Capcom held an event in New York City where I was able to get some hands-on time with the E3 demo of Resident Evil Revelations.

The game is set sometime between the fourth and fifth games in the series. The demo begins with Jill Valentine searching for a missing Chris Redfield on an abandoned cruise ship floating somewhere in the Mediterranean. The innards of the boat don’t look like your average cruise ship, and instead have an ambiance and look similar to the mansion found in the original Resident Evil.

The game harks back to the series survival horror roots with cramped corridors and unbeknownst horrors around every corner. Players have the choice of taking in the action from a third-person or first-person camera angle. Controls are similar to recent games in series with aiming done with the circle pad and shooting your weapon achieved by pressing the R and Y buttons together.   

While the enemies in demo didn’t exactly look like zombies, they certainly acted like them. The gray-colored bipedal monsters (some with faces resembling evil seals) would slowly lumber towards Jill and if they successfully reached her would begin dining on Jill with a giant tongue/blood-sucking straw. In the demo, Jill could knock an enemy on-top of her away by repeatedly hitting the B button which would initiate a retaliatory kick. The Capcom representative on-hand was not sure if Jill would have knives, tasers, or other weapons to use during these super close encounters later on in the adventure.

There was really only one puzzle in the demo with Jill finding a rusty screwdriver in a bathtub and then using it to short circuit an electronic panel to open a locked door. Hacking the panel is actually done with a touch-screen mini-game where the stylus is used to place nodes into their correct spots on a small grid.

One interesting item found late in the demo is the supply scanner. If you have fond memories of scanning things in the Metroid Prime games, you may enjoy using the new supply scanner to find hidden items, ammo, and weapons. At one point, I scanned an apparently empty shelf with the scanner and was greeted with some desperately needed ammo. There are still easily visible items that will inexplicably shine to help themselves stand out.

The demo may have been short, but the frightening atmosphere and high production values make this one game that I am strongly looking forward to.

Check out the videos below which together show the entirety of the E3 demo.