After over a year of its release on Nintendo 3DS, Resident Evil: Revelations gets a hi-def port to home consoles and PC. This means that the graphics get a nice boost, with the game now looking far superior to its handheld cousin, the controls are tweaked to suit controllers as well as mouse and keyboard (although the game is still best played using a gamepad of some kind), yet, interestingly, one of the game's key features, the 3D, has been stripped during the port. The move isn't entirely surprising, given that Sony, a company that was pushing 3D via first-party titles, has virtually abandoned the technology — a direct result of the lack of interest from the general gaming public, presumably. This means that the passive 3D (which doesn't require glasses, no less) on the Nintendo 3DS still makes it the definitive version of the game.
If you've not played the original 3DS version, however, fans of the series should simply grab a copy of the new port. It's a game that sticks to its roots — ammo scarcity, adventure elements, exploration and scares. The events of Resident Evil: Revelations take place between Resident Evil 4 and 5, where you get to play as the original protagonists of the series, Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine. Jill (now teaming up with Parker Luciani) is seen investigating the SS Queen Zenobia in the Mediterranean, looking for signs of Chris and his new partner, Jessica Sherawat. The Zenobia is an appropriately creepy setting for Revelations, with its 1930s-era decor, T-Abyss virus-infected crew members and claustrophobic passageways. While most of your time will be spent aboard the ship, there are a couple of other locations as well — a flashback section in the city of Terragrigia as well as a mountainous, snowstorm-affected region of Europe (possibly Scandinavia). And thanks to the episodic nature of the narrative, you'll never feel left out — a “previously on Resident Evil: Revelations” snippet at the start of each act aims to keep you abreast of all the plot twists and diabolical schemes of biological terrorist organisations involved. Just don't press “start” during any of the cutscenes, or you'll miss pretty much everything.
Like Resident Evil 5 (and 6), you're now allowed to move around when aiming (gone are the Resident Evil 4-days of imprecision and immobility), which means you can still deliver the killing blow from a distance or at close quarters using the various firearms at your disposal with crazy precision. There are specific game sections where ammunition is abundant, giving you a false sense of security, because, for a lot of the game, you'll be running out of it, and running around looking for more. The game also features a gameplay mechanic centred around the 'Genesis' device, a piece of equipment that can scan objects as well as any B.O.W. (bio-organic weapons) alive or dead, in addition to the environment, revealing secret items or stashes of ammunition. Scanning for ammo and the follow-up act of scavenging feel a lot like loot-hunting in action RPGs — but more importantly, they're essential for survival during the game's skirmishes. A rudimentary upgrade system is present as well — find upgrade parts that range from damage boosts to reload time reduction, and instal them in one of the various slots on each gun at work benches located around the ship.
The hi-def makeover does make a lot of Revelations look quite pretty — particularly at 1080p with no frame-rate cap on the PC, but the quality of some textures serve as an unnecessary reminder that this is the port of a handheld game. But since Revelations is a relatively new title, the obvious disparity in visual fidelity isn't as apparent as for some of the titles in Sony's PS2 classics catalogue. But having said that, the game isn't as atmospheric as Resident Evil 4 and doesn't feel as triple-A as Resident Evil 5. But what it does manage to do is fit nicely between the two to deliver an experience that takes the best from both those games. Resident Evil: Revelations is also Capcom's best PC port this side of the recent Street Fighter 4 titles (the game is also available on PS3 & Xbox 360 in India and Wii-U internationally).
