While I wait for UPS to get their shit together and actually deliver my "release-day delivery" copy of RE: Revelations, I thought I might get some impressions from folks in the GB community. I'm sure this is a rather niche audience purchase since it requires both a 3DS and a love of RE, but since playing the demo, I've been rather excited.

So what has your experience been like? Do you find that the atmosphere or/and scares are possible on a handheld? Have you been playing with or without the 3D? Anybody playing with the circle-pad? Looking forward to seeing some impressions!

I'm playing without the circle pad, with 3D on. I think the 3D is actually pretty decent, much better than Mercs, and it seems better than the demo. That could just be my imagination though. It seems to help me gauge where enemies are a bit better, so there's a slight gameplay advantage. Losing AA kind of sucks, but oh well. The story mode seems alright, but goddamn the new partner characters are annoying. They do jack shit for damage, they're poorly written, and Jill's new partner has the fattest fucking face. It seems like they wanted to model him on Russell Crowe or something, but they took his face after he gained all that weight and put it on the body from Gladiator. It's horrible.

In terms of scares, it's tense and probably creepier than RE4/5, but it's never going to compare to an Amnesia or anything. Honestly, if you're in it for the scares you might want to not use the circle pad actually. It restricts you a bit and makes you less powerful. Backing up and frantically blindfiring at a charging boss is kind of awesome, even if it is a moment made possible by clunkiness.

For me, the real surprise is the Raid mode. Holy shit guys, this is awesome. Think Diablo meets Resident Evil. There is leveling with enemies scaling to your level. There are loot drops. You can socket "gems" (parts). Enemies have special modifiers. I haven't tried it coop or online, and I probably won't because I don't know anyone locally with a 3DS and there's no voice chat, but it seems perfect for the bus when you don't want to invest yourself in something atmospheric and- HOLY SHIT A LEVEL 7 HANDGUN.

I got it the day it came out along with the Circle Pad Pro and I have to say that it's been an awesome experience, great sound, 3D looks really nice, gameplay is fun, game actually does scare you at times. I'm really happy with my purchase.

Playing with CPP, I absolutely love it. Very good mix of old and new RE. Playing with 3D off, for some reason I feel like the game gets darker when you play it in 3D, and for an already very dark game, that is bad juju. I am at my first underwater section. I fucking hate underwater parts in any video game, so there you go. Really looking forward to raid mode.

I've been getting through it slower than I'd like, had some real bad family stuff which obviously took precedence over it. I think I'm on Episode 4 or 5, and I am enjoying it. The circle pad makes it better to play but it's not exactly essential to the experience.

Got it with the pad and finished it/ Gotten to level 50 in Raid mode etc. I think the game is better than 5 but not a patch on 4. It's tense, scary would be the wrong word as the only real scares are cheap jumps. It's a bit like Dead Space in the ship sections although very few enemies pop up from behind. The sections I liked the least are the quint/keith and Terragrigia sequences that relied a little too much on back into a corner and holding off wave after wave with a shotgun.

The game does get very, very action heavy in the back half of the game and some of the setpiece moments are really good. It clearly looks gorgeous and the 3D is awesome when you use the ingame very strong option. The swimming sections were a pain initially as they didn't auto change to inverted and I had a lot more problems than I thought I would.( The option to invert them doesn't show up until youve reached that section)

It's a very cool game I like that it's hugely stupid... Resident Evil has always been fucking ridiculous. Some of the dialogue is insanely funny... probably unintentionally so and I love it for that. I like the designs... even the one legged swimsuit and the cutscenes are all pretty awesome. I even enjoyed the on rails shooty sections.

Raid mode is wonderful, wonderfully wonderful, but if theres one major complaint it is that there needed to be some kind of communication system in the game even if it was just basic "come here" "stay" commands. Soooo many guns, mods, characters and skins to unlock along with endless missions and weird viral achievements.

edit - Oh and the music is fantastic!

I just beat the second boss.

I think the game does a pretty good job of forcing you to manage ammo and herbs and such. I don't like how hard it is to tell when enemies are staggered and you can melee them though. Melee in general seems a lot less viable than in 4 and 5.

Also, the loads between areas are the worst. Throw a load screen up there for 20 seconds! It's already compartmentalized, and I don't want to see the game drop to sub 1 FPS every time it streams in a new area. It looks terrible and is super easily fixed.

@GloomyTangent: Yeah, I didn't melee a single enemy in the game after messing with it in the demo, It pretty much always resulted in me taking damage.

Glad people are liking it, can't wait to get mine in the mail

I bought the game and I also picked up a Circle Pad Pro. I think it plays really well. I am only on episode 4. The graphics are pleasing and the sound design is really well done. I strongly recommend experiencing this game with headphones.

If you want to play the game, strongly consider the circle pad.

Having fun. I don't care about the bulk of the pro since screw playing games outside my house.

Its got a good enough quality to it and its pretty decent with its difficulty with how ammo and herbs are handled, although it does skip away from the main Character Jill away to events and some characters that are just dull sometimes, i did find myself getting bored of it about 5 or 6 hours in since the story itself seems very disconnected from the whole big picture of what the main series RE has been about which makes the story a bit lack luster and some of the voice acting or just scripting in general can be dull at times .But the game play handles well enough on the handheld not using the circle pad so it has some merit to it and the UI and the not needing to manage inventory much aside from which 3 weapons you bring is nice.

The Episodes have a sort of nice short length to each if you want to just pick it up to just do one episode at a time which is what i have been doing and its been working out that way, it does start off somewhat scarier than more action RE's until it starts throwing tonnes of mutant zombies at you at allot of stages of the game then that veil sort of never comes back for me, but then it is hard to get scared at a handheld game unless your using headphones and only playing in them middle of a dark room.

The 3D works pretty well with it too and makes the game look like a pretty game graphics wise, they don't really use it for anything useful but it looks nice with the 3D on, in general its a good game to get some use out of your 3DS while it isn't an exceptional game it's worth most peoples time.

@GunstarRed: I think so far I've only done it by accident, honestly. I think if you loaded your weapons with Daze mods, maybe that would make it more viable? I don't know, it just doesn't feel right. RE4 and 5 had that sort of flow where you'd go for the kneecaps and then close to kick or whatever, and this is a change. That's not innately bad, but I don't think it's as satisfying.

I want to play this so bad =/

Amazing graphics and incredible gameplay whether you play with the CPP or not.

Game has really good atmosphere, even though I use the 3DS built-in speakers (which are actually a lot better than people give them credit for - they actually have some kind of surround sound crammed in there!).

It seems like a fairly lengthy game (I'm about 3 hours in at chapter 3, and I think it has 12 chapters?), and raid mode and the achievements make it seem like it's packing a LOT of content.

I also found the game pretty hard, the first boss managed to rip my asshole open a few times, and on the attempt that I actually killed it I was eventually running around trying to shank him because I was completely out of ammo in all weapons, and this is just on normal difficulty. If I play this through on hell, I think I'll have to scavenge a lot more ammo before I try that again.

The music is great, too, but the cutscenes are notably low res and kind of muddy (so far most notable in a scene where a helicopter flies over some water, but the cutscene showing a city on the other hand still managed to look very impressive simply from the art itself).

About the complaints that reviewers like to bring up about this game:

1.) The episodic format? You have to remember this is a handheld game, and it has to be broken up in chunks. Even if the system can go into sleep mode at any time, I think most people who use their handhelds don't like shutting their handheld right in the middle of an intense segment. The recaps help if you, like me, don't pick up your system and play every day or play through the entire game in one sitting. I think they are skippable too? Honestly, they're so short that even when I did start a new chapter right after finishing one I just sat through it to get a better grip on the situation.

2.) "The controls are bad" and "It should have been on a home console": The controls are good, even with only one stick. How anyone could have problems with these controls is beyond me. As for home consoles? There's really not much to say about that. I don't think it's fair to reduce a review score because the game is on the "wrong platform". I honestly don't even understand what that means. The game was designed for the platform, how can it be the wrong one?

I'm really enjoying it. I find holding the circle pad pro more comfortable because it gives you more room to hold the device and it works well. The graphics are great and it has a good creepy atmosphere (unlike RE5). The episodic take ruins it a little but I don't mind it. So far so good. I don't really understand Brads dislike for it really.

I would play a full Resident Evil action RPG. That's what I'm getting out of Raid mode. Get on that shit Capcom.

I've found myself enjoying Raid mode SO much more than the main game. Using CPP. I'll flip back and forth between 3D. During the action sequences, I'll usually flip it off.

Either way, the main game still warrants some attention, but the random loot drops after every mission in Raid Mode is a terrific game mechanic. Nearly S-ranked all of the initial Raid missions. Unlocking more will totally be what gets me through the rest of the game if I hit a frustrating snag or something.

Playing in the right condition it can be pretty spooky. Tied with REmake for scariest in my opinion.

I just played this, the first act, headphones, dark room. Honestly its quite atmospheric, really reminds me of the old school RE games. Its still early but i swear, this game is what RE5 should have been TBH. Also i dont like the episodes, it breaks the game into chunks, which is good for handheld gaming, but meh.

i just picked it up, saving it for later tonight after the lady friend goes to sleep. i am excited to play it.