Although I’m pretty sure I didn’t ask the question, “what happened to Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield between Resident Evil 4 and 5?”, Capcom has graced the 3DS with a new entry in the series that attempts to do just that. While I’m not sure they’re entirely successful at achieving that goal, Resident Evil: Revelations is a pretty solid entry in the long-running series, and a showcase piece for that shiny new 3DS you got for Christmas.
All of the elements you’d expect from a recent entry in the Resident Evil series are here: private corporations up to no good, a plot that doesn’t pretend to make much sense, a little more gunplay than your traditional survival horror game, weirdly sexist dialogue (a certain female character is a prime offender), and of course, absolutely hideous voice acting from the supporting cast.
The main plot follows Jill Valentine and her new partner, Parker as they hunt for Chris Redfield, who has apparently gone missing at sea on a mysterious/derelict cruise ship, all while tracking down a terrorist cell once thought defunct and yes, yet another variant of the T-Virus. Oh, and there’s a cool future city that gets destroyed by its own government (using reflected solar rays from a satellite) after being overrun by fish monsters. You know, the usual.
You will regularly switch to other characters to flesh out the story. While this affects the pacing of the campaign negatively, it helps break things up a bit, and some of the non-Jill sections take place in (slightly) wider-open areas than the cruise ship allows.
The campaign chapters are broken out episodically, in a manner very similar to Alan Wake. Each section begins and ends with a good chunk of story, and there’s even a “Previously, on Resident Evil Revelations...” lead-in to each chapter, a nice touch. It helps break your playtime into manageable chunks of time, which is thoughtful for gaming on the go.
Jill’s sections tend to play a lot more like a traditional survival horror game, with fewer resources to work with, while other characters’ areas load you up with ammo and high-powered weapons for more combat. At set intervals throughout the story, usually after completing a few chapters, you will unlock missions for Raid Mode, wherein the game’s co-op lies.