twist that has to be the best “princess is in another castle” reference to date. Taking a page from the Call of Duty playbook, you’ll get to control several characters at different points in the timeline and in different locations over the hearty, ten hour story. In a series first, it’s all broken up into an episodic structure a la Alan Wake that’s ideal for the mobile platform. There’s even interstitial “previously on Resident Evil” voice overs.

The story is messy and the writing is serviceable at best, but the setting and gameplay more than make up for deficiencies that are frankly par for course in discussing even the best Resident Evil titles. Most of the game takes place on the Queen Zenobia, a cruise ship with sinister secrets that’s overrun by Bio-organic Weapons (B.O.W.s) but there’s also an interesting dalliance during the last few hours of a floating technological Utopia, destroyed by the story’s terrorist organization. The Zenobia is easily among the best settings that the Resident Evil games have featured, up there with Arklay Mansion and the Raccoon City Police Department. It’s claustrophobic, mysterious, and the mixture of architectural and industrial styles is fascinating. In one part of the ship, you’re in a post-Deco pavilion but in another you might be running for your life down in the bilge. Environments are varied, and atmosphere is thick.

This strong sense of place is aided by the 3D effect, which is by far the best 3DS has seen to date. It’s spectacular. The sense of depth in these environments is immersive, and during a couple of surprisingly not-terrible underwater swimming sequences the effect seems beyond the usual sense of looking into a diorama. There still isn’t much of an effect on the actual gameplay, but the game successfully leverages dimension to enrich its settings.

Control is still not great, but arguably the sense of restriction that limited mobility imparts is part of the survival horror concept. This time out though, Capcom has seen fit to give players more agency than usual in terms of input choices including an option for the new circle pad attachment. First or third person aiming is available, and the camera can be controlled by touch, tilt, or D-pad.