Rrrrrrrrrrresident...
EVIL!
REVELATIONS!
Welcome back, nerds and nerdettes, to the world of Survival Horror!
That's right, we're going to be hitting up one of the best Resident Evil games to come
out in recent years: Resident Evil: Revelations.
Unless you have the 3DS version, then it's Resident Evil: Revelaitons?
I have no fuckin' clue.
So, whether you've got a Wii U, 360, PS3 - Fuckin' Irrelevant - Grab a Jill Sandwich!
Grab your Barry Burton Cup!
If you don't have one, MAKE ONE, FOR FUCK'S SAKE!
Anyway!
Resident Evil: Revelations!
Pretty much, it puts survival and horror back in the forefront of the series.
It's not a fucking shooting gallery like certain other titles in the series, no, this is just--
Wait a minute...
This doesn't seem right.
This doesn't seem right at ALL.
Where the fuck am I?
W-wait a minute...
what the f-- Lara Croft: No.
That's not right.
Run back to the start and try again.
OH GOD FUCKIN' D-- *Elevator Music*
REVIEW outsourcing?
What are you, MICROSOFT?!
REVIEW START!
2005: Fuck you.
Bela Lugosi: FUCK YOU!
I don't know who you killed.
I don't know what arcane, unholy force you draw your satanic energy from, what I do know...
is that ever since my calendar lapsed on over to '05, Survival Horror, as a genre... has
been insufferable shit.
Perhaps it was the disbanding of Team Silent in '04, the departure of Shinji Mikami, or
the laborious march into a 6th Console Generation that had more 'Identity Crises' than DC Comics
during a slow sales period.
But you ruined Survival Horror.
And fuck you very much.
The silver lining?
Since, oh... mid-2012?
What we'd previously regarded as a long-deceased patient... began to register a fuckin' pulse.
Silent Hill: Downpour, while far from perfect, was an unqualified step in the right direction
for the heretofore flagging series, and Christ knows the arrival of Naughty Dog's latest
setpiece wellsprin The Last of Us was heralded by a chorus of bought-out gaming journalists
ejaculating in unison.
But the uncontested silver lining... of the silver lining... arrived in the form of Resident
Evil: Revelations.
Sure, Revelations is still a modern horror title: With all the proclivities and developmental
eccentricities that entails.
What a steaming ladleful of irony that is!
That in a effort to shed the formulaic and admittedly clunky design of the early RE titles...
they reinvented it with a formulaic and clunky design!
What constructively separates Revelations from other, recent RE titles that have milked
this engine and formula bone-ass dry... is that when that inevitable moment arrives,
where all doors spontaneously lock, the string section hits the higher octaves, and somnolent
hordes of super-mutant firearm fodder pin you to the wall until you've given them all
a .45 calibur coffee break, it's actually in service to a prevailing atmosphere and
tone that comes dangerously close to being legitimately fuckin' creepy!
Distinguished even further from its projectile-pumping peers in the numbered Resident Evil series...
by the game's more miserly approach to conferring ammunition.
If this were Resident Evil 6, and a gaggle of 300-lb.
hired thugs were able to pin me to the love seat long enough to actually make me play
the fuckin' thing again... yet another action setpiece with conveniently barred exits and
frothing zombie hordes encircling the player would scarcely be worthy of the resultant
eye-roll.
But with Revelations' ammo-related strictures, what was old is fuckin' new again, and it's
remarkably effective.
Shining particularly bright is the game's monster design.
Oh, sure, Squidhead Von TennisRacketHands probably won't be sweeping this year's Originality
Awards, but after Amos & Andy Presents: Resident Evil 4, 5 and 6, where the enemies' only common
denominator was brown skin!?
I'll take what I can fuckin' get!
Weapon customization is a breath of fresh air after the streamlined stuffiness of RE5&6.
One thing that's come into sharp focus for me over the last damn-near-decade of the Survival
Horror Drought?
Popping a zombie's head like a ripe watermelon is twice as satisfying when the gun in your
hands is Donatello'd the fuck out with enough scopes, damage modifiers and laser sights
to dead-eye Dianne Feinstein from Saturn.
If there's a fly to be found in the proverbial ointment, then its name... is Chris Redfield.
Chris, you poor fuck.
You selflessly hoisted this entire series on your oily, bulging shoulder-boulders and
bore it to the promised land with the original Resident Evil and its stellar Gamecube remake.
But did we thank you?
Fuck-to-the-NO!
Shit, well over half of us played as Jill Valentine instead, because pixellated vaginas
were still a novelty in 1996.
Then, you were unceremoniously replaced by Captain Combover in the sequel, and for the
next half-decade, found yourself in varying states of 'kicked to the fuckin' curb' until
some asshat Capcom Executive was feeling charitable one afternoon, and let you out of your cage
during the latter half of Resident Evil: Code Veronica.
The bad news?
Code Veronica... was Code Veronica.
And, now, because 'being scared' is nearly as out-of-fashion as zombies than can't outrun
a velociraptor, you've been slammin' uncut Rhino Steroids into the vein beneath your
cock and your games went from being set in the Mall of the Living Dead... to Mall of
Duty.
Now, here you sit, relegated to being the weakest link in the chain that is Revelations.
Like a beefed up, unwelcome party guest, every time Jill's shamblin' shindig kicks into full
swing, here's Chris Redfield, with a bucket full of setpieces, slammin' all the Pilsner
and puttin' Sha Na Na on the stereo.
We'd kick him the fuck out, but it's really not his fault.
He's a product of his environment.
And his environment...
are the real zombies at modern day Capcom.
And speaking of the walking dead, what stage of cerebral necrosis spawned this game's save
system, if you feel comfortable even calling it that?
Checkpoints?
Never fuckin' work.
Ever.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEVER!
Especially on a handheld, and especially in 2013.
If you're still using them, this late in the game, you are everything that's wrong with
everything, and seppuku is your only hope for redemption.
Checkpoints took the red-eye out of here back in 2002.
It's having cocktails with Something Awful.com's relevance.
Acquire a fuckin' clue, Professor Plum!
Virtually everyone who's played this game has suggested, at one time or another, that
'This is the game Resident Evil 6 should have been.'
But I actually disagree.
Revelations is the game Resident Evil 4 should have been.
Rather than allowing themselves to become so thoroughly impressed with their new third-person
shooting mechanics, advanced enemy A.I., quicktime events and fully 3D environments, Capcom should
have asked themselves how they could put those inventions to work in service to the genuine
horror and dread of classic Resident Evil.
Because the light atmospherics of RE4, while quaint...
did not get the job done.
Revelations... finally does.
I'm RazörFist.
God - fucking - SPEED!