Resident Evil Village
Developer/publisher Capcom Format PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release 2021
Given that Resident Evil’s shift to firstperson has proven fruitful, it’s a surprise in some respects that Capcom should opt to revert to thirdperson type not only for the entirety of the Shadows Of Rose expansion but also in allowing players to tackle Village’s campaign from the more traditional over-the-shoulder perspective. In truth, it feels a little like an accomplished fan mod: there are moments when it becomes unambiguously clear that this game was designed with a firstperson viewpoint in mind, not least the way it still forbids you from getting a good look at Ethan Winters’ face.
The same can’t be said for the generous new episode, which takes place 15 years after Village, and focuses on Ethan’s teenaged daughter Rose, as she enters the Megamycete’s consciousness in a bid to rid herself of the powers that have led her peers to label her a ‘freak’. What this means in real terms is a tour of several environments from Village, beginning with the luxurious Castle Dimitrescu; if the relative lack of new settings sounds dismaying, this is a lesson in how to repurpose and recontextualise existing locations, using your knowledge of them to wrongfoot you.
Indeed, while Village was set upon visiting physical torment on its protagonist, Shadows Of Rose puts his daughter through the psychological wringer. One especially unsettling set-piece forces Rose through an area where dead doppelgängers have been framed in a macabre gallery, adding to the peril generated by the new ‘face eater’ enemies, whose method of attack you can surely guess. It’s closer to classic survival horror than the main game: these enemies move quickly, juking and staggering, lunging to grab Rose from quite a distance, while pistol ammo is scarce. Her powers, however, allow her to freeze them temporarily in place, though a special herb is required to top this up. This approach gives the combat an appreciably different rhythm, and even when you unlock the shotgun and a brute with a laughably obvious weak point arrives, encounters remain fraught and intense.
And what a delight to discover that House Benviento has something even more terrifying in store than before. A child’s scrawled message – “let’s play statues” – is a chilling portent for one of the most sphincter-clenching sequences in the series’ history, as glowing-eyed mannequins advance on Rose, only jerking to a halt when she looks straight at them. Then comes a masterful change of scale – one that would, crucially, only work in thirdperson – followed by a final battle that not only affords you a parry of sorts but a lateral dash. The fiction may have slipped from at least a vague basis in science into the realms of pure fantasy, but it hardly matters when Rose is so much more fun than her faceless father.