Resident Evil: Revelations 2

On paper, Resident Evil: Revelations 2 is a perfectly competent entry in the series, getting a lot of the basics of a survival horror right, successfully building a tense atmosphere while giving limited ammo to the player. The problem is that, just like its many monsters, the game lacks a soul: its design choices and storyline are so bland and uninspired that, even though Revelations 2 is far from being the worst entry in the series, it’s certainly one of the most forgettable Resident Evil games.

The game opens with an ad about the dangers of bioterrorism, advertising how politicians and big companies should not be trusted. It’s selling a private organization called TerraSave as the solution: a multinational human rights agency that Claire Redfield works for. Appropriately, since this a Resident Evil game, the ad ends with a very goofy moment:

One night, during a party with TerraSave employees, Claire is kidnapped alongside Barry Burton’s daughter, Moira, and put inside a sinister, dilapidated prison: there are dead people hanging from the ceiling, blood splashed on the walls, and spikes coming out of covered bodies. Claire and Moira soon find out that special bracelets were put on their arms, which will monitor their feelings: the bracelets will respond to fear, triggering a horrible mutation if their wearer is horrified.

It’s a tense, effective opening. The prison makes for a great setting, being claustrophobic and nerve-wracking: we are seeing these monsters locked up inside cells and we just know they will eventually get out, which provides a constant source of anxiety. Meanwhile, fear becomes a feeling to be even more dreaded by the characters than usual, as it will mark their deaths.

Revelations 2, however, doesn’t take long to abandon all these great elements. It doesn’t take more than an hour for us to get out of the prison and to realize Claire and Moira are literally fearless: they look at all the grotesque monstrosities in front of them, killing everyone, and the color of their bracelets doesn’t change.

The issue here is that the game refuses to delve into this subject: it could have linked Claire’s lack of response to her history and trauma, saying that she became desensitized to the horrors she witnesses, and it could have done something similar with Moira. Unfortunately, however, the narrative just brushes over this plot point, with the characters rarely stopping to question why they’re not afraid of the monsters and becoming one themselves.

A big problem with the narrative in Revelations 2 is precisely its lack of polish: it’s doesn’t seem too much interested in any plot point. The climax focuses on Moira’s overcoming a specific fear, for example, but it never bothered to weave a convincing web of events to lead to this moment: consequently, as with most things in the game, it just happens, with little to no build-up.

Take the intro about Terrasave as another example. Since the game opens with an ad about the organization, it suggests that it’s important for the story. However, it ends up being just an afterthought: it could have been removed entirely from the game without changing any big plot element. There’s a small twist about one of its employees, but it’s just the game copying its direct predecessor without adding its own twist to it.

Characters, themes, and even the general plot of Revelations 2 are all severely under-developed, making even the first Revelations feel like a character-driven story in comparison. It doesn’t help that there are very few twists and turns in store, and that the ones that exist don’t even work: one of the last “revelations”, the one regarding the fate of a major character, manages to be both predictable and nonsensical at the same time – which is certainly a feat.

Thematically, the game doesn’t have anything to say about any subject: the problem is that Revelations 2 is just a collection of ideas that its predecessors developed better. Like the first Revelations, it wants to tackle corruption and terrorism, but sidelines the matter until it’s time for the twist, creating no build-up at all. It wants to have its own Wesker, but believes the name is all there is to the series’ iconic villain, him, hoping it will suffice to make the new one interesting and mask their bizarre motivations.

There’s also a problem with the pacing. The game is divided into four episodes, and each one is divided into two parts: first, we play as Claire and Moira, then as Barry and a mysterious girl named Natalia. This leads to some repetition, as Barry traverses a good chunk of the same environments that Claire visits in the same episode, usually taking a new path only halfway through the level. To make matters worse, Barry rarely discovers anything new, making his part of the chapters feel like a chore for most of the time.

Repetition can be a big problem in Revelations 2, especially since the environments are mostly bland and uninspired: we usually move from one dilapidated building to the next, which will offer the same blood-spattered walls. Most environments in the game look like this:

:

When Revelations 2 finally decides to offer an interesting place to explore, it still just copying what its predecessors already did way better. There’s a coastal village at the beginning of chapter 2, for example, which tries to harken back to the beginning of Resident Evil 4, but the level design doesn’t allow the player the same level of freedom and experimentation, quickly locking Claire inside a single house. In this chapter, however, there’s a great moment when the game plays with expectations, making the player hear the buzzing sound a “chainsaw” before showing the object and who is wielding it, creating a great deal of tension based on the Resident Evil 4 experience.

It may lack a distinct flavor, but Revelations 2 at least gets most of the basics of its genre right. The environments are dark and gory (if not memorable or creepy); ammo is sufficiently scarce so to make the monster encounters more tense, and the game also offers an alternative to combat with stealth: it actively encourages the player to avoid being seen to save ammo. The problem here is that the stealth mechanic is too simple and basic and so quickly becomes repetitive: all enemies react the same way to the player’s character, which is virtually invisible when not in front of the creature’s cone of vision. It can also lead to some goofy moments, such as when a monster was unaware of Barry’s presence even though he was standing right behind it and coughing nonstop.

There’s also a focus on co-op in the game, but it’s not that well-balanced, putting one player as the “support character”, while the other has to shoot all the enemies. Moira uses a flashlight (which marks hidden loot), for example, and can use melee attacks (useful on weak enemies) and open chests, while the player with Claire has all the fun shooting the monsters with all types of guns. With Barry, things become more interesting, as Natalia can sense enemies, allowing the player controlling her to tell their location to the one playing Barry (and the game quickly adds invisible enemies into the mix to reinforce this dynamic.) Playing solo, however, means that you will rarely switch from Claire to Moira, ignoring the girl for the most part of the game, while with Barry and Natalia, you have to keep switching between the two of them constantly (especially against the invisible enemies: if you don’t switch to Natalia, she will give general directions when you shoot (“more to the left, up, up!”) which means that you will lose precious ammo in the process.

When the campaign is over, there’s Raid mode, which offers an almost endless amount of shooting galleries, loot, and RPG mechanics. With the amount of unlocks, skills, characters, and enemies (it’s not afraid to get silly and put bizarre effects on them) this mode can become addictive and is certainly more enjoyable than the main story.

At the end of the day, Resident Evil: Revelations 2 is not a bad game, but it’s certainly not a great one either: although it gets some things right, it copies too much to really stand out. And Resident Evil is a series that deserves much more.

December 17, 2021.