Disclaimer: If you haven’t beaten Resident Evil Revelations 2 yet and/or are still looking to experience it for the first time, the nature of this additional content may reveal spoilers. You have been warned.
It’s no surprise that I found Revelations 2 to be one of the most satisfying Resident Evil experiences since, well, ever. The more distance I got from the fairly epic and deserved ending of the game, the more I liked it. So it’s no surprise I wanted to keep my experience rolling like a good high and dig into the extra episodes.
Using the term “Episodes” to describe this additional content is perhaps a bit misleading, if this were real television you might call them “webisodes” or even “commercials.” They don’t so much play out how Revelation 2’s main chapters do, and are more a group of minigames. I suppose there is a ‘story’ attached to both episodes, but they don’t really add a significant amount to the overall ordeal.
The episodes you get as part of the season pass or the game’s physical retail disc are titled The Struggle and Little Miss respectively. Each one stars one of Revelation’s side characters, with The Struggle putting you firmly in Moira’s fashionable boots and Little Miss placing you in command of Natalia. They also each grant a new partner, keeping in line with the recent “It takes two baby” spirit of every Resident Evil since 5.
A cage went in search of a bird.
Doing my best not to spoil it, Moira and Natalia undergo their own separate ordeals on the crazy zombie infested Russian island that Revelations 2 takes place on at different points during the core game. These episodes are more or less their “Meanwhile” and “But Also” to clue you in as to what the young women were up to during those missing gaps.
Moira’s episode, The Struggle, plays out a bit like The Mercenaries meets a zombie browser game. You have a full day (roughly 9 minutes) to hunt animals for food which automatically converts into “rations” serving as Moira’s extra lives. During the hunt you are also able to gather weapons, ammo and healing items. Then you enter phase 2 where Moira and her partner have to fight off several waves of monsters and complete a few different objectives. It starts simple, disarmingly easy even, but gets very intense very fast, especially on Survivor difficulty. Even better, Moira’s failure i.e. losing all your “rations” means the game will delete your entire save file for The Struggle. Yep. The entire thing, checkpoints and all. I may not have named it The Struggle, I may have named it “Life’s a bitch and then you die.”
Natalia’s episode is a lot more forgiving. She has to search across the island for her lost, suicidal teddy bear Lotte. She’s joined by “Shadow Natalia” in her little quest. Natalia has lost her Joel like ability to suss out monsters, and they can now cause her to “faint” if they spot her. That’s right, this is a sneaking mission, weapons are procure on site. Thankfully Shadow Natalia still has the ability to spot monsters and the beasties won’t harass her, while only Natalia Natalia can open doors and use items, making it so the two girls must work in tandem to get across the island and rescue Lotte from herself.
As minigames both episodes are fun and, thankfully, short (trust me you don’t want The Struggle to be a long campaign) clocking in at roughly 30 – 45 minutes each. The game’s Raid Mode however is going to have much, much more longevity than these bonus episode, and indeed it seems as though the extra episodes aren’t worth much more than unlocking a few special features in said Raid Mode (or trophies if you’re an achievement whore).
There’s other goodies available for unlock now too. Such as MILF Claire.
If you plan on grabbing the season pass or the physical copy, then the extra episodes are a nice little bonus, but I would advise against going out of your way to snag them. The most awesome bits of Revelations 2 are still located within the campaign and Raid Mode. Still, it’s very refreshing to see the developers try something a little different simply in the name of fun, an increasingly lost art in today’s world of srs bzns AAA games and dramatic soap opera-ish indies.
