Resident Evil Revelations 2 - Episode Two: Contemplation (DLC)

I went into Revelations 2 expecting a budget side-story to tick boxes between mainline entries, and that is roughly what the campaign delivers. Four episodes, two interlocking timelines, four playable characters who pair up by design rather than preference. Claire Redfield and Moira Burton anchor the past-timeline: Claire handles the shooting while Moira refuses firearms entirely, relying on her crowbar for close brawls and a flashlight to blind enemies and locate hidden items. Six months later, Barry Burton and the quietly unsettling Natalia Korda work the same island in the present. Natalia can sense enemies through walls and pinpoint their weak spots, but she cannot take them down alone, which means actually using the buddy-swap mechanic in single player becomes a real tactical loop rather than a gimmick. The Barry-Natalia pairing is the stronger half of the campaign by a fair margin, since both characters have limitations that genuinely feed off each other. The shooting itself sits in familiar Capcom third-person territory: enemy weak spots glow, the dodge mechanic from the first Revelations returns in slightly looser form, and resource management nudges you toward hoarding ammo and herbs even when the game never reaches true survival-horror tension. Critics were split on whether Revelations 2 is horror or action dressed in horror clothes, and the honest answer is closer to the latter. Light scares, a handful of well-designed enemy types, bullet-sponge bosses that feel more like tradition than challenge. The episodic structure produces uneven pacing across four chapters, with early episodes feeling thin on story and later ones compensating with busywork puzzles. The writing is cheerfully B-grade, Barry's dad jokes included, and the script never pretends otherwise. What rescues the overall package is Raid Mode. It is essentially a separate game running in parallel: pick a character from across the wider Resident Evil roster, customize weapons and skill loadouts, then work through around 200 combat missions pulled from multiple entries in the series. Locations from Resident Evil 5, 6, and the original Revelations show up here, and enemies come with modifiers like extra speed or bonus health. You can run it solo, through split-screen local co-op, or online. The loot loop is real, the difficulty scaling holds up, and it adds genuine replay value on top of a campaign that clocks in at maybe eight to ten hours depending on how thoroughly you explore. The one persistent sore point is the absence of online co-op for the story campaign itself, which limits co-op to couch play and makes the asymmetric character design feel underexploited for anyone without a nearby partner. Steam reviews sit at 78 percent positive across a substantial sample, which tracks with what the game actually is: a competent, occasionally inspired midrange action-horror title that never quite commits to being great at any single thing but stays fun enough to finish. If you are a series fan catching up, the campaign is worth one playthrough for Claire and Barry alone. If you are primarily a solo player chasing replay depth, Raid Mode justifies the price on its own. Go in expecting a polished but unambitious stopgap and you will land in roughly the right mindset.

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