Resident Evil Village

 

I consider myself a strong Resident Evil fan. So  when Village came out I was looking forward to eventually playing it, but had to wait awhile because too much was on my plate. All I really knew about it before playing it was a few brief glimpses at the trailer and screenshots, showing the vampire women, and a few jokes flying around that it’s less survival horror, more survival thirst. That sounds silly and intriguing so I have to know whats up. Also, the fact the game isn't numbered, unlike Resident Evil 7 which also featured the main character, Ethan Winters. This one is just Resident Evil: Village. So it makes it sound like a new arc in the franchise.

You play as Ethan Winters, the protagonist from the previous game. You start off in your house, where everything seems peaceful and normal. You're with your wife and your baby, and you get to walk around the house and look at everything. And the first impression is how amazing and detailed the graphics are. Almost every step of the way in this game I would just stop and stare at objects in the environment. All the small things, from tin cans, to paintings, to plates of food. The textures, models, but even more than just graphical fidelity is the amount of interesting set pieces and environmental story telling on display. Simply looking around the game world is never a dull moment and rarely feels like things have been copy pasted. Every location from important to mundane feels like it has handcrafted unique things to look at. So for the first 30 minutes or so I would just walk around this house and stare at every object in it.

Then things start being really over the top, in Resident Evil fashion as of recent. Resident Evil has always been over the top more or less, but the past few games have really dialed it up. This time, Chris Redfield suddenly bursts down your door with a military team, murders your wife, and takes your baby. Uhh...what?  Then you find yourself wandering around in the snow, going off some trail, to where you arrive at the Village. Its not long until the shock and awe comes on full display. Shortly into the village you get your fingers chewed off by a zombie. The purpose of this seems to be nothing but shock value, something that repeats throughout the game. Really though, I love it. The previous game did stuff like this too, and it looks like they're just gonna keep ramping up the shock value. Then, for the rest of the game you can visibly see your chewed off fingers. A part of me thinks its rehashing the same sort of gimmick and novelty from the previous game, especially since it happens in the first 30 minutes of the game. If it happened later, just to remind you how vulnerable you are, thats one thing - But it happens so soon that it comes across like cheap and edgy shock content. Thats just a minor criticism though, its still good.

The main premise of the game is that youre trying to find your stolen baby, and you go to this village which acts as a sort of hub. This village is, as you would expect, infested with crazed infected villagers that are akin to zombies. Fast, feral, and hungry. These monsters can take up to 10 bullets to kill initially, it does give off an intimidating and threatening vibe. So you're going around this wintery village, and the layout is almost maze-like. Its got many locked gates, areas that are only accessible with certain items you obtain much later and come back to access, and it has moments where you go through one detour section, then find yourself going through a new area only to open some door or gate and then wrap around back at an earlier point after unlocking a door. Giving an interconnected almost metroidvania feel. And like I said previously about taking my time to really pay attention to the environments and objects in them is still true, it was fascinating just walking into every house and looking at all the objects laying around, whats hung on the walls, how these people lived. Each house and location has its own unique handcrafted objects and environmental stories to tell, it was captivating the entire game. Not only just the handcrafted objects were fascinating, but the graphics in general are stellar. The "RE Engine" has got to be one of the best out there in modern gaming. I think it looks better than Unreal Engine, and certainly performs better. From the lighting, to the animations, the models and very high texture work, down to the actual artstyle and how the whole game is visually pieced together is just stunning and amazing to look at. The animations on the enemies are very fluid, threatening and lifelike. The gun handling and animations are immersive and have small realistic details like when you reload the pistol, he doesn't drop the magazine, but holds the old one in his hand to put back in his pants or something, because why would you drop precious magazines in a survival situation? Stuff like that makes the combat and immersion feel grounded. So, you go through the village, this where the game starts to really kick off and show what its about. Its quite an action packed game, its not really a careful, meticulous survival horror game like the original games. Of course not, they've been straying away from that for awhile now. Instead its almost just a straight up First person shooter. I played on the default difficulty, and the game was never very challenging or stressful really. You get a gun very early on, and combat happens quite frequently - Between the abundance of ammo, the accessibility of crafting ammo and health whenever you want, and the liberal save system which both frequently auto-saves, as well as being able to make manual saves, the game did not have many challenging or really scary moments. A lot of feeling of fear and dread in games is knowing you don't have that many resources, and if you die you will lose a bunch of progress and have to re-do things, making your life feel precious and important. That sense is almost gone in this game, I always had enough ammo to just shoot everything down without even aiming for the head, and was never low on health for too long. Its not a terrible game breaker or anything, it just clearly sets this games tone apart from dreadful survival horror, instead it leans more on the action side. The village is packed full of enemies, mostly the standard villager zombies, but sometimes more bigger, tankier enemies, and at one point a big wolf thing which was intimidating.

The gunplay and controls feel good. You can set weapons to four quick slots to change between at a moments notice, stuff like various Pistols, Shotguns, a Sniper rifle, and a Grenade launcher and explosives among a few others. The variety in weapons is interesting and always found myself excited to go around exploring the levels opening chests seeing what new thing I would find. Theres even attachments to further improve and enhance your weapons that you can acquire.

Theres a crafting menu which is very basic, you just collect things like herbs, gunpowder, and chemical fluids. Then you can craft either health, or ammo for various guns at the press of a button.
There is an inventory, and inventory management, but you'll rarely be picking up so many things that it will become a problem, unlike classic Resident Evil having no space and having to use storage boxes.
Everything is more accessible, less stressful.

Before too long you meet the merchant, known as The Duke. This guy is a damn sight to behold. Just look at him. He seems to magically pop up in places unexpected, as if hes teleporting around the game following you around. The game definitely leans on the absurd, almost fourth wall breaking tone quite a bit, even the developers don't know how to explain this guy other than hes just a gamey resource to sell you things. But its great. I always look forward to seeing this guy, upgrading my guns at him, seeing if he offers anything new and interesting and whatnot. Theres even a food system where you can go around collecting (very rare, not respawning pieces of food) to give to him so he can cook you meals, which give permanent buffs. Stuff like permanently increasing your health, movement speed, and reducing how much damage you take while blocking. Unfortunately I was only able to buy two of these upgrades the whole game, between not finding enough resources, and accidentally dumping some of them into the block upgrade that I didn't want (I misread the menu and how to allocate the resources). Theres an entire category of items you collect called Valuables, which serve no other purpose than to sell it to him. You can inspect every item in a 3D view which is neat, and fun to do, and some of these even are able to be combined together for increased value, so it helps to hold onto some of them. This merchant will periodically offer new weapons, attachments, and upgrades to your weapon such as upgrading the damage, ammo capacity, reload speed and so on. He pops up commonly too, each new area you explore he'll probably be there, when you least expect it. These things, coupled with how strange he looks and behaves, makes it an exciting addition to the game for sure.

But the Village is not the only main area. From the village you have to collect four flasks, containing pieces of your child. A bit morbid isn't it? To get these flask pieces, you go on four different excursions to new standalone areas, each with their own antagonists. These areas are A mansion, A puzzle house, A mine and boat oceanic level, and a giant Factory. First you go to this big mansion, which inhabits Countess Dimitrescu and her servents. This area harkens back the classic Resident Evil mansions everyone knows and loves. An elegant, extravagant, rich, gothic, baroque location with many interesting set pieces and locations. Once you're in here, you can't return to the village. The game does a great job with keeping up an exciting pace, always throwing something new at the player, always leaving them wondering whats around the corner. This is where the game really exposes its almost supernatural, magical narrative. You come across these women, almost witches, one of them is giant and then theres smaller servants. They treat you like an experiment or a pawn in their torture trials, so you're running around this mansion getting constantly jumpscared by these women. The big one, Dimitrescu, will randomly just pop out of nowhere right in front of you, materializing from flies it seems like. You have this swarm of flies that chase you around, signalling that shes near I guess. I think this area of the house was really one of the only areas that had such jump scares and a feeling of dread, like wondering where you're gonna get jumpescared next. It seems random, too, its not always some scripted event. Just going around the mansion has a chance for them to spawn in various places. Sometimes right ontop of you. You can't harm them, either, bullets do nothing against them. So its always this game of cat and mouse. Also, the janky, funny weird saferoom door behavior is back from the previous game. What I mean is, if youre being chased, as soon as you duck into the saferoom door, the enemy just loses interest and turns away. Infact, she cannot even fit inside. But this has a funny consequence where you can almost break the AI and bait them repeatedly at the door and it looks comical and silly and breaks some of the horror of the monster. I understand why they did it, but maybe it could of been handled better. Like they could of made it so the enemy can pull you out of the saferoom or something.

The supernatural weird narrative is really dialed up here, for instance at one point you get hung up by having hooks shoved into your hands, and then you escape but then 10 seconds later your hands are fine. Another point (later in the game) the protagonist literally gets his hand sliced in half, but just picks his hand up and reattaches it and everything is fine. Like what the hell is going on? Its nonsensical, and yeah it tries to get explained later, but the game is leaning heavy into this supernatural, magical nonsense narrative more than ever. Teleporting magic witches, unkillable magically healing protagonist, giant merchant that warps around following the player, its more silly than ever. Think about classic RE, everything is explainable by natural phenomenon. Just some biological experiments that went bad, causing a virus outbreak. Nothing too crazy, really. I get that there was some outlandish parts in those games too, but here in Village its just like nonstop over the top nonsense. Honestly, it kinda takes away from it a bit. It doesn't feel grounded and immersive, but just ridiculous attempts at shocking the audience. Also it goes for the cliche trope where its like the whole purpose of the story is all about parental love and how strong a fathers love is for his child. Its just low hanging fruit. Yeah it works to get across a narrative, but its trite and just not very creative. Still, its entertaining, I'm almost glad its gone down this route even, just for the pure spectacle, but it does make me appreciate some of the other titles even more.

The mansion isn't overly complex and long winded like an entire game in its self, no, its only one section of the game. So its not some giant maze thats confusing to navigate, you can learn it fairly quickly. But it does have four objects, masks, you must retrieve to complete the location. So you go around, getting keys and objects to unlock new parts of the mansion to find these masks. Nothing to hard or confusing, and it keeps the progress at a satisfying and steady pace. One thing I am sort of disappointed by in general, though, believe it or not is the enemies. Specifically the zombies. Yes, the villagers early in the game were kinda cool and intimidating, but really I still find the typical shambling slower paced classical George Romero zombies more insidious and scary than a couple crazed villagers once and again. You're only ever fighting 2, 3, sometimes 5 enemies at once. But some of the other games with their classic zombies can have you surrounded by these slow moving flesh eating freaks  that really gives a slow sense of dread and horror. Inside the mansion you have different zombies, too. They're these scrawny guys holding weapons in robes. These guys are not scary or threatening at all. They don't look scary, they dont act scary. They just walk around with an axe, or a sword, as you dump ammo into them. Really makes me start to miss the classic zombies and wonder what this game would be like with hordes of slow moving shamblers instead of these skinny robe wearers. At one point in the mansion you go into a torture dungeon, this place was unsettling and had many interesting set pieces, but the actual combat and enemies themselves left me feel a little disappointed.

Theres a rooftop section in the mansion, which almost looks like something out of Dark Souls or Elden Ring. Climbing across these rooftops of amazing architecture, and then you start to get attacked by flying gargoyles of all things. What game am I playing!? It was a fun section, though. You get to use the sniper rifle to pick these things off. Like I said, the game does a good job with keeping up a steady pace and throwing new and interesting situations at the player frequently. The mansion section overall isn't too long, maybe two or three hours out of the 15 hours it took me to finish the game. As you make your way through it, theres a couple boss fight type arenas. A few times you go up against the servants, who can only be harmed after shooting out a window putting sunlight on them. Then its a simple closed off arena battle where you dump ammo into them until they die.

The mansion section ends off with a rooftop battle where the main lady transforms into some giant deformed monster where you have a closed off rooftop battle dumping dozens of rounds of ammo into her contorted body. Another over the top, almost silly spectacle, but it works and is fun enough. It helps to have these explosive dramatic segments to really give that sense of differentiation between the games areas and progressions, but the game leans more and more into action and less and less into dreadful survival horror. So its good in some ways and bad in others.

After completing the mansion you return to the village, now it opens up a bit more as you have new tools to access other areas of the map, and even the trader reveals these special yellow chests which get marked on your map to help entice you to find these treasure items. This can be stuff like attachments, or items you can sell for a lot, or new guns and so on. Which further enhances the sense of exploration and gives a reason to return to some previous areas which made them exciting again.

After the mansion you find yourself entering another big house, but this one isn't like a gothic mansion but more a reserved pedestrian manor. Except this time, you lose all your weapons. Instead, this is a big puzzle house dedicated solely to solving mysteries and puzzles. Another interesting change of pace which prevents the game from feeling repetitive and stale. You go into a room with a weird mannequin on a table with doll parts stringed up from the ceiling, and you examine this mannequins body for clues and oddities. Then theres a puzzle with a music box which was quite cryptic and the hardest puzzle in the game. Every other puzzle in the game is dead simple (Another thing where the game feels a bit dumbed down and lacks challenge) , but this music box had me stumped for a bit. I kept backtracking to the mannequin room to see if I missed anything, but I didn't. You just have to line up the scratches on the plates, but its barely visible. After that you watch some film reel, and then suddenly youre exposed to the most surreal and bizarre scene in the whole game. A gigantic deformed baby fetus chases you around the house while you're defenseless and you have to slip past it repeatedly trying to escape. Hiding under a bed at one point and so on. This thing is just a sight to behold, just look at it. Definitely a highlight and memorable moment.

By this point this whole section is almost over. The first mansion with the ladies is probably the most in depth and longest part of the game, the other three sections are quite short and succinct.
You escape the baby, then confront this weird doll monster thing where you just walk around doing hide and seek with these dolls, doesn't last long, then you've completed the whole section and have another baby piece.
Its cool that theres a whole section dedicated to puzzles and mystery solving, but I can't help but feel there could of been something else done here. Maybe briefly get your guns back and have to fight throughout the manor, I don't know

Then, you confront the third antagonist, Moreau, after climbing into a mine. Hes this deformed, blobby, bumbling sulking fish guy. That vomits goop all over the place that you can break apart. The actual mine section is pretty short and not much to mention, but then theres a boat section (Callback to RE4?) This part is very cinematic and epic, as you would expect, giant fish monster bursting out of the sea attacking your boat. Theres a short section flipping some bridges around to climb around the lake, hitting some power switches and draining a dam which opens up a new area. Theres a boss fight against Moreau  where he transform into this big monster in a closed off arena, and it can get really claustrophobic and kinda frustrating cause theres not much room to maneuver and he does this acid spitting attack that is really hard to avoid. Still, decent boss fight, you cant say the game is dull or boring cause theres always some crazy new sight to see. You get the third flask piece of your baby, discover some weird lore about fetuses in jars, and get contacted by the last antagonist called Heisenberg. He tells you theres a trial setup for you back at the village.

Finally after wrapping back to the village one last time, theres now billboards and signs all over the place guiding you to the last area, the Factory. You get there, and expectingly its this big sprawling interior factory owned by a man in a trenchcoat thats the most normal antagonist of the whole game. He even sounds reasonable and an unlikely ally. He just wants to destroy the main villain Miranda and get out of the village. But some reason or another the main character refuses his allegiance and finds himself kicked into the bowels of the factory having to fight his way out. Turns out that was a good decision because later on you find a note that written by Heisenberg that says how he wants to use Ethan in some human experiment and turn him into a man/machine hybrid monster. This factory section has the most different set of enemies. Instead of typical zombies, theyre human experiments twisted into man and machine. You cant really hurt them normally by just shooting at them, but instead there is a glowing button kind of thing on their body you have to shoot a few times. Still, they're not that challenging or really threatening, but its just another nice change of pace. But really though I think this factory section is my least favorite part of the game, Maybe simply due to the location being kind of ugly and repetitive looking. Of course its a run down old factory, its supposed to be ugly and repetitive, but I found myself feeling a bit impatient and frustrated getting through this place. Its this big maze of warehouse rooms and metalwelding places where you have to collect different molds to return back to the molder machine and turn it into objects to unlock new places of the factory. You come across an elevator where The Duke of course is waiting for you to do shopping. You can ride this elevator up and down to the various floors of the factory as needed. But really its just a lot of running around back and forth samey looking rooms for the next object you need to unlock the next door. He offers a few new guns, a Skorpian machine pistol which replaces the pistol, a newer enhanced tactical shotgun, and so on. But you don't really get to use these guns for very long, as the game is almost over by this point. Maybe introduced a bit too late?

There is however, quite a few different new enemies than just the standard man/machine monster. At one point you come across two jetpack monsters, which was unexpected. Still, they pose little threat, and there was only two of them in the whole game it seemed like. Then theres a monster that charges at you, but his shootable button thing is instead on his back, so you have to get behind him to really do damage. Then, you come across a boss fight with this guy with a rotor strapped to his front that charges at you, in a closed off flaming arena room, where you have to make him charge into a wall and then shoot at the switch behind him to kill him. A pretty fun boss fight, overall. Maybe the scariest part of the game is when you get this Mold for a horse key, and you have to go back down to the factories Molding machine, but this time the power is out and the lights are off and youre fumbling around in the dark trying to find which damn room it was, and youre getting jumpscared by these man/machine monsters from the darkness, sometimes giant hulking bullet sponge guys, was kinda frightening and intense. Lastly after all that you find yourself in a damn Tank mech vehicle of all things, and youre up against a crazy boss fight where Heisenberg has turned into a giant monster and its like some crazy turret vehicle section that is just so over the top and ridiculous its almost beyond words. Like what damn game am I playing? Its fun enough, but the mood of the game is just all over the place. Its like it cant decide what mood it wants to go for. I appreciate the lack of repetition, but sometimes its just like come on can we keep the game more sensible? It comes across like a zany comic book at times rather than a visceral terrifying horror experience. Apparently the main protagonist gets killed here, gets his heart ripped out by Miranda, but yeah I was skeptical and was even cracking jokes making fun of the writing like "Oh yeah thats no big deal, just a flesh wound, he'll be back up and running in a munte or two"


To compound on what I was just saying, believe it or not, theres then a whole section where you play as Chris Redfield and its like a Military Call of Duty mission. No more survival horror , but instead youre roaming around the village with thousands of bullets spraying full auto at waves of enemies. What the hell? This game really is all over the place! You have a full auto assault rifle decked out with tactical attachments, grenades, and a souped up pistol. This plays just like a Call of Duty mission, you even call in tactical laser airstrikes on targets. Theres another short boss battle in a tiny closed off room where you just wait for your airstrike device to recharge and hone it on the boss a few times. But before long this section ends, and what do you know, you're back playing as the protagonist again. Hes not actually dead? Hes a ghost or something? You get a weird cutscene saying how hes never been alive? Who knows. The narrative just does whatever is convenient at the time to push across whatever extreme ridiculous stunts it can to the viewer, its not really coherent or makes much sense. It turns out its something like hes possessed by some weird mold that makes it so he cant die and regenerates parts of his body? I have no idea.

But now you're at the last section of the game, its not much of a section. The village is locked off, you see the merchant one last time, who for some weird reason has a few new attachments that you get to use for a grand total of like, 5 minutes so its kinda odd. Then is the final boss battle against Miranda. Its another closed off arena where she floats around and shoots projectiles at you, sometimes streams of fire that you can hide behind a pillar for protection. You'd think there might be some sort of gimmick or special place you have to shoot, but no, you just have to dump tons of ammo into her. I died once or twice getting a feel for the fight, but on the third one I pulled out the Magnum I had been saving, which does giga-damage, used that, then dumped all my shotgun rounds and some grenades and that was it. Game complete. End credits. Ethan saves his baby, his wife is miraculously not murdered but the one from earlier was an imposter being shapeshifted by Miranda (yeah, see what I mean about the narrative just being convenient nonsense), and for whatever reason Ethan is all weak now and can barely move so he gives his baby to Chris who shortly before reveals Chris is actually a good guy and he couldn't reveal too much to Ethan because it would compromise the mission, yada yada, Ethan sacrifices himself and your Wife and child, and chris, fly off into the sunset. Theres a post-credits cutscene showing the child as a teenager visiting Ethans grave and then being drove off by some FBI agents.

So thats Resident Evil Village. A new interesting detour in the franchise? Yeah pretty much. It has some questionable weaknesses, like the insane contrived plot, some less than terrifying enemies and the game not being that challenging and a bit too action packed, but on the other hand the pacing is great and never feels dull or boring, always something eye-opening happening, the graphics, general settings and atmosphere is top notch, gameplay is fun with satisfying combat. Now that Ethan Winters is gone I am even more curious to see what the next installment in the franchise will be, but it wont be surprising if it turns out hes miraculously alive still, knowing how silly the writing has been lately. The game of course has some extra content after beating it, too. Like mercenaries mode, which seems to be improved from previous games, now it feels like Killing Floor or something. Wave based survival with the Merchant after each rounds, complete with perks you can pickup mid battle where you get to choose buffs. Some other new enhanced difficulty game modes for the main story, a bunch of unlockables and achievements to get - So its very possible I will return to this game to play it again, get a bunch of achievements, try a harder difficulty and see if it resolves some of my complaints.

8/10