Talking about My Revelations

With Revelations 2 is almost upon us now, I thought it would be a good time to reflect back on the first Revelations game and what made it so great. I first played Revelations shortly after getting a Nintendo 3DS so the experience is a little less than a year ago and still pretty fresh in my mind. I find Revelations' acclaim a little unwarranted, I mean sure it was miles better than Resident Evil 6 but let's not make it sound like the second coming of Resident Evil 4. I do want to point out what made Revelations better than most recent RE entries

1. No More Umbrella
Let's face it, the original storyline that spans across the first 3 RE games is now a convoluted mess thanks to the many different writers who pitched in over the years. It's hard to make an sense of the Umbrella legacy anymore or tie up the loose ends which Capcom so clumsily attempted to in RE5. Thankfully, Revelations told a new story much like RE4 did without much ties to the original storyline aside from the iconic characters appearing. No silly homages to the series like what happened in RE5 Gold or RE6, it was a servicable story with nice twists and a brand new villain.

Remember the feeling when you first got the Colt Python?

2. Simple Guns
The RE games has always placed a strong emphasis on the guns used but in the early games, you are able to figure out which weapon works best against which enemies because the weapons were slowly introduced into the game as you play. That way you formed a strong bond with the weapons because you become very familiar with the ones you are using before you get a new toy. In RE6, I actually lost track of which ammunition goes to which weapon when I was clearing the character inventory. Too much awesome weaponry was clearly not a good thing and Revelations wisely scaled back on the number of weapons deployed. It doesn't introduced the weapons into the game as masterfully as the old games but at least, it was manageable and fun.

Aside from this, there are some aspects which makes RE Revelations not so great like the annoying new side characters and episodic chapters. In the end given the dire strait predicament of the series right now, the first Revelations certainly did more right than wrong but it still pales in comparisons to the early RE games under Mikami's supervision.