the other hand...there's a gun, covered in slime. And on the other hand, this was a handheld

game. A great handheld game, but a handheld game nonetheless.

And what's great on a handheld, isn't always as great on a big screen.

Now, if you don't have a Nintendo 3DS, you missed out on something pretty special in

Resident Evil: Revelations. It was a return to form, in a lot of ways. It brought the

series back to something a little more Resident Evil and a little less Rambo. And now, a year

later, this fantastic handheld game...has made its way to home consoles.

Whoa. Calm down there, Jessica. The title for sweet asses in Resident Evil

is...kind of occupied.

Revelations is a kind of spin-off, that takes place between the fifth game...and the legendary

fourth game. What made it so great is that...it was like a rebalancing of the series' components.

It still plays like four and five, but it scales back that action movie feel and reestablishes

the atmosphere of the early games. Case in point,

the desolate Queen Zenobia, which is still one of the series' creepiest settings.

So you're starting with a pretty awesome 3DS game, right? And the general idea is to take

that game, bring it to more powerful hardware, improve things. But the funny thing is...even

though Revelations has been improved technically, it's doesn't look nearly as impressive in

this new form.

And that's the irony here. Revelations looked stunning on the less-powerful 3DS, but in

HD...it's really underwhelming. And again, that certainly has a effect on the game's

vibe, which is a lot less effective. I mean, it's still a creepy game and it does manage

tension, but...you can always tell this was a handheld game blown up for a bigger screen.

And to be fair, that's actually understandable.

Even if poor performance is less so.

Fortunately, there's also some good news here. That's that Revelations at least plays great

in HD. I mean, there's an argument to be made that no Resident Evil game plays great, but...this

one is as good as any other. And if you liked popping off head shots in Resident Evil 4

and blowing sh*t up and then re-blowing it up in Resident Evil 5, you should have no

problem with Revelations. And it's still really fun to play.

Know what's weird about reviewing remakes like this? I mean, I've spent this whole time

criticizing the game and comparing it negatively to the original, but...it's still really good.

Resident Evil 4 is one of my all-time favorite games, and Revelations is the first one since

to even come close to that feeling. It's a perfect mixture of the action and atmosphere

the series has so often struggled to balance.

Even on the PS3, even though it's not as good as the original, this is the best Resident

Evil in years.