Early in my playing of Revelations I did struggle with the controls. The game can be played as a twin-stick shooter, with the right "stick" amounting to your right thumb gliding over part of the 3DS' lower touchscreen. It doesn't work well that way and might better function with the attachment of the optional 3DS Circle Pad Pro add-on. But I don't have that thing.

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Fortunately, the right-stick camera control proves not to be necessary for players like me who become adept with the nearly digital intentionality of Jill Valentine's body movement and with the freedom to scan a room down the barrel of a gun in first-person. In other words, yes the game can let you look in one direction while moving in the other, but you don't need to. This is a game about focused action, not about doing two things at once.

The full Revelations package, with its satisfying campaign, abundant voice-acting, dozens of cut-scenes, impressively deep 3D and realistic graphics, makes the 3DS seem way more formidable than it had six months ago when Resident Evil Mercenaries was clumsily puffing up a mini-game into a full-priced game.

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Revelations makes the 3DS' Mercenaries seem like even more of a joke because it actually contains a better version of a Mercenaries-esque mode in it. Here in Revelations you get 21 Raid Missions, all maps pulled from the campaign, playable solo or offline and online co-op. They are glorified shooting galleries that you run and shoot through for points. You cash these points in for better weapons and upgrades as you level up your character. The main drawback is that co-op play is not that intimate. It's just two people in a level who can do the same shooting. But considering this all feels like a generous extra, that's no big demerit.

I'm sure some people would like a scarier Resident Evil than Revelations, though this one undeniably moves closer to RE1 than either of the last big two. I'm mostly satisfied with the mix here. Episode after episode, the game feels like an anthology of the series' past tones. Fat has been cut, additions have been made, corny dialogue continues to be chattered and an under-appreciated piece of hardware has been programmed masterfully.

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Resident Evil: Revelations' is one of the series' best and it is a 3DS essential, a worthy continuation of the release of substantial and technically impressive games on the platform that have been coming out, about one a month, since the fall.