Here’s the thing, I’m a big fan of the RE franchise. And I mean a BIG fan! I watched all the craptastic movies and actually enjoyed them. I still play Resident Evil 3 when I’m feeling nostalgic. I have the PC and PS3 Gold Edition of Resident Evil 5. I bought a Nintendo 3DS handheld just so I can play Resident Evil Revelations.
But for all the novelty of playing a 3D game on handheld, when the initial excitement wears off, you’re faced with just the game. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a pretty good game which actually managed to recapture the essence of the Resident Evil world, that is survival horror.
But there are things I wish the game developers did differently. Things like:
1. A Partner Who’s Actually Useful
In Resident Evil 5, you have Sheva. Although she’s a bit of annoying – getting in the way of perfect shots, getting killed sometimes (Rocket Launcher) in the process, and being too trigger-happy with not a care on your precious limited ammo supply – at least she’s good for something. Put her on attack mode, and she’s perfect bait. She’s there to bail you out when you’re knee-deep in sh*t, and she does manage to kill her share of the baddies.
In Revelations, your partner is everything that Sheva isn’t. They don’t get in the way. They don’t waste your ammo because they have their own seemingly infinite supply, and they appear to be immortal.
Good traits for a partner. Except… they’re too disconnected, ineffectual, useless. They can’t kill any but the most pathetically weak enemies. They won’t help out when a monster is sucking your life dry. They can’t even serve purposely as bait.
2. No Chapter Selection for Campaign Mode
The beauty of RE5 is you can drop in to any chapter if you so choose. You can visit the swamp to pick up a rocket launcher for use in other chapters. You can go back and kill those nasties that gave you a hard time the first time around. You can farm and stock up on ammo to prepare for future fights.
Not so with Revelations. While Raid Mode holds a lot of replay value, where you are able to select the stage to fight in, solo or with a partner via the Internet, the Campaign mode can only be played forward until you reach the end. It does save your current progress (automatically, by default), but if you wanted to replay the last chapter (or episode, as they’re called in the game), you’re out of luck. You have to go back to the beginning to do that.
3. No infinite ammo for any weapon except Rocket Launcher
In RE5, you can save up points and money points to buy yourself a nice ticket to trigger-happy land where ammo is no issue. Every weapon save for the grenade launcher has the potential to be upgraded to an infinite killing machine.
But for revelations, all you have are loadable customization items that you pick up while running around in the game or otherwise defeating enemies. While they add value to your weapons, there’s a caveat. Some weapons can only have so many custom parts attached. And the really good ones don’t appear ‘til you get to the harder parts.
You do have the Rocket Launcher, which have the unlockable infinite ammo capacity. That is, until you manage to get through HELL mode. And believe me, you’ll have one hell of a time trying to do that! So good luck, you’ll need it!
4. Random Weapon Drops and Random Items in Store
In Raid Mode, you can pick up new weapons if you snag the weapons cases lying around in stages, or if you kill some enemies (bosses mostly). Problem is, you can’t choose what weapons you get. Not even in the store. Oh by the way, the store is only for Raid Mode. You don’t have that option during Campaign.
The randomness in the weapons dropped I get. But for you to have to get in and out of the store repeatedly just ‘til you find something useful is absolutely a bad idea. Not to mention, you have to examine items carefully, as weapons of the same level (yeah, there are levels) are not created equal. Some have plenty of custom part slots, some have few, and others don’t even have them at all.
The levels of weapons you can buy from the store depends on your current player level, which max out at 50. But weapons from the store are limited to level 48. There are rare weapons, but you’d be extremely lucky to find high-level Pale Riders, Drakes or Muramasas in there.
So you’re left to farm on the advanced stages on Abyss (Hardest) Raid Mode. What’s annoying is you can play through those stages a whole day and still come out empty-handed or at best with low-level (read: weak) weapons and custom parts.
Something about leaving it all out to luck to get the right weapon and custom parts you want or need just rubs me the wrong way!
5. Turning off the Background Music Kills the Dialogue
Background music, creepy and antagonizing as they may be for games of this genre, serve a purpose. I respect that. It adds to the atmosphere of the game. But I find it hard to concentrate so I usually just turn them off.
Imagine my surprise when I realized the dialogue spoken by the characters is part of that background music! Seriously?! I had to put the volume for BGM down to the lowest level just so I can play at ease. But now I have to compromise with straining my ears during cutscenes just to hear what the characters are saying.
