Resident Evil: Revelations (Wii U) Review

Resident Evil: Revelations stars the well-known Jill Valentine as the main protagonist, who is accompanied by her new partner, Parker Luciani - a fellow member of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance and former agent of the Federal Bioterrorism Commission. Together, they set out on an assignment led by Director O'Brian, who has recently lost contact with Chris Redfield and his partner Jessica Sherawat. O'Brian directs Valentine and Luciani to the missing agents' last known location, the Queen Zenobia, a ship located in the Mediterranean Sea.

As well as following the activities of Chris, Jill and their new partners, Resident Evil: Revelations introduces two new characters to the series; Keith Lumley and Quint Cetcham. Whilst the game does have a light-hearted tone, mixed with a serious concept as a whole, the dialogue between these two new characters is even more hilarious - especially since Quint is the biggest nerd in the BSAA, meaning that Keith can always crack a joke or two about that.

Although originally a handheld title, Resident Evil: Revelations has very high production values, making it feel like a major instalment in the franchise. As well as adding some new content into the mix for this expanded port, Capcom have also made a few changes to the campaign and several improvements in Raid Mode.

Rather than taking the action based route which recent offerings in the franchise have done, Resident Evil: Revelations instead goes back to the series' roots of survival horror, including lots of closed-in places, which will make players feel really claustrophobic!

Throughout the campaign, players will come across various weapons and Custom Parts. Custom Parts can be assigned to weapons to increase specific stats of that weapon, such as the firing rate and size of the magazine. There are also some of these which are known as Illegal Custom Parts, which give weapons special abilities, like being able to charge shots before you fire them off - these charged shots knock the enemy back and do extra damage, meaning players can save ammo.

Speaking of ammo, Capcom have included a tougher difficulty for this version of Resident Evil: Revelations known as Infernal. This difficulty provides a real challenge for players, even veterans of the series will find themselves struggling at some point during Infernal. The difficulty basically consists of low ammo drop rates and extremely high enemy spawn rates; meaning that enemies are thrown at players left, right and centre whilst the player tries to fend them off with their limited ammo.

Before tacking this new challenge, it is recommended that players first get geared up for it, by playing through the game on Normal difficulty to pick up weapons and Custom Parts. Thankfully, weapons and Custom Parts can be carried over to the Infernal play-through by simply starting the New Game+ mode.

This wouldn't be a Resident Evil game without any form of an extra mode, but rather than the fan favourite Mercenaries making a return, Capcom decided to go all out and create a whole new mode known as Raid Mode.

Raid Mode is made up of twenty stages (plus a huge bonus stage!) which are usually short missions taken from segments of the campaign, but the selling point here is that players can also play with friends and strangers via. Nintendo Network. There is also a levelling up component in this mode, with players receiving an amount of experience points, which is dependent by how many enemies they killed and what rank they got for that stage.

Throughout Raid Mode, players will be able to find or purchase various different weapons which have their very own stats depending on what level the player has to be to equip the weapon. Custom Parts and Illegal Custom Parts can also be found throughout Raid Mode, but like the weapons they are tied to Raid Mode and cannot be equipped when playing the campaign.

As well as including all of the content from the 3DS version, Capcom have also added the fan favourite, H.U.N.K and FBC member, Rachael as playable characters in Raid Mode. Not only this, but all new Custom Parts have been included and there are also some unique weapons, known as "tagged" weapons. These have unique modifications, dependent on which tags they possess. For example, a weapon with the tag "Speed Shot" has increased fire rate and magazine size.

Another feature, which is exclusive to the Wii U version, is the ability to post Death Messages to Miiverse when players meet their fate in the campaign. Players can also post a Creature Message from within Raid Mode and it will be displayed when they show up in someone else's game. Whilst these aren't ground breaking features by any means, they are quite fun to utilise!

In terms of control methods Resident Evil: Revelations supports, players can play the game on the TV with the inventory and map displayed on the GamePad's touchscreen or they can play the game using just the TV with the GamePad as a controller, or solely on the GamePad. For those that don't feel comfortable using the Wii U's tablet controller, Capcom have included support for the Wii U Pro Controller. No Wii Remote and Nunchuck support though, sadly!