Resident Evil: Revelations Review (Sunbreaker)
Edit: I've beaten the game and majority of my following review still rings true. The story is still goofy but engaging (the main villain looks so comically villainous that you'll guess who it is and The Divine Comedy comes up so much it becomes a whole other sort of comedy), combat is fine if annoying with the inability to run and the dodge mechanic being touchy at best, the save system is weird without traditional RE save stations but it auto saves at good places in between saving after clearing stages so it isn't too bad, but over all its a fine game that ported over rather nicely from the handheld. My playtime in my save clocked over 6 hours so a decent length and I didn't try the raid mode at all so I can't comment on that. edit edit: I completely forgot to mention the overall map for the game; it's awful and only best used to get a grasp of where you are/want to go and then the minimap for more precise navigation once you've figured that out.
Set after 4 and before 5, Revelations mainly follows Jill Valentine navigate through a spooky ship looking for Chris Redfield's signal who was looking for a terrorist group who sent monsters on a city in the middle of the ocean a year prior. Things go sideways and Jill and her partner Parker must survive on the ship that's now full of monsters. Sometimes you cut away to the past controlling other characters or other characters in the current time doing other stuff, to some success. One section was walking in a building for 5 minutes before going back to the action (usually Jill's POV) so it kind of undercuts tension sometimes.
The game is episodic but since it came packaged all together originally, it falls a bit flat when after each episode there is a 'Previously on...' of what you literally just did since the bits in the episode range so far from either 30~minutes to 5 minutes in length so it feels like you're stuck in some time loop reliving what you just did. I know they did episodes in the sequel but at least that one the episodes were released every few months so a catch up on what happened makes sense.
Gameplay wise it's fairly fun, I like scanning around rooms looking for loot and collectables and the combat is fine as well and translated well from its 3DS roots to get onto the PC. The one gripe of moment to moment combat is the dodge is real finicky when it works as you either do it by hitting w or space bar before an enemy attacks. I did it accidentally with w many a time and doing it with space is a bit more reliable but still not fully right as you'll think you did it but still get it. Difficulty wise I'm on casual mode as I worried about how the controls would feel and even on the easiest mode the game is still pretty difficult. Two of the bosses I've gone against wasted the majority of my ammo being giant sponges who spawn enemies and I barely survived but at least afterwards the game is nice about giving ammo to help replenish after such instances.
Monster design is... alright though the majority of the monsters you fight all sort of look the same so your eyes kind of unfocus when you go against them. The boss monsters so far are at least interesting looking. Player character design is all over the place. Jill, Parker, Chris and O'brien all look normal but all the other characters you see regularly look like they were dressed in the dark (Jessica being the worst offender; what is that wet suit??) and are too overly designed that it's comical when you see them.
The story is also similar in being goofy with what its telling and I think tries to be serious but not really succeeding. Which makes sense since after 4 they were trying to catch that magic again and put it on the other games to mixed success but overall this game's story seems interesting enough even if it is goofy beyond all heck.
For fans of the series I'd say this is a good game to grab.