Reviewing Monsters: Resident Evil Revelations 2

Resident Evil: Revelations 2 [2015]

Certainly not the last Resident Evil game by a long shot -- it's released five years ago, we've got RE7, the remakes of RE2 and RE3, and a bunch of other side-games in-between them -- but it's going to be our last Resident Evil review until we get good high-def pictures of Resident Evil VIII's monsters.

Not a whole ton to say here, Revelations 2 basically takes up the characters that have been somewhat ignored by more recent mainline series games (RE2's Claire Redfield, plus fandom favourite side character Barry Burton from the first game) and tosses them into a storyline! This is a sort of an attempt at course-correction after Resident Evil 6, attempting to bring the series from super-action back to horror, although emphasis on the 'attempt', and they arguably they wouldn't really succeed until REVII. 

This one, in particular, tries just a bit too hard to shoehorn an eye-rolling amount of blood'n'gore in its monster designs, as well as trying to shoehorn in a psychological-horror bit with the T-Phobos virus that I don't feel worked out quite as well as they intended.

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The Story

After the events of Resident Evil CODE: Veronica, Claire Redfield has chosen a different path and has became the head of the anti-bioterror protest organization TerraSave (something detailed in some tie-in movies released much earlier). However, during a celebration in TerraSave headquarters, Claire and one of her partners, Moira Burton (daughter of former STARS agent Barry Burton), gets captured by a group of mysterious masked assailants. Claire and Moira wakes up in an abandoned prison, finding themselves fighting against monstrous shambling creatures. As they try to survive the labyrinthine prison, a female voice called the 'Overseer' guides them through the compound with cryptic poetry-like hints. To their despair, after fighting their way through the prison, they find out that the prison itself is located on the remote Sejm Island. Claire and Moira make their way to a neighbouring town, making allies out of a group of abductees -- Neil Fisher, Gabriel Chavez, Pedro Fernandez and the young girl Natalia Korda-- and try to formulate a plan to escape. However, the Overseer betrays them, turning on loud alarms that draw the monsters to them. Pedro and Gabriel are killed, while Natalia is abducted. 

Claire's group fight through traps and monsters to get to the Overseer's base, and later find out that Neil Fisher is actually a mole from the now-defunct FBC (the antagonists in Revelations), and is the true mastermind of the kidnapping. He sold the TerraSave members to the Overseer, who identifies herself as Alex Wesker (sister of longtime franchise antagonist Albert Wesker). However, Alex Wesker betrays Neil, and injects him with a sample of the Uroboros virus, and his mutated form is put down by Moira. Alex, meanwhile, has placed Natalia and sent her via machinery into the depths of the facility, before giving a speech and abruptly committing suicide. As the base self-destructs, Moira helps Claire to escape but gets herself trapped by debris.

When Claire comes to, she wakes up and is questioned by Moira's father Barry Burton. Six months later, after desperately looking for clues, Barry goes off to the island alone, meeting the amnesiac Natalia Korda. While looking normal, Barry soon finds out that Natalia has a strange inhuman ability to detect B.O.W. locations, even invisible ones. Barry and Natalia journey through the island, eventually arriving on Alex Wesker's facility. They are stalked by Alex Wesker, who, naturally, survived her 'suicide' albeit in a mutated form. Alex mocks Barry, claiming to have killed Moira. As Barry and Natalia escape from Alex and her monsters, Barry reveals a bunch of backstory between him and Moira. Natalia herself has to struggle with the revelation that she is now suffering from split personality, as Alex has implanted part of her consciousness into Natalia's body. 

As they fight deeper into Alex's hideout, Alex mutates into a giant Uroboros monster while ranting about her obsession of becoming immortal. Barry ends up being assisted by Moira (who's not dead and has been hiding in the island) and Claire Redfield, who arrives as backup. Barry and Claire hold off the giant Alex Wesker mutation, until she's ultimately destroyed with a rocket launcher. The four of them head back to the mainland as BSAA troops arrive to purge the remaining B.O.W.'s on the island. 

The epilogue of the game sets up the plot of Resident Evil 6 as Chris Redfield prepares to go to China, while unknown to anyone, the consciousness of Alex Wesker starts to take over Natalia...

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Afflicted

This game's virus is the T-Phobos, yet another variant of the T-Virus that turns the humans into 'Afflicted'. Which... is basically zombies tossed through a layer of 2010's-era gore detail and some 'oh no, these guys got tortured terribly' gross-out imagery. A pretty neat model, but nothing too different from regular zombies if we're being super honest. T-Phobos is apparently a virus that causes mutations specifically, turning them zombie-like and violent towards any un-infected, after its hosts experiences extreme fear, so of course Alex Wesker has this massive prison where she tortures the inhabitants of Sejm Island. It's... it's honestly a bunch of more obvious horror movie tropes and zombie survival tropes that I don't feel gel particularly well with the rest of the franchise. Not so much that it feels wrong, but I did roll my eyes a couple of times when reading through the summary of the T-Phobos and the Afflicted. I dunno, maybe as a standalone game concept it'd be neat, but as part of a long-running franchise with so many different viruses and settings, this one felt a bit too try-hard for me. Maybe I'd feel better about it if I played through the story? I dunno. 

Apparently all the Afflicted were kept in total darkness because Alex Wesker is a sadist, which is why these Afflicted are vulnerable to light and can be stunned with your flashlight. Also, all the Afflicted are men, since apparently the T-Phobos kills female hosts? Which is somewhat relevant because most of our main characters (bar Barry) are women, but eh, unlike the Sea Creeper difference in the preivous Revelations game, all this earns from me is a shrug. Depending on who you ask in the internet, this is either a bizarre roundabout way of feminism or just the developers being lazy to create women-zombie models. 

Rotten

So the angry Ganados-style Afflicted turn out to be only halfway through the process of zombification, and afterwards they deteriorate into the Rotten, which are shambling, decomposed walking corpses. The model certainly looks gloriously wretched and nasty, looking more mummy-like than rabid... although they're basically just, well, zombies in a nastier state of decay. It's different enough from the traditional T or C virus zombies in the franchise, but, again, it's kind of mundane and honestly the Afflicted/Rotten combo feels so much less practical as a bioweapon than most of the other alphabet viruses we've seen in the franchise. 

Cyst

Less of an enemy and more of a hazard, the Cyst are just... well, giant cysts, massive chunks of flesh created by the T-Phobos. They explode if you get near them. These Cysts are found when certain Afflicted with tumours are shot, and a bunch of their tissue lumps fall onto the ground and is allowed to grow, at which point they rapidly grow into these Cysts. Not much to say here, it sure is a gross cyst and it sure is consistent with the Resident Evil aesthetic of tumorous fleshglobs... although after seeing the Globster from the previous game, this one is certainly more than a bit underwhelming. 

Sploder

These Sploders are at least a fair bit creepier! We've seen bloated explosive zombies in the franchise before, but this one is actually particularly nasty-looking. This is less of a fat person and one whose stomach has clearly mutated and grown into this mass of nasty bloated tumorous flesh. Even the dude's head has been reduced into nothing but a fungus-esque stump. These Sploders are apparently what happens when an Afflicted 'dies', so to speak, instead of turning into a Rotten, where the T-Phobos goes wild in trying to repair the damage into the body, and, well, turns the body into a barely-functioning giant exploding mass of volatile tissue with legs. Nothing that I feel is particularly fresh to the franchise, but that sure is a nasty looking model! 

Iron Head & Vulcanblubber

Yeah, I think one of my biggest problem with this game is that it feels like it's desperately trying to combine random tropes from different horror games or movies in an attempt to really go back to horror, and Iron Head here is clearly obviously a Pyramid Head wannabe from Silent Hill. One of the Silent Hill games even takes place in a prison, doesn't it? the metal helmets are kinda cool, I guess, and so is the stapled wound across the chest, but it feels so boring compared to similar enemies like the Executioner Majini from previous games. It fits the torture-dungeon prison aesthetic for sure, it's just an aesthetic that I don't find to be particularly interesting. 

The Vulcanblubber is also pretty bland, another generic 'look at all the blood splattered around this guy' enemy with a face that's all wrapped up in bandages and stuff. He's a fat man who uses a pot fileld with explosive things and is basically sort of a mobile artillery or something. Again, neither one of these are terrible designs, but they do feel like they belong in a different sort of horror game. 

Giant Whip Spider

I am thankful for obligatory monster type, though. The Giant Whip Spider is pretty simple, just a giant version of the real-life Amblypygia, but to someone who's never seen a Whip Spider before they look weirdly removed enough from regular spiders and scorpions to look extra unsettling. And... and whip spiders already look pretty unsettling, aren't they? Even though whip spiders are actually notoriously docile and timid. Pretty cool to see a more obscure animal make it into a video game, even if they don't necessarily do much with this one. 

Orthrus

Obligatory zombie dog time, this one named after the two-headed dog from Greek mythology, sibling of the three-headed Cerberus. The Orthrus is our obligatory zombie dog, and... yeah, this one feels extra Silent Hill-y with its haunting stretched eyeless skull-face that makes it look genuinely bizarre, like some mutant skull gas mask thing. It sure feels like its own brand of creepy instead of yet another rehashed zombie dog. That alone would make the Orthrus already creepy enough (even if the mass of knives stabbed onto its flesh is a bit too much), but look at that second screenshot to see where its real mouth is!

Yeah, the entire head is just the upper jaw, and the actual mouth is under where you'd think the Orthrus's 'neck' is, and it's shaped like a giant bear-trap, too. An utterly wacky design in all the right ways, and while there isn't admittedly a whole ton of competition in this game, the Orthrus is definitely my favourite from this one. 

Revenant

Thankfully, from the Orthus onwards at least none of the monsters look boring? The Revenant here looks a bit way too over-the-top, though, hopping off the 'disturbingly gory' train and straight up to 'ridiculously over-the-top', and not even in the funny way. It's just trying to be too hard to be oh-so-edgy, but... I dunno. It sure is horrifying, with the limbs being mismatched and sewn together like that, and the expression on this guy's face and two mouths does look pitiful and scary... but I dunno, the Revenants kind of go a bit over-the-top and it ends up becoming just a bit too ridiculous. I might like it a bit better if they maybe nixed one or two details from this thing. 

Like, okay, there's a bit of a theme of 'how afraid can you get' with Revelations 2 and T-Phobos, and this sure is a tortured and mutilated guy and that's terrifying in a basic sense, but... but that's honestly all about it. I do like that they move like puppets, but at the same time I can't honestly say that this is a design I prefer over a good 90% of the other monsters in this franchise.  

Slinger

Kind of neat, even if it does look like an attempt to reinvent G-Birkin. I actually like this one, the Slinger here is apparently created by Uroboros Virus instead of the T-Phobos, and while it's a pretty simple giant flesh-mutant monster, I do like that it's got random diving-suit viewing windoes or something welded onto its flesh. It looks pretty different from the 'mass of black tendril' Uroboros monsters, but I guess that the regular Uroboros parts are hidden within that swollen sacks of flesh, and the Slinger, well, slings these parasites that explode on impact. Neat. 

Splasher

Another one that sort of earns a shrug from me, although I do appreciate the amount of detail put into this one. That right arm is just a mutated mass of bones and skulls with some of them looking like they're screaming, and I appreciate the huge swollen right leg, that one random arm sprouting out and reaching towards the wrong direction, and the lump of mass on the lady's chin. Another one that's created similarly to the Revenant and moves around like dolls, and they use that giant bone arm to sling pus at you. Again... eh. I think this one might be the favourite out of the Revenant, Slinger and Splasher, but they're all kinda just trying too hard. 

Glasp

Oh, okay, this bug monster is actually pretty neat. After so many enemies that are just 'look at how gory we can get', the Glasp here... it's a weird giant flea monster with a pair of extra wings, and a face that looks positively nasty like some sort of hag, and a mass of hair. The Glasp's main face is a weird nasty Pac-Man mouth, but there's actually the remnants of a human face looking up. The Glasp, like RE4's Novistadores, are creepy flying bugs that also have the power to turn invisible with the aid of a gas. As this shot shows us, not only does it have the weird Pac-Man mouth, it's got a long, vertical mouth running down the bottom of its abdomen. Apparently that mouth is where it vomits out its tiny grub babies after it catches and kills you. 

I like the Glasp on principle because it's a creepy bug monster and it's more exciting than the torture chamber rejects, but it's also kind of whatever to me. 

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BOSSES:

Mutant Pedro

He's significant because he's a character, Pedro Fernandez, and someone Claire runs around with for a while before he gets killed... but he's just some zombie dude (well, 'Afflicted') who's mutated like a milder case of the G-virus, sprouting eyeballs and having his right hand swelling and merging with the hand drill he's holding. Honestly kind of underwhelming. 

Monster Neil

Neil Fisher is another character in the game that gets mutated, this time by the Uroboros Virus. He sure gets real jacked, particularly in the thighs, although there's not much to really say here. His arm is pretty consistent with Resident Evil 5's Uroboros mutants, and his left arm looks like a Rob Liefield artwork. He sure is a giant jacked-up mutant man.

Durga

Kind of more interesting? The Durga here is a fusion of the Uroboros Virus and a bunch of Revenant corpses, and borrows its name from a multi-armed goddess in Hindu mythology. We've seen these sort of 'monster that is a fusion of a mass of corpses' before; like Derek Simmons' fly form, or Nyx, or Javier Hidalgo... but for the most part they tend to take on a more recognizable form. Durga, as messy as it looks, actually does look like just a bunch of random corpses stacked on each other, with some recognizable limbs from a Splasher or a Revenant strewn here and there. And just look at that screenshot, you can more appreciate that there's like a half-dozen faces that are just stretched apart like someone trying to make a tapestry or something. 

Actually a pretty nasty-looking thing, and I like this significantly more than the Revenants and Splashers it's made up of, The Wiki compares this to a 'tree', and as you fight it the Durga's true Uroboros 'stem' will reveal itself. Not my favourite boss by a long shot, but a pretty cool and nasty visual that actually makes me go 'oh, that's actually creepy'. 

Alex Wesker

So yeah, Albert's got a sister. Alex Wesker, as most Resident Evil villains are wont to, gets two monster forms. Originally showing off as basically female Albert Wesker during the Claire campaign, after a botched suicide attempt and the T-Phobos activating within her, she gets turned into a weird old crone-like woman that stalks Barry during his campaign. There's a whole ton of storyline involving a play at immortality and taking over a little girl's body, but we're here to talk about monsters. Alex's first form is... it's actually pretty nastily scary, and in all the best ways possible. Usually these first forms either don't try to look too monstrous, or, at least, keeps a lot of the human parts intact, but Alex Wesker's first form looks pretty hideous. I'm not sure what part of it looks the most nasty. Those Uroboros tentacles coming out of her stomach like guts spilling out of a stomach wound? The mass of tumours on her chest? The emaciated limbs? I'm going to say that screaming, wretched face that's partially merged into her shoulders. 

Alex then mutates even further, and ends up sort of looking kind of like a monster from the Alien franchise or something, with how thin and glossy a lot of her body parts are. The stomach-tendrils are still there, albeit wrapped around what remains of her spine. It actually looks monstrous and not cool at all, and I actually approve of this final design a lot. Not too much to say here, but I'm actually kind of a big fan of Alex Wesker's monster forms. 

Raid Mode Giant Monsters

As part of the multiplayer part of the game are these 'giant monster' events, where players have to fight these kaiju-sized titan versions of regular enemies... some of which look significantly creepier when they are gigantic, particularly RE6's Rasklapanje or this game's Glasps, as shown here. The monsters that get blown up into giants are based on Ironheads, Huntesr, Afflicted, Mutant Pedro, Revenants, Scagdeads, Executioner Majini, Vulcanblubber, Rasklapanje, Rotten, Orthrus and Glasp. Needless to say, they're non-canon as far as most of Resident Evil goes, but it's neat to acknowledge them here.

Some of the names are pretty generic cool giant monster names (Drednought, Juggernaut, Chaos, Destruction, Ichor, Pulverizer, Defiler, Plague), but some draw theirs from Greek mythology (Medusa, Stheno, Euryale, Charon, Hydra, Aello, Ocypete), Norse (Surtr), Egyptian (Shezmu) or Lovecraft's works (Dagon, Innsmouth). Not much to say here, they sure look hauntingly huge.