Of course, this is predicated on having a local partner. The ability to signal your partner via in-game prompts like Resident Evil 5 used is missing, and there is no support for voice chat, so setting up strategies is next to impossible. Add to that the fact that each player needs to go through a door separately, and it can be fairly easy to get frustrated while playing online. If you want to play this one in co-op, a friend you can talk to (via your choice of internet voice chat) or see in person is the way to go.
No review of this game would be complete without mentioning the new Circle Pad Pro attachment (review forthcoming) for the 3DS, which adds a second analog circle pad and an extra pair of shoulder buttons to the system. While the controls without this attachment are perfectly fine and I had no trouble playing through about half the campaign and a few online co-op sessions using them, I greatly prefer the added control fidelity that the CPP grants.
Rather than mapping all movement and aiming to the left circle pad (you can change the control scheme to allow for aiming with the ABXY buttons, but it wasn’t as comfortable as other games that use that scheme), Revelations remaps the controller to feel more like a modern third-person shooter, with movement mapped to the left circle pad and aiming mapped to the right. Aiming and firing weapons is moved to the new shoulder buttons, and things generally feel a lot nicer. You can even move while aiming!
Taken as a total package, Resident Evil Revelations is an easy game to recommend. It’s got a meaty amount of content, the graphics are just about the best you’ll see on the 3DS right now, and hey, the co-op experience might be a little lacking, but we can’t always win, right?
Verdict
Co-Op Score
Overall
The Co-Op Experience: Raid Mode will let you play as Jill Valentine or Chris Redfield through levels taken from the single-player campaign. The arcade-inspired mode will rank players based on performance and award loot at the end of each level.
Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience along with an average score for the game overall. For an explanation of our scores please check our Review Score Explanation Guide.