Horror Returns

From what was a brilliant survival horror series, the Resident Evil series has taken quite a action orientated turn losing the charm of what made the original game great. Thankfully the first Revelations game went back to the series roots trading gun-ho combat with actual survival horror and we see the series return in Revelations 2.

At TGS, we played a quick demo of Revelations 2 running on the Xbox One. First of all, the game ran quite smoothly and visuals were quite amazing in some scenes – it’s another step up above RE6. The demo chucked characters Claire Redfield and Moira Burton into a abandoned prison. The setting was quite similar to the SAW movies with the characters not knowing how they got there and with the kidnapper watching and taunting characters as you progress.

The gameplay was pretty much Resident Evil third person so if you’ve played previous games before – you’ll feel right at home. The newest addition to the mechanics is the ability to switch between Claire and Moira just like in Resident Evil 5 with each characters providing their strength and weaknesses. Claire is the protector and players will utilise her for most of the combat moves. She handles firearms when Moira refuses to. However Moira has the ability to search out goods similar to Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite. Using her torch – Moira can shine on important things such as ammo and health plus also find objectives like that darn missing key to unlock the door. Moira can also deal damage to enemies using melee weapons.

The demo has me fumbling around dark corridors and stairs avoiding zombies jumping out at me. It wasn’t hard, maybe because the Capcom rep made me select Casual after seeing some other journos die (lol) but I did find some occasions where I was out of ammo using a combination of dodges and melee to defeat the undead. I assume the next difficulty level would be more my style of gameplay with less ammo and more damage.

“It wasn’t hard, maybe because the Capcom rep made me select Casual after seeing some other journos die (lol).”

My time with Revelations 2 was a short one but I enjoyed what was presented. The demo ran smoothly and it didn’t felt clunky like previous Resident Evil games. The rep did confirmed that co-op play is available but via local offline multi-player only – so invite a mate over for some Claire and Moira bonding. Resident Evil Revelations 2 doesn’t feel like a totally new achievement for the franchise but the return to survival horror proves that Capcom still knows what made Resident Evil great.

Resident Evil Revelations 2 brings the horrors in 2015. The preview demo was played in English on the Xbox One during the Tokyo Game Show 2014.

Read more coverage on Tokyo Game Show here.