Resident Evil Re:Verse Closed Beta

Resident Evil Re:Verse is an interesting take of the Resident Evil franchise. It’s okay to be skeptical of this game, but it is fun to play and hopefully it is improved when it releases.

When Resident Evil Re:Verse was announced during Capcom’s Resident Evil 25th Anniversary showcase, I was honestly skeptical of the way the game looked in the stream and the concept of it in general. It was shown after the gameplay reveal and PS5 demo announcement of Resident Evil Village. I was not feeling the cel-shaded look that the game had and the way the gameplay was shown. I did, however, create a Capcom ID and signed up to be a Resident Evil Ambassador to see how the game was because I know I cannot judge a game without trying it first. When I was invited to the closed beta, the game was operating between January 28th to the 31st ranging in various times like 1AM – 8AM (EST). I played it on PS5 with the PS4 backwards compatibility the first day and time it was available, and it was more fun than I expected!

The closed beta started me off in a tutorial playing as Leon Kennedy. Every character starts off with a standard weapon which was the handgun for Leon, and a personal weapon which was the pump action shotgun for Leon. The standard weapon has unlimited ammo, but personal weapons do not, you would have to pick up ammo boxes throughout the map. The standard weapon is mapped on the left D-PAD and the personal weapon is mapped on the right D-PAD.

There are also special weapons like rocket launchers, and you can hold up to two and they get discarded when using all the ammo. You access those weapons by the up D-PAD if you have one and/or down D-PAD if you have two. You heal with green herbs that you can find around the area and to avoid damage you can dodge by pressing X and the direction with the analogue stick (or backwards if X is pressed by itself). There are also skills that they have, Leon has Roundhouse Kick mapped to R1 and Dual Wield with his handguns mapped to L1.

When going around the battlefield you also collect something called virus capsules. When you get killed playing as a human character, you will end up transforming into a bioweapon (it is so cool how they implemented that mechanic). The more virus capsules you collect, the stronger your bioweapon. Even if you have zero virus capsules, that bioweapon is still cool to play as! It is also noted that if you collect virus capsules, it will boost the damage your weapons do while playing as a human character and make them more accurate. While playing as a bioweapon, you get to see enemies through walls with heat vision and you can lock onto enemies by pressing L2 and cancelling that action by pressing L2 again.

Bioweapons also have skills, the bioweapon I used in the tutorial, Hunter Gamma, had the skills Acid Spray pressing R1 and Devour pressing L1. Acid Spray is a medium range attack that also makes enemies get stuck at times and Devour is a close-range attack that does an animation if you get them with that skill. Bioweapons do lose health overtime and when attacked so there is a sort of balance because of how strong they can be. When you die as a bioweapon, you respawn back at a random spot as a human character and be immune to damage for a bit so that you do not die immediately when you spawn.

After doing the tutorial, I jumped right into multiplayer. We only had one map available to us, which was the police station from Resident Evil 2 and RE2 Remake. It seemed to be all the same with a few modifications so that it could be an arena where you can find players easier. The mode we had available to us was free for all deathmatches. So, it would not matter if we were Human or Bioweapons, you were attacking everyone until the time end and you had the highest score. It was really fun to play because collecting the virus capsules and trying to kill people who turned into bioweapons. It was all intense because the match went fast with only having 5 minutes to stay at the top. It can get hectic, especially when so many people are fighting in the same area.

The controls and movements of this game were actually pretty good. It did not feel janky when running around the map. There were some humans I played with like Ada Wong where I had a tough time aiming with personal weapons. Ada had a crossbow as her personal weapon, and I had trouble trying to shoot people when they were running around so I tried to change my settings, but it did not work as much.

There were also some bioweapons who were doing weird movements when trying to attack and I would not be able to get a hit, but once I got the hang of it, I ended up getting more kills with them. I also kind of wish the movement were a bit faster when traversing the arena but other than those things, the controls and movement felt fine.

In the end of the match, it shows the top three players with the highest scores. It also shows how many kills you got as a human and bioweapon, your deaths, virus capsules collected, revenge kills (killing the enemy that just killed you), and your longest kill streak.

The options we had to play as Humans/Survivors were Leon Kennedy. Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Claire Redfield, Ada Wong and HUNK. The Bioweapons we got to play as were Fat Molded when you have no virus capsules, Hunter γ or Jack Baker when you have 1 virus capsule, and Nemesis or Super Tyrant when you have 2 virus capsules. Every human character I played with felt good to play as but I did see some balance issues, especially with Chris Redfield and HUNK.

Chris has an ability called “AMG-78 Powered Exoskeleton”, where you punch an enemy, and you knock them down to the ground. Now it would be fine if the time to get up was not that bad, but it takes a while, especially when your character is being electrocuted at the same time. Chris can shoot you while you are down, and it could be a kill. And the fact that abilities regenerate fairly fast in the game makes him a bit overpowered when you get caught in that cycle constantly.

HUNK has this ability called “Assassinate” where he stabs you in the back and it is always a one hit kill. He can also turn invisible with the ability “Active Cloaking” and it can last a while and sometimes be mixed with the Assassinate ability to just rack up kills quickly. The bioweapons all seemed balanced to me, even Nemesis especially because I was able to kill him at some point using my standard and personal weapons. My favorite bioweapon was Jack Baker from Resident Evil 7. He had a good range with his attacks, and he moved fast too.

There is an open beta that is currently available for Resident Evil Re:Verse, it recently went through some server issues not too long ago, but it seems to be back up and running if you want to try it. The open beta will run from April 8th 2:00am EDT to April 11th 2:00am EDT. More info for the beta can be found here: Open Beta Test – Resident Evil Re:Verse | CAPCOM. Any updates on the beta (if it is down or something) will be available there as well. You need to create a Capcom ID first before playing the beta. The beta is currently available on PS4, Xbox and PC (Steam).

I want to thank Capcom and the Resident Evil team for making a beta available to try. It is really awesome to try games before they release and being a part of the development process. After the closed beta test ended, we were sent emails to complete a survey where we contributed our thoughts, and changes we wanted to see made in the game. I am hoping from playing the open beta that I see some things changed and updated from what we shared. I also hope they do the same with the open beta and add any changes that we want to see from playing that as well.