survival horror

It’s starting to get to that time of year when you need to start planning for Halloween. Will you be dressing up and hitting the town or will you be …
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The Final Station is a post-apocalyptic survival game with a unique concept: players drive and maintain their own train throughout the wastelands, picking up other survivors along the way to …
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Among the Sleep is among a growing number of what many gamers refer to as “walking simulators” that feature among the Xbox One back catalogue, but what makes Among the …
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The Resident Evil series has seen many iterations over the past twenty years. Some of the earlier titles were released on consoles that are obsolete that many of us don’t have …
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Resident Evil Revelations 2 was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Capcom Entertainment Inc. The last episode was released on March 17, 2015 and the complete season is available for $24.99 on Xbox One. XBLA Fans’ Michael Cheng purchased a copy out of pocket for review purposes.

Alas
We’ve finally reached the end of the crossroads, and it’s been a long journey. You can find reviews of individual episodes at the Resident Evil Revelations 2 hub, which gives finer details on each leg of the campaign. If I were to score to just the campaign, it would be “Try It.” The campaign is somewhat short but fair at its current price tag, and it has a bunch of interesting concepts filled with exciting highs and lows — and a few other concepts that just didn’t work very well. It is not, however, the only gameplay option available.

Resident Evil Revelations 2‘s Raid mode is an arcade-like experience featuring players hunting down hordes of enemies in an arena-like setting while trying to survive and ultimately reach a goal. Players level up from killing enemies, which allows drops of higher level weapons and weapon parts and gives skill points to upgrade perks that increase character durability. It’s similar to a role-playing game in which you play to see your character grow stronger, tackle harder levels, progress forward and hopefully beat the toughest challenges. Raid mode is addicting to play through and features 15 playable characters (two are DLC characters and one is unlockable from an extra episode) and six different weapon types with multiple weapons in each category. I’ve put over 200+ hours into it, which is much more time than I spent on the campaign. Raid is not without its faults, however, as you’ll find out below.

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The journey of a little girl and her teddy bear.. sorta.
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Resident Evil Revelations 2: The Struggle was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Capcom Entertainment Inc. It was released on March 17, 2015 for $4.99. XBLA Fans’ Michael Cheng purchased a copy out of pocket for review purposes.

The Struggle is a side story that bridges the gap between the end of Claire’s campaign and the end of Barry’s campaign and features Moira Burton and a character who was introduced in Episode 3 . As such, for continuity purposes, this episode should not be played until after finishing the main game.

The goal of the extra episodes seems to be to provide an alternative gameplay experience to the original campaign, and The Struggle does not shy away from that. About two minutes into playing The Struggle, I was already dubbing it “Moira Gear Solid 3,” as it contains small animal hunting for rations as well as stealth sections. After a hunting segment, multiple battles take place that function remarkably similar to Revelations 2‘s Raid mode only with the frailty of using a campaign character.

Is this extra episode worth playing?

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Resident Evil Revelations 2: Metamorphosis was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Capcom Entertainment Inc. It was released on March 17, 2015 for $5.99. XBLA Fans’ Michael Cheng purchased a copy out of pocket for review purposes.

Many elements that contributed to the excitement of the first three episodes are missing and players may be left with a strange sense of both satisfaction and disappointment.

Claire’s campaign starts off after the climactic boss fight of Episode 3: Judgment in the middle of the tower nearing the top. Little did I know, the boss fight was the coup de grâce to Claire’s adventures. Claire’s campaign is very short with the top time on Xbox One clocked in at 6 minutes 44 seconds as of time of writing. The one major scene is incredibly anti-climactic with no player interaction at all. It feels like the player went on a great big adventure with Claire for nothing. With brief puzzles thrown in, less than double digit enemy count and players playing most of the episode with a countdown timer, there isn’t much positive about this segment other than at least its short to replay. I can understand not putting in two major bosses in one episode or starting an episode with a major boss fight but one can wonder if the episodes could have been segmented better.

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Resident Evil Revelations 2: Judgment was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Capcom Entertainment Inc. It was released on March 10, 2015 for $5.99. XBLA Fans’ Michael Cheng purchased a copy out of pocket for review purposes.

Resident Evil Revelations 2 Episode 3: Judgment takes players on a ride that includes more action, more action puzzles, more explosions and more ways to die. Players may notice that one or more of this episode’s sections feel like a tribute to the older games in the series.

Claire’s campaign starts off with Claire finding a message left by a character from Episode 2 to go to a factory nearby. Through a series of wild events, players are taken through a few factories, the sewers and eventually into the interior of the island tower before climaxing at the game’s first major non-optional boss fight. Judgment contains more action puzzles than the first two episodes combined, and on the first playthrough, players can easily die if they don’t think on their feet. It’s nice to finally see a real boss fight this time around. A word of warning to streamers using the Twitch app on Xbox One, though: although you can stream the actual boss fight itself, the scene after that is blocked and will show the Twitch pause screen until you reach the result screen. Very disappointing.

Barry’s campaign continues on from the encounter at the end of Contemplation. After the cut-scene plays out, the player starts off in a drained version of the sewers in Claire’s campaign before heading to a deserted mining facility. This segment tries something different: sending the player on an extended fetch quest involving carrying a cube from one location; dropping it on a conveyor belt to be transferred; and repeating a few times before it eventually reaches its destination. Some players may not like the duration of this fetch quest, myself included. It was tolerable the first time and a major annoyance on every subsequent playthrough.

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Resident Evil Revelations 2: Contemplation was developed and published on Xbox One and Xbox 360 by Capcom Entertainment Inc. It was released March 3, 2015 for $5.99. XBLA Fans’ Michael Cheng purchased a copy out of pocket for review purposes.

Fun fact: one of my favorite characters in the Resident Evil series is Jim Chapman from Resident Evil Outbreak and Resident Evil Outbreak File 2. His classic line was “my life is s—.” So hearing Resident Evil Revelations 2: Contemplation‘s Pedro Fernandez spout out, “my life is awesome” in a similarly whiny tone to Jim’s made me crack a smile.

Contemplation has Claire arriving at a seemingly deserted fishing village surrounded by fellow TerraSave members that were abducted and dropped on an unknown island. Once you’re allowed to leave the bar, you can step outside and wander around the fairly open village. This area is reminiscent of Resident Evil 4, and the events that occur during Claire’s campaign continue to follow that game’s vibe. Players will encounter one or more boss fights, which can be challenging on higher difficulties if you’re unprepared from a lack of ammo, a lack of health items or even having the wrong type of ammo. All in all, Claire’s section is a high-octane action sequence with many segments that instill a false lull of safety.

Barry’s campaign follows in the footsteps of Claire’s campaign as he attempts to visit Moira’s last known position. While the tougher monsters exist in Barry’s second episode campaign, the section as a whole is fairly uneventful. There is only one major event in Barry’s segment that might not even happen depending on the actions taken in Claire’s section. Barry’s episode two campaign was very disappointing; however, it’s where most of the major story reveals occur, preventing it from being a complete waste of time.

The story is making good strides forward and has the potential to be captivating — despite being made up of nothing but convenient plot twists and reveals — and the major villain is an interesting throwback to a previous Resident Evil title that very vaguely mentions this character.

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