Previews

Monster hunting

Resident Evil: Revelations, the second title in the franchise to hit Nintendo's 3DS, is set between the fourth and fifth entries in the core series. It centres around the founding of the B.S.A.A.3, a new monster hunting club headed up by Resident Evil regulars Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, and sees players switching character perspectives a number of times during play.

While you'll face off against all manner of zombies during the game, the real enemies pulling the strings are humans. A terrorist organisation known as Veltro is in possession of a virus which it intends to deploy to the Earth's waters, turning the infected into flesh eating freaks, meaning the monster slaying action is set against the backdrop of a bioterrorism plot.

Lost at sea

Two gameplay sections shown off to date take place in contrasting settings. Starring Jill and a new character called Parker, the first is set on a creature infested cruise ship in the Mediterranean. It's a highly atmospheric location, with peeling paint, spiral staircases and neatly laid dinner tables giving the impression of an abandoned stately home. There are locked rooms to escape and plenty of dark, claustrophobic corridors to creep through, with enemies springing out of the shadows when you least expect it, and smoke obscuring living corpses until players are well within munching distance.

The second features Chris and new female pal Jessica exploring the snowy wastes of the Arctic tundra. Despite the shift from the cramped cruise ship environment to a more open location, the hostile climate and abundance of zombie snow dogs mean this section's no less chilling, with plenty of tense, action packed encounters on offer.

Zombie slaying

True to series tradition, players have to manage their ammo supply so as not to get caught short in combat, which feels slick and robust, something that's partly attributable to the long-overdue addition of a first-person aiming camera that makes shooting less fiddly than in previous Resident Evil games. A new supply scanner gadget is used to reveal items hidden from sight, pinging when they're in range and lighting up when targeted.

Also new is the B.O.W. Decoy, a grenade that attracts enemies towards it before exploding. It's a great way to manage crowds of zombies when your ammunition is running low and you're feeling overwhelmed, which is exactly what happens when Chris falls down a collapsing platform and injures his leg in one scene, leaving him lying wounded and attempting to fight off waves and waves of feral dogs with a pistol and dwindling bullets.

It may be on a handheld with a relatively small screen, but Revelations feels like a fully-fledged Resident Evil game. There's tense monster-slaying, daft B-movie dialogue, and the visuals are on a par with the best looking 3DS games to date. For fans of the series and newcomers alike, it promises to offer a thrilling action horror experience and a great way to kick off 2012.