Resident Evil Revelations 2 offline co-op

Once the gold standard by which all other survival horror games were judged by, many fans have felt that the Resident Evil series has dropped off in quality in recent years. Resident Evil: Revelations underwhelmed whilst Resident Evil 6 suffered from disappointing sales meaning that if developer and publisher Capcom wanted the longstanding series to continue, they would have to pull something great out of the bag.

Many had hoped that that special something was Resident Evil Revelations 2. Putting players in the shoes of Claire Redfield (who has partnered up with Moira, the daughter of Barry Burton) in a story set between Resident Evil 5 and 6, the game looked to be a return to its roots and could win back players who may have turned to games like The Last of Us and Alien: Isolation for their survival horror fix.

Sadly, Capcom's attempts at a Resi reboot haven't quite gone to plan as they have been forced to cut offline co-op from the PC version of the game, announcing it on Tuesday right as the first episode of the game (out of four) was released. While this would would be frustrating enough for PC gamers looking to play the game with a friend in-person, this is occurring after the game was delayed for extra polishing. Furthermore, the Steam page for Resident Evil Revelations 2 specifically stated that the game would feature offline co-op play and it continued to say that even several hours after Capcom had made the announcement that the game would not have co-op play.

In a statement, Capcom explained that:

"The PC version of Resident Evil Revelations 2 supports a variety of customisable visual settings and resolutions. The decision to prioritise a single local screen was made to ensure a stable user experience across a variety of different PC settings and devices."

"Raid mode will support online co-op shortly after launch when a free patch is available for players to download which adds this feature, but the main campaign on PC will only be available to play in single local screen."

Resident Evil Revelations 2 Delay

Worse still is that in another update Capcom even acknowledges that people may have bought or pre-ordered the game specifically for those offline co-op features.

"We apologize to our Resident Evil Revelations 2 PC players who purchased the game and expected to have local co-op as a feature. The feature wasn’t intended for this version and that caveat was mistakenly omitted from the product description on the Steam page earlier, and then included as soon as we were made aware. This was an unintentional error and again, we apologize for the confusion this may have caused."

The idea that many Resident Evil fans may have forked out for a game that isn't what they expected is certainly unsettling and it's moves like this that are perhaps why pre-orders are decreasing across the gaming industry. There is the faintest glimmer of hope in the fact that Capcom also says that it is "currently looking into the matter and potential solutions" but given that there are so many other factors here (the console versions have to be supported and developers are still hard at work still an online co-op patch), those playing Resident Evil Revelations 2 on computers may be waiting sometime yet for offline co-op to arrive.

Sources: VG24/7, Rock, Paper, Shotgun