Resident Evil Revelations 1 Ranking: B
Taking place between Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5, this game follows Jill Valentine as she investigates a creepy abandoned cruise liner in the Mediterranean Sea called the Queen Zenobia. Since this is a Resident Evil game, you find the ship infested with ooze sea zombies. Old-school fans of the series praised Revelations for incorporating more survival horror elements while keeping the control scheme from 4. Since (as of this writing) my entire experience with the old-school Resident Evil games consists of like 10 minutes of playing the first game and saying “wow screw these camera angles,” my opinion of Revelations comes from other considerations.
I gave Resident Evil 4 a shrine because of its innovations on the series – the new control scheme and the departure from “Umbrella made some zombies” plot. You know, the exact reasons old-school fans hate that game. At any rate, I didn’t give the fifth game a shrine because it lacked innovations on that level, but I gave it an A because of its solid partner gameplay and its importance plot-wise.
The gameplay in Revelations isn’t too different from 4 and 5, so it gets no positive or negative points on that front. The story…is dumb. And keep in mind I’m talking about a series full of shady backstabbing scientists who created zombified bio-weapons and lived in buildings with hilariously complicated locks that must have been a real pain every time someone needed to go use the bathroom or something.
We start with the leader of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, Clive O’Brian, sending Jill and a new character, Parker, to the aforementioned ship to look for Chris Redfield and his partner, since they’d lost contact while in Finland. First, I asked this question during Resident Evil 5, but why are Chris and Jill taking orders from anyone? They founded the BSAA. Shouldn’t they be in charge?
Anyway, why would Jill investigate a ship in the Mediterranean when Chris’s last known location was Finland? That’s literally on the other side of Europe. Why is this ship, which was used as a terrorist staging ground a year ago, still floating around in the Mediterranean Sea a year after the attack? Why does Jill go to this ship without better equipment? This isn’t her first rodeo; she should know better. This is exactly the problem I mentioned in my Resident Evil 5 review, where a survival horror plot makes no sense when you consider that Jill, a veteran of fighting off bioterrorism, goes to investigate a location where there is likely some sort of biohazard. Jill should’ve gone into the Queen Zenobia with machine guns and plenty of ammunition and medication.
Speaking of knowing better, as a bioengineer I cringed every time Jill touched obviously infected rotting tissue with her bare hands.
We later find that O’Brian set this all up just to freak out Morgan Lansdale, the leader of another anti-bioterrorist organization who secretly helped the terrorists (organization named Veltro) a year ago. Jill does fall into an ambush on the ship and “Veltro” takes credit for it…but then what? Let’s say Lansdale hears about this. What does O’Brian think he’d do? Panic and confess? That’s simplistic.
We later find that Jack Norman, the leader of Veltro, has video evidence of his interactions with Lansdale, which he recorded in case Lansdale betrayed Veltro. Lansdale then betrayed Veltro and Norman…did nothing. The entire end of the game revolves around finding Norman and getting that evidence to do exactly what Norman should’ve done a year ago.
Oh, yeah, and eventually Chris goes to rescue Jill but ends up on the wrong ship, which is an exact replica of the Queen Zenobia. Really? What even was the point of that?
There are some segments of the game that made me kind of mad. There’s this timed segment where the game throws no less than 2 mini-bosses at you on the way. Later, there’s a timed segment where you literally have to fight a giant tentacled whale-boss that looks like it can eat the entire ship. I hate timed missions. The Gatling gun segment before that is also very frustrating. The last boss is a bitch and a half.
Having ranted this much, though, I still recommend this game. The atmosphere is definitely well-done and most of the game is reasonably fun. There are underwater segments, which normally infuriate me, but this game manages to make them not suck, which I consider a pretty notable achievement. And even though I think this game’s plot is idiotic, it looks tight and consistent compared to Resident Evil 6’s train wreck of a plot. Maybe I’ll eviscerate that game on this page sometime in the future. Who knows.
At any rate, my performance in this game was actually pretty on-par with how I did in Resident Evil 4:
Taking place between Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5, this game follows Jill Valentine as she investigates a creepy abandoned cruise liner in the Mediterranean Sea called the Queen Zenobia. Since this is a Resident Evil game, you find the ship infested with ooze sea zombies. Old-school fans of the series praised Revelations for incorporating more survival horror elements while keeping the control scheme from 4. Since (as of this writing) my entire experience with the old-school Resident Evil games consists of like 10 minutes of playing the first game and saying “wow screw these camera angles,” my opinion of Revelations comes from other considerations.
I gave Resident Evil 4 a shrine because of its innovations on the series – the new control scheme and the departure from “Umbrella made some zombies” plot. You know, the exact reasons old-school fans hate that game. At any rate, I didn’t give the fifth game a shrine because it lacked innovations on that level, but I gave it an A because of its solid partner gameplay and its importance plot-wise.
The gameplay in Revelations isn’t too different from 4 and 5, so it gets no positive or negative points on that front. The story…is dumb. And keep in mind I’m talking about a series full of shady backstabbing scientists who created zombified bio-weapons and lived in buildings with hilariously complicated locks that must have been a real pain every time someone needed to go use the bathroom or something.
We start with the leader of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance, Clive O’Brian, sending Jill and a new character, Parker, to the aforementioned ship to look for Chris Redfield and his partner, since they’d lost contact while in Finland. First, I asked this question during Resident Evil 5, but why are Chris and Jill taking orders from anyone? They founded the BSAA. Shouldn’t they be in charge?
Anyway, why would Jill investigate a ship in the Mediterranean when Chris’s last known location was Finland? That’s literally on the other side of Europe. Why is this ship, which was used as a terrorist staging ground a year ago, still floating around in the Mediterranean Sea a year after the attack? Why does Jill go to this ship without better equipment? This isn’t her first rodeo; she should know better. This is exactly the problem I mentioned in my Resident Evil 5 review, where a survival horror plot makes no sense when you consider that Jill, a veteran of fighting off bioterrorism, goes to investigate a location where there is likely some sort of biohazard. Jill should’ve gone into the Queen Zenobia with machine guns and plenty of ammunition and medication.
Speaking of knowing better, as a bioengineer I cringed every time Jill touched obviously infected rotting tissue with her bare hands.
We later find that O’Brian set this all up just to freak out Morgan Lansdale, the leader of another anti-bioterrorist organization who secretly helped the terrorists (organization named Veltro) a year ago. Jill does fall into an ambush on the ship and “Veltro” takes credit for it…but then what? Let’s say Lansdale hears about this. What does O’Brian think he’d do? Panic and confess? That’s simplistic.
We later find that Jack Norman, the leader of Veltro, has video evidence of his interactions with Lansdale, which he recorded in case Lansdale betrayed Veltro. Lansdale then betrayed Veltro and Norman…did nothing. The entire end of the game revolves around finding Norman and getting that evidence to do exactly what Norman should’ve done a year ago.
Oh, yeah, and eventually Chris goes to rescue Jill but ends up on the wrong ship, which is an exact replica of the Queen Zenobia. Really? What even was the point of that?
There are some segments of the game that made me kind of mad. There’s this timed segment where the game throws no less than 2 mini-bosses at you on the way. Later, there’s a timed segment where you literally have to fight a giant tentacled whale-boss that looks like it can eat the entire ship. I hate timed missions. The Gatling gun segment before that is also very frustrating. The last boss is a bitch and a half.
Having ranted this much, though, I still recommend this game. The atmosphere is definitely well-done and most of the game is reasonably fun. There are underwater segments, which normally infuriate me, but this game manages to make them not suck, which I consider a pretty notable achievement. And even though I think this game’s plot is idiotic, it looks tight and consistent compared to Resident Evil 6’s train wreck of a plot. Maybe I’ll eviscerate that game on this page sometime in the future. Who knows.
At any rate, my performance in this game was actually pretty on-par with how I did in Resident Evil 4: