Resident Evil: Revelations Review

Credit where it is due: getting this out of a 3DS was an engineering stunt, and the scanning mechanic gives the exploration a reason to look at walls that the console entries never found. The ooze enemies are unsettling in the specific way of things that used to be people and forgot the shape, and Jill's stretches aboard the derelict liner have moments of real quiet. The trouble is that the ship is mostly the same three brass corridors, the campaign keeps cutting away to jungle and snowfield chapters starring characters nobody asked about, and the episodic structure inserts a recap into a game you have not put down.

The plot is the series at its most impenetrable, an unbroken chain of double crosses involving an organization whose goals shift by cutscene. Raid mode, a loot driven arcade grind, is the most replayable thing in the package by a distance. On a television it looks exactly like the portable game it is.