Tag: Resident Evil Village Review

Resident Evil Village is a survival-horror game from Capcom, and is the eighth installment in the long-running Resident Evil franchise.

The game follows Ethan “I’ll block it with my hands” Winters, the protagonist of RE7, as he travels to a remote European village to find his kidnapped daughter. Unfortunately, said village is filled to the brim with vampires, werewolves, actual wolves, and one overly-enthusiastic shopkeep.

I have long been a fan of the Resident Evil franchise. The first game I ever played on the original Playstation was Resident Evil 2, and Resident Evil 4 is one of my all-time favorite games.

However, with the fifth installment, the franchise started moving in a more action oriented direction, and then completely ran off the rails with 6. In fact, 6 was such a mess that I’d almost written off the series as a whole. 

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard brought the series back in the best possible way. It dialed back the action and cranked up the atmosphere and horror. It also introduced some new characters and ideas that really helped to revitalize the franchise in interesting ways.

So, when I heard that 8 was in the works, and that it was going to keep the aesthetic and functionality of 7, I was super pumped.

Village did not disappoint. In fact, it was better than I expected. It did not, however, move the series forward. I mean, it did story-wise, but from a spiritual/technical standpoint, Village actually felt more like…

Resident Evil 7.4 or 4.7… Whichever Makes More Sense

As I said in the opening, Village is about the protagonist of a previous Resident Evil game traveling to a remote European village to rescue someone who’d been kidnapped. Which, if you’ll remember, is the plot of Resident Evil 4. 

In fact, there are a number of similarities between the two games that have to be more than coincidence. Both games have:

• A suspicious, yet friendly, teleporting vendor
• A village filled with infected townsfolk
• A castle run by a crazy person
• A big lake monster
• Sparklies that you shoot to acquire treasure
• A religious leader who tricked people into thinking they were magic with the use of a Bio-Organic Weapon

I only realized the similarities between the two games when I was about halfway through my first playthrough. I was telling my wife all the reasons I really liked the game. By the time I was through my list of reasons, I realized that I’d said “like Resident Evil 4”  an alarming number of times.

4 managed to walk the line between horror and action very well, so using it as a template for the feel of Village while still maintaining the look and mechanical aspects of 7 was a fantastic choice. The fusion of the two allowed for some bigger action set pieces, while also making sure that the rest of the game felt grounded enough to be scary.

Bump In The Night

There is not a single place in the entire game that feels safe… except for the safe rooms which, you know… are safe.

The rest of the game gives you an overall sense of impending doom, and I attribute this almost entirely to the audio.

My playthrough could be broken down as follows:

• 20% – shooting unspeakable horrors
• 5% – inventory tetris
• 5% – trying to figure out where I was
• 10% – looking for ammo
• 5% – running from unkillable monsters
• 55% – firing wildly at nothing because a twig snapped behind me

That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. I spent so much time creeping slowly through areas in case something attacked that I actually made the game more unnerving for myself. 

You see, most areas have a number of ambient noises that randomly occur as you make your way through. If you’re walking through the woods, you hear lots of snapping twigs and things running through the underbrush. If you’re in a house, you hear creaks and groans, and if you’re in the castle… Well, you mostly hear Lady Dimitrescu screaming about how dead you’re going to be.

These seemingly innocuous noises, paired with the often subtle soundtrack, increased my paranoia to the point where I sometimes felt more afraid of the noises than of actual enemies.

For example, I could fight an entire group of werewolves and be fine, but walking down an empty stretch of forest with nothing but the sound of rustling leaves and the slow creak of an iron gate in the wind would have my heart racing.

This oppressive feeling is one of my favorite aspects of the game. It really made Village a true horror game in my eyes, as opposed to something like RE5, which was an action game that was occasionally scary. 

Walk. Walk For Your Life

One thing that I really wish they’d tweaked between RE7 and Village is the movement speed. I understand that it was meant to increase tension and give the game a more deliberate feel, but it was honestly frustrating to deal with. 

The walk speed in Village was fine. It was a slow, but reasonable, pace. However, when I hit the “run” button, I felt like I was pressing the “casual jog” button instead.

Now, I’ve never been attacked by monsters, but I can almost guarantee that if I were to run into a goddamn werewolf, I would more than double my walk speed. Ethan, on the other hand, just kinda power-walks.

I will say that his lack of urgency did cause me to have panic attacks, because I could hear the things chasing me getting closer, but ultimately it felt downright sluggish.

Ebb and Flow

One thing that Village does very well is making sure you have just enough stuff to survive. I’m not sure if it was based on an algorithm or if the developers were psychic, but somehow I only ever had enough supplies to survive whatever was just ahead.

Sometimes I would find tons of supplies and ammo, and start feeling a little cocky—like, “yeah I don’t even care what they throw at me. Look at all the bullets I have”—only to find myself down to five total bullets moments later. 

There were literally times when I would question if I could continue playing because my resources were so low, and I didn’t know where to get more. 

Then the craziest thing would happen. I would make it through the next section with only those five bullets.

Then, I’d find six more, and make it through another round of enemies.

I think the game wanted me to feel that helplessness. It wanted me to be at the bottom of a dungeon fighting creature after creature, wondering if I would make it to another box of ammo before I ran out. The fact that Village made me run this razor’s edge the entire game is impressive. 

I mean, what would have happened if I had missed my shots more often? Would I have been out of luck? Would I have had to start over because I was out of ammo? Or would I have braved the entire game using only the knife?

Now that would be scary.

Best Of Both Worlds

Overall, Resident Evil Village was an impressive game. It seamlessly combined elements of two previous installments into a game that had the strengths of both, without their obvious shortcomings (looking at you, RE4 QTE’s). 

The voice acting was spot on, and the graphics were phenomenal. The gameplay, while sluggish at times, was executed well enough. It could have used improvement, especially where movement speed was concerned, but didn’t stop me from enjoying the game.

The story wasn’t quite as good as I was hoping it would be, but interesting characters and a terrifying setting made up for the lacking narrative and made the experience enjoyable throughout.

I’m giving Resident Evil Village a terrifying 8/10 for daring to evoke feelings of RE4 and largely succeeding in the process.

I would also like to…

[twig snaps]