[Review] Resident Evil: Revelations HD (Wii U)

From a technical perspective, Revelations HD isn’t something to shake a stick at. It’s a 3DS port, after all, and if you pay too much attention to insignificant textures (dripping blood, viscous fluids, etc) you might find it to be somewhat distracting. On the whole, however, the textures have upscaled quite well; the same, unfortunately, cannot be said for animations and AI behaviors. Allies in particular don’t move how they should, they don’t react to stimuli how they should, and they certainly don’t deal with enemies and bosses how they should. Much like the inane jokes I discussed earlier, it’s a minor frustration that occasionally breaks the immersion, and something I wish they would have fixed.

Still, on the whole they certainly did a good job with the port, and only those who care greatly about technical finesse or flawless visual presentation will find it to be at all game-breaking. And those types of people do exist. The point I would make to them, though, is that this game looks better than Resident Evil 4 (both artistically and technically, actually) and we had no problem immersing ourselves in that game.

Wii U owners know that we have a hardware advantage over other consoles: We can have Off-TV play, we can have Miiverse support, we can have IR pointer controls, and we can have touch-screen puzzles. Revelations HD, unfortunately, only uses three of those things, leaving out the sought-after Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition Wiimote+Nunchuck control option in lieu of supporting the Classic Controller Pro and the Gamepad. It– like so many of the issues I have with this game– certainly doesn’t ruin the experience, but it would have been much more fun to play through with that option.

Thankfully Capcom did not jump the shark entirely, because those awesome wiring puzzles from the 3DS version are back, and they do a fantastic job of truly adding something intangible to the experience here as well. Additionally, Off-TV play is present, so you can plug in some headphones and go at it under the safety of your bedsheets if you want, and there’s a bit of Miiverse integration in the form of “Death Messages” (the games allows you to post whenever you die) and “Creature Messages” (messages that appear above creature’s heads in Raid Mode).