Resident Evil Revelations 2 Ranking: B
This game takes place between Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 and begins with Claire Redfield at a TerraSave event. She and her coworkers, including Barry Burton’s daughter Moira, get kidnapped and brought to some remote island, where they encounter monsters and other par-for-the-course Resident Evil things. The game has four episodes with each episode containing two parts – the first follows Claire and Moira, and the second follows Barry six months later as he’s on the island to rescue his daughter. Barry also meets a mysterious 10-year-old girl named Natalia, so his gameplay involves them both.
Revelations 2 does some things very well and other things very poorly. The setup falls under the former, since things you do as Claire and Moira will affect what Barry and Natalia encounter. Episode 2 is a prime example, where if you kill Pedro “Balls” Fernandez, Barry/Natalia won’t need to fight Mr. Balls and can bypass two whole areas. The partner mechanic also gives rise to interesting gameplay; Moira and Natalia can’t really fight, meaning you need to switch between Claire/Barry for combat and Moira/Natalia for support.
Also done very well? Barry Burton, one of the best parts of the game. He fills his reputation as the grizzled badass players of Resident Evil 1 will remember, complete with one-liners and his trademark magnum. The game also explores his fatherly role in detail; indeed, his relationship with Moira is a big focus of the plot and has incredibly hard-hitting emotional moments. We also see him develop a father-daughter relationship with Natalia as the game progresses.
On the flip side, Claire’s character is one area the game fails monumentally hard at and is the main reason I downgraded the game’s grade to a B-rank. Did the writers of this game play any of the previous games with Claire? Claire is infuriatingly out-of-character in this game, and if you’ve read my rants on Fire Emblem: Three Houses, you know how much out-of-character writing pisses me off.
First, when Claire finds the first gun in the game, she remarks that “it’s more reliable than any person.” This is a callback to Code Veronica…except in Code Veronica, Steve Burnside is the one who says that and Claire refutes him, eventually convincing him that he’s wrong because Chris’s arrival vindicated her trust in him. So the writers made Claire say a line she’s on the exact opposite side of. To make things worse, Steve’s line was a thinly veiled jab at Claire, essentially telling her that he finds some gun more reliable than he finds her. In this scenario, Claire’s words are directed at Moira, someone she ostensibly cares for highly (and relies on throughout the game, since Moira provides crucial support).
One of Claire’s defining character moments occurs in Resident Evil 2, where she unhesitatingly takes care of and bonds with a ~12-year-old Sherry Birkin. The backstory of Resident Evil 6 reinforces this, since Claire took time afterwards to continue caring for Sherry. Resident Evil: Degeneration, one of the CG movies (that this game directly references, no less), sees her unflinchingly risk herself to protect and care for a young girl caught in a bioterror attack at an airport. Amusingly, some Senator was the one who’d put her in danger and she bitch-slaps him for it.
In this game, she meets Natalia, promptly begins to interrogate her, and intimidates the hell out of the already bewildered girl. Moira has to talk her down. What the complete fuck? She later prioritizes finding Neil, one of her coworkers from TerraSave, over looking for Natalia, something Claire would never do. Between a grown man armed with a gun and a helpless girl toting around a teddy bear, Claire would unhesitatingly and unequivocally go after the latter.
The writers, in fact, wrote a romantic connection between her and Neil. Since, spoilers, Neil turned out to be the one who’d orchestrated the kidnapping, leading to the deaths of all her coworkers minus Moira, I can see why the writers wanted to do that, to make the betrayal hit harder. The problem is how it’s executed – Claire wouldn’t prioritize Neil over Natalia, romantic feelings or not. In addition, there’s a sequence where mutated monster-Neil (because yes, he got injected with a virus and mutated into a classic Resident Evil boss) is on top of her trying to kill her and she…asks where they went wrong. Yes, she’s concerned with where she and her romantic interest “went wrong” and not (1) Neil betraying her and TerraSave, (2) Neil getting at least three of her coworkers killed, (3) Neil intending to use Uroboros to commit a new bioterror attack, and (4) Neil at that moment trying to kill her.
I’ve heard that the original Japanese script didn’t have many (if any) of these lines, so maybe I should be giving the localization team shit rather than the writers. It’s infuriating either way.
Anyway. I also don’t quite like some of the gameplay. There’s stealth in the game, except it’s mostly in Barry’s segment, which is baffling since his segment should be the more action-focused of the two. He’s on an island looking for his daughter and he knows the island is full of danger. He, admittedly, starts with more firepower compared to a standard Resident Evil protagonist…but the game encourages him to sneak around and stealth kill enemies. Wouldn’t this sort of thing make more sense in Claire’s segment, where she’s underequipped and struggling to survive?
I’ll finish with something the game does very well – the ending sequence, assuming you’re on the good ending path. The last boss is Alex Wesker and she’s your standard Resident Evil giant mutated monster. She chases Barry, Moira, and Natalia to a cliff edge and they’re not sure what to do as they’re cornered…and Claire comes in with a helicopter out of nowhere, tells Wesker to “oversee this, bitch” and shoots her directly in her core with a sniper rifle.
It doesn’t end there, since she survives that and Barry declares he’s “putting [her] and [her] entire goddamn family in the ground.” The final sequence has you controlling both Claire flying around in the helicopter with her sniper rifle and Barry as he leads Wesker around for Claire to shoot. Eventually, they get tired of She-Wesker’s continued existence, so Claire drops the sniper rifle, pulls out a rocket launcher, and vaporizes her for good. This is one of the most badass ending sequences I’ve ever seen.
To wrap up: for whatever reason, Revelations 2 doesn’t give you an overall results screen, but I calculated my average accuracy from all eight parts and my total clear time, which came out to 76.3% and 8:57:47. I’m not entirely sure why my accuracy was so low in this game. Oh well.
This game takes place between Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 and begins with Claire Redfield at a TerraSave event. She and her coworkers, including Barry Burton’s daughter Moira, get kidnapped and brought to some remote island, where they encounter monsters and other par-for-the-course Resident Evil things. The game has four episodes with each episode containing two parts – the first follows Claire and Moira, and the second follows Barry six months later as he’s on the island to rescue his daughter. Barry also meets a mysterious 10-year-old girl named Natalia, so his gameplay involves them both.
Revelations 2 does some things very well and other things very poorly. The setup falls under the former, since things you do as Claire and Moira will affect what Barry and Natalia encounter. Episode 2 is a prime example, where if you kill Pedro “Balls” Fernandez, Barry/Natalia won’t need to fight Mr. Balls and can bypass two whole areas. The partner mechanic also gives rise to interesting gameplay; Moira and Natalia can’t really fight, meaning you need to switch between Claire/Barry for combat and Moira/Natalia for support.
Also done very well? Barry Burton, one of the best parts of the game. He fills his reputation as the grizzled badass players of Resident Evil 1 will remember, complete with one-liners and his trademark magnum. The game also explores his fatherly role in detail; indeed, his relationship with Moira is a big focus of the plot and has incredibly hard-hitting emotional moments. We also see him develop a father-daughter relationship with Natalia as the game progresses.
On the flip side, Claire’s character is one area the game fails monumentally hard at and is the main reason I downgraded the game’s grade to a B-rank. Did the writers of this game play any of the previous games with Claire? Claire is infuriatingly out-of-character in this game, and if you’ve read my rants on Fire Emblem: Three Houses, you know how much out-of-character writing pisses me off.
First, when Claire finds the first gun in the game, she remarks that “it’s more reliable than any person.” This is a callback to Code Veronica…except in Code Veronica, Steve Burnside is the one who says that and Claire refutes him, eventually convincing him that he’s wrong because Chris’s arrival vindicated her trust in him. So the writers made Claire say a line she’s on the exact opposite side of. To make things worse, Steve’s line was a thinly veiled jab at Claire, essentially telling her that he finds some gun more reliable than he finds her. In this scenario, Claire’s words are directed at Moira, someone she ostensibly cares for highly (and relies on throughout the game, since Moira provides crucial support).
One of Claire’s defining character moments occurs in Resident Evil 2, where she unhesitatingly takes care of and bonds with a ~12-year-old Sherry Birkin. The backstory of Resident Evil 6 reinforces this, since Claire took time afterwards to continue caring for Sherry. Resident Evil: Degeneration, one of the CG movies (that this game directly references, no less), sees her unflinchingly risk herself to protect and care for a young girl caught in a bioterror attack at an airport. Amusingly, some Senator was the one who’d put her in danger and she bitch-slaps him for it.
In this game, she meets Natalia, promptly begins to interrogate her, and intimidates the hell out of the already bewildered girl. Moira has to talk her down. What the complete fuck? She later prioritizes finding Neil, one of her coworkers from TerraSave, over looking for Natalia, something Claire would never do. Between a grown man armed with a gun and a helpless girl toting around a teddy bear, Claire would unhesitatingly and unequivocally go after the latter.
The writers, in fact, wrote a romantic connection between her and Neil. Since, spoilers, Neil turned out to be the one who’d orchestrated the kidnapping, leading to the deaths of all her coworkers minus Moira, I can see why the writers wanted to do that, to make the betrayal hit harder. The problem is how it’s executed – Claire wouldn’t prioritize Neil over Natalia, romantic feelings or not. In addition, there’s a sequence where mutated monster-Neil (because yes, he got injected with a virus and mutated into a classic Resident Evil boss) is on top of her trying to kill her and she…asks where they went wrong. Yes, she’s concerned with where she and her romantic interest “went wrong” and not (1) Neil betraying her and TerraSave, (2) Neil getting at least three of her coworkers killed, (3) Neil intending to use Uroboros to commit a new bioterror attack, and (4) Neil at that moment trying to kill her.
I’ve heard that the original Japanese script didn’t have many (if any) of these lines, so maybe I should be giving the localization team shit rather than the writers. It’s infuriating either way.
Anyway. I also don’t quite like some of the gameplay. There’s stealth in the game, except it’s mostly in Barry’s segment, which is baffling since his segment should be the more action-focused of the two. He’s on an island looking for his daughter and he knows the island is full of danger. He, admittedly, starts with more firepower compared to a standard Resident Evil protagonist…but the game encourages him to sneak around and stealth kill enemies. Wouldn’t this sort of thing make more sense in Claire’s segment, where she’s underequipped and struggling to survive?
I’ll finish with something the game does very well – the ending sequence, assuming you’re on the good ending path. The last boss is Alex Wesker and she’s your standard Resident Evil giant mutated monster. She chases Barry, Moira, and Natalia to a cliff edge and they’re not sure what to do as they’re cornered…and Claire comes in with a helicopter out of nowhere, tells Wesker to “oversee this, bitch” and shoots her directly in her core with a sniper rifle.
It doesn’t end there, since she survives that and Barry declares he’s “putting [her] and [her] entire goddamn family in the ground.” The final sequence has you controlling both Claire flying around in the helicopter with her sniper rifle and Barry as he leads Wesker around for Claire to shoot. Eventually, they get tired of She-Wesker’s continued existence, so Claire drops the sniper rifle, pulls out a rocket launcher, and vaporizes her for good. This is one of the most badass ending sequences I’ve ever seen.
To wrap up: for whatever reason, Revelations 2 doesn’t give you an overall results screen, but I calculated my average accuracy from all eight parts and my total clear time, which came out to 76.3% and 8:57:47. I’m not entirely sure why my accuracy was so low in this game. Oh well.