That said, I do wonder whether the game’s appearance on HD consoles in May is such a wise idea. It’s easy to see the appeal from Capcom’s perspective: Revelations wasn’t a big hit, and an HD update represents a relatively cheap way of boosting sales while simultaneously demonstrating to those left disappointed by Resident Evil 6 that the franchise hasn’t entirely lost its capacity to scare. But at the same time, Revelations feels like the perfect marriage of form and format, its narrative delivered in the kind of bite-sized morsels that make sense on a handheld, but less so on the big screen. Anime scribe Dai Sato introduces plot twists at a rate that shows the title is fully justified, but console players accustomed to lengthier play sessions may be left with a nasty case of narrative whiplash.
Beyond that, the confines of a smaller screen are precisely what make the Zenobia feel so troublingly claustrophobic. Its enemies may be relatively few in number, but they’re big enough to fill the 3DS’s three-and-a-half inch display, while the illusion of distance provided by the stereoscopic effect induces gasps on the occasions that enemies close that gap. The loss of depth will likely be keenly felt, and I have my doubts that the lumbering atrocities that patrol the Zenobia will punch with a similar weight when their surroundings are expanded to fill a 40-inch screen
It remains to be seen, of course, just what the promised new content comprises, but I sense anything other than a wholesale reinvention may be doomed to failure. Perhaps Capcom should simply leave Revelations in its natural environment on 3DS and release its worryingly compulsive bonus mode as a standalone score-attack title on the download services. Raid mode – Resi 4’s The Mercenaries in all but name – is a terrific addition to Revelations that shows that Resident Evil needn’t abandon its action focus completely. But if Capcom is to welcome us back to the world of survival horror, it needs to understand why the Zenobia sets the pulse racing in a way the series hasn’t since Mikami’s departure.
