Hands-on with Resident Evil: Revelations on Nintendo 3DS

There are two kinds of Resident Evil game: the early survival-horror ones, and the modern action-horror ones.

Revelations belongs to the latter camp in both looks and style, but if the demo we went hands-on with the other day is representative of the finished game, it seems Capcom has looked not to Resident Evil 5 for its main inspiration but to the critically lauded DLC for that title, Lost in Nightmares.

The level we played begins in an old mansion (again) and stars series regular Jill Valentine. Everything you might want to see in a regular Resident Evil game is present, from the descriptions of nearby objects to the dressers containing handgun ammo.

The controls are really well handled on the 3DS, with the R button pulling up the gun sights and L used for strafing. These are configurable should you want to give your left index finger a rest.

The graphics are fantastic - closer to the home console version of Resi 5 than to the PS2 version of Resi 4.

Effects like clinging fog inside a huge dining room really drive home the power lurking inside the 3DS’s unassuming shell.

It looks like something goes here

While we didn’t get to experience many puzzles during our hands-on (the demo was all of ten minutes long), the one that was there bodes well for the finished game.

It doesn’t involve finding crests (sorry long-time fans), but instead revolves around using a screwdriver (found by draining a bath, of course) to open and rewire a control panel.

The act of unscrewing and rewiring is performed on the touchscreen. While these switches to stylus can be a little disruptive in some games, it comes as a welcome tension-building change of pace here.

Ammo conservation zone

Much of the tension in Revelations comes from the fact that enemies don’t arrive in waves but in unpredictable dribs and drabs.

Things may be different in the full-game, but the semi-infrequent appearances of the abominations in the demo made them that bit more shocking.

Also adding to the scares was the fact that the heads of the foes I encountered in Revelations were constantly whipping back and forth, making headshots tricky.

It meant that, come the end of the demo, I had actually run out of ammo and had to flee past them in true survival-horror fashion.

I suspect the new item viewfinder object - which helps scan and locate hidden ammo caches but restricts you to a weaponless first-person view - will prove to be very useful in the main game.

The only real criticism I formed during my time with Revelations is that the 3D mode, as in DOA: Dimensions, halves the framerate, making those aforementioned enemies ridiculously hard to target. But the game can induce a few jumps without the 3D on in any case.

We’ll see if the survival-horror spirit of old really has risen from the grave when Revelations is released (date currently to be confirmed).