3/5 ★ – DirtyMidnighter's review of Resident Evil: Revelations.

The idea of a full-fledged Resident Evil game coming exclusively to the 3DS was pretty wild at the time, an exciting proposition that was a huge factor in my decision to buy Nintendo's new handheld. So when RE:R came out, I was honestly, a bit underwhelmed. It's not necessarily a bad game, it's just not a great Resident Evil game. For starters, the 3DS is not an optimal way to enjoy this type of game. The small, angular handheld is a hand cramp waiting to happen. It's not exactly a highly immersive horror experience when you're staring at a screen the size of a post-it note. Also, the story is unfortunately pretty forgettable. Despite filling in a pretty important period of time in Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield's timeline, it just comes off as filler that needlessly complicates the RE lore by adding yet another city-wide outbreak disaster scenario that doesn't come close to Racoon City in terms of build-up or believability. There's also some really disposable side-characters who show up with the sole purpose of getting killed off. I do appreciate the emphasis on classic survival horror mechanics in Jill's sections on the cruise ship, but they are frequently interrupted by bland actiony shoot-em-up levels that were already done better in RE4 and 5. Anyway, they released a better version of the game on consoles so go play that version. After all, it is canon, so you'll need it for your full Resident Evil series playthroughs. But yeah, this is my bottom of the barrel mainline RE game.