Resident Evil Village
CAPCOM’S SURVIVAL HORROR RELEASE IS A GAME OF TWO HALVES
Horror comes in many forms and that’s equally true of Capcom’s eighth mainline entry in its acclaimed horror series. While it leans heavily on the creepy oppressive nature of the 2017 release, Resident Evil 7, it also has plenty of nods to the more action-orientated entries in the franchise, particularly Resident Evil 4. The end result is an oddly disjointed game at times, although it’s nowhere near as fractured as the disappointing sixth game in the series.
Village is a direct sequel to the 2017 game and once again puts you in the everyman shoes of Ethan Winters, who is enjoying a peaceful life of anonymity with his wife Mia and newborn daughter Rose. It’s not long however before things take a tragic turn and Ethan finds himself trapped in a secluded village with no idea of his surroundings or the whereabouts of his precious daughter.
It’s a strong opening and the tension only heightens as you slowly explore the deserted village and fend off the odd attack from fiendish-looking monsters, while solving surprisingly simplistic puzzles. Like its predecessor Resident Evil Village uses a first-person viewpoint to show off its world and it’s a good decision, allowing you to really marvel at the tired-looking village and the bleak gothic architecture of the huge castle that hangs ominously over it. The lack of VR is a huge disappointment, but there’s no denying how effective the horror is when it’s up close and personal and often staring you directly in the face (and normally trying to take a bite out of you at the same time).
The village’s castle is the home of Lady Alcina Dimitrescu, a huge imposing vampire who routinely stalks you through her stronghold, along with her three shape-shifting daughters.
These tense encounters can come out of nowhere and dramatically ratchet up the tension as you frantically explore the beautifully decadent building in search of your precious daughter. Despite her prominence in most of the game’s advertising, Dimitrescu is just one of four lords you’ll need to best before finally coming face to face with the mastermind behind Rose’s disappearance.
Each lord is locked away behind a different part of the village, effectively
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working as standalone levels, and while you end up racing through the domains of some, they’re all filled with memorable encounters that will often have you jumping out of your chair or uttering plenty of unintentional swears as yet another jump scare tears an obscenity from your lips. Highlights include a tense encounter against a water-based foe that has you crossing a submerged village as you desperately try to find a way to drain it and even out the fight, along with a truly terrifying encounter in the stately home of Donna Beneviento. Stripped of your weapons during this section, you’re stuck in a deadly game of cat and mouse as you attempt to escape her home whilst being attacked by creepy dolls and a disturbing talking puppet called Angie.
There’s some truly messed up shit in Capcom’s game and as you slowly unlock the village’s many secrets the denizens you face become even more terrifying. By the time you reach the factory of Karl Heisenberg, who can directly manipulate metal, you’ll find yourself in full body-horror territory with ghoulish creations enhanced by metal implants and drills which could have sprung from the minds of Shinya Tsukamoto or David Cronenberg, they’re that scary. It’s here that the action begins to ramp up as well and as a result the game loses some of its focus. While there’s a good range of weapons to discover in Village they don’t always feel impactful to use like in earlier games in the series. Many of the enemies soak up bullets like sponges, which diminishes much of the terror that’s laid out in the game’s earlier sections.
This shift in tone is also found in protagonist Ethan Winters. He’s something of an odd hero, generally spending most of his time terrified or bewildered by his surroundings and blindly devoted to his daughter’s safety, only to spit out atrociously poor one-liners when he finally bests a lord or wrangles himself out of another dangerous situation. Granted, dialogue and story strands have never been a strength of the series, but both feel particularly trite here and remind you that for all the stunning visuals and cinematic sections, you’re still just playing a videogame.
While Village’s story rarely hits the right beats, the same can’t be said for its overall pace. It’s certainly a lean game taking around ten hours to complete, but we’ll take pacing over padding any day of the week. Yes it means that some areas feel like they’re over far too quickly – we’d have loved to have spent more time in Beneviento’s creepy home for example – but it also ensures that you’re always being kept busy and the many highs you encounter easily outweigh the lows. Puzzles, which have always been a big part of the series, also feel underdeveloped and there’s nothing in here that’s as clever as some of those found in its 2017 counterpart.
Although it doesn’t offer the same unique experiences as its predecessor managed, Resident Evil Village still has the power to shock and entertain, and ultimately that’s all we really want from the popular series.
In a nutshell
Yes the loss of VR is disappointing and the action feels a little forced in its closing chapter, but Village remains an entertaining edition to Capcom’s bonkers horror series.
>> Score 77%