Resident Evil Village Review

I can still remember the summer that myself and a couple of friends played and beat Resident Evil: Director’s Cut in a single session, largely with Eiffle 65’s I’m Blue playing on repeat on a cheap CD player right next to the maybe 22-inch TV we had in the third-floor bedroom. It was entirely too hot, and all we had to drink was warm Pepsi, but we were completely enamoured with the game so we didn’t care – less shocking that we wouldn’t care given we listened to eight hours of I’m Blue, I’m sure. Regardless, I loved the game and it would lead to playing the excellent Resident Evil 2 and the Kool-Aid Man simulator Resident Evil 3. I would eventually play most of the fourth, though I distinctly remember that being the point where I felt the series was less horror and more action, and that unfortunately came to a head in Resident Evil 5 and whatever the five-alarm fire Resident Evil 6 was. I didn’t get a chance to play seven, but I felt it finally looked like the series was getting back on the horror track, and when the trailers dropped for Resident Evil 8, I was convinced this was continued proof that Capcom had figured it all out and the series was back in force. So, on day one I picked Resident Evil 8: Village up and hopped right in.

If, like me, you didn’t play Resident Evil 7, you’ll be glad to see you are given the opportunity to watch a recap of the important events that are relevant to 8’s story as this is a direct sequel. You play as Ethan Winters, a father and husband who fled to Europe with his family at the request of Chris Redfield in an attempt to get as far away from the evil that nearly ended them in Louisiana. It’s been three years since those events, and while things haven’t been perfect they’ve been better with baby Rose becoming the center of attention for both Ethan and his wife Mia. Sadly, the good times don’t last long. Shortly after putting Rose down for the night, amid an uncomfortable conversation with Mia, the mostly quiet home is shattered with bullets through the dining room window. In an instant, Ethan witnesses the death of Mia and the obduction of Rose by Chris Redfield and his team. Ethan himself is taken by the team as well, but not before being unceremoniously knocked out to keep him subdued. Ethan awakens sometime later, the transport truck he was supposedly in moments before flipped on its side and everyone else was killed. Investigating the area you find but one path to take, and it leads you to an unsettled village nestled amongst towering snowy mountains. It’s time to find Rose and unravel the mystery behind what Chris Redfield’s team is really up to.

The village itself acts as a hub that branches out to the other areas of the game that you’ll be spending most of your time in. Fans of the franchise will notice quickly how much the franchise staples are on the table. There are items to be found and places to stick them on statues and in doors. There are keys to be discovered and modified, and seemingly random objects to be combined and utilized. If there’s an obscure way to open up a locked door, you’ll be doing it. Some of these things will make some amount of sense, others will have you wondering what cracked-out architect was hired to build the place. There aren’t any major head-scratchers in terms of the puzzles, and I would have liked some more in-depth solutions, personally. There are of course also hidden items and optional areas sprinkled throughout, and so those who like to pixel peep and do some occasional backtracking will have some of that to do. Otherwise, the beats of the gameplay are much of what you’d expect given the previous games, for better or worse.

The story at a high level is satisfying but the individual pieces are often more interesting than the whole. It might come as a bit of a surprise to anyone who has borne witness to the accidental success of the giant vampire lady in the game’s marketing that she doesn’t play nearly as big a role as you might expect. In fact, the story arc of the sex symbol Lady Dimitrescu helms is over quite early on. While it might be over faster than you were hoping it to last, it’s certainly one of the high points of the game and could have arguably been an entire game itself if it more completely explored the story of the mother and her daughters. Instead, their castle is but one of four main locations you’ll be visiting as you work your way toward your ultimate goal. Each is the domain of one of the four Lords under Miranda – the longstanding priestess of the village.

Each of the four Lords are almost representative of different Resident Evil games of old, but also representative at times of different types of horror. One location evokes the Mansion of the original game. Another location holds nearly all of the game’s psychological horror elements, while all of them have an aspect of the horror of being chased. Some are demonstrably more effective than the others, with the aforementioned psychological horror segment really being the closest to effective horror that Resident Evil 8 reaches.

I say that because similar to Resident Evil 4, 5, and 6, Resident Evil 8 struggles to attain a consistent feeling of horror mostly because of its heavy leaning on action combat that too closely resembles a standard first-person shooter. Despite the absolutely incredible work the art team has done here to build a remarkably detailed world full of visually interesting characters and places, the gameplay only occasionally rises up to meet it. When it does, Resident Evil 8 is a spectacular showing of action horror, but that’s so rarely achieved that it made me a bit sad to see such great work go unrealized. That’s not to say the game is mostly full of lows, but it also isn’t chalk-full of highs either.

The Resident Evil 8 experience, if anything, is marked by gorgeous but middling horror. There are a handful of moments I can think of that might truly catch someone off guard, but unless you’re completely oblivious you’re going to see nearly every jump scare coming and too easily see through the setups that are meant to keep you on edge. Horror isn’t easy these days, given how much of it we’ve had at this point, so I can understand why consistent horror is a very difficult bar to reach, but Resident Evil as a franchise has struggled to get there on more than one occasion and Resident Evil 8 isn’t much different in that regard.

When Resident Evil shifted away from the static camera, tank-controlled games of old and moved to the over-the-shoulder views of the following three titles, it was a welcome change that went a long way in tightening up the weakest part of the franchise in its controls. It also represented a new challenge: how can controls be made better but still kept difficult enough not to become trivial to those who are action game veterans. After all, much of the horror in horror games comes from a general sense of helplessness or the idea that you can’t always fight your way out of everything – at least easily. Silent Hill tackled this with extremely limited resources, meaning you quite literally had to run past or through many enemies. Resident Evil decided to tackle this by making guns and aiming those guns a bit sluggish and weighty while making the enemies move erratically and in ways that often were counter to the average player’s aiming tendencies.

This continues to be their solution in Resident Evil 8, and I think it’s a love-it-or-hate-it sort of thing. You never really feel 100% in control of your weapons, almost like you’re moving through molasses while drunk. You adjust to it, but it’s a unique system that you won’t find anywhere else so if this is going to be your entry point to the series or your first time back since the original three games, it might take you some time to get a handle of the flow of combat. Each enemy has a unique movement set, and some are obviously programmed to quickly lunge or dodge if you aim at their heads for more than a split second. Every encounter is almost like a puzzle whereby you have to sort out how best to deal with enemies coming at you with what resources you have and how they are likely to react to your actions. Some but not all environments you’re in will have objects you can use to aid in thinning the herd or slow their movement, such as the classic explosive barrels or conveniently placed bookshelves next to doorways you can move to block paths.

What can be frustrating, however, is that it’s often difficult to ascertain what encounters you are able to simply run through, and which you need to kill every enemy in sight before moving on. This is on display almost immediately in the opening hour of the game where you are all but overrun by enemies and are told to simply survive but it presents in such a way that it appears you need to kill everything despite lacking the resources to do so effectively. It becomes apparent that this is supposed to be more of a cinematic experience as it ends in a triggered event in which an enemy will spawn behind you wherever you are and throw you out into the street to start a cutscene. I was in the back of a house at the time when this happened, so the enemy came out of thin air and then awkwardly threw me through the walls over 100 feet to reach the street the game wanted me to be on.

All this really means is that you’ll end up dying a few times while trial and erroring your way through these sequences, but I managed to haphazardly sort most of them out on the first attempt, so I suspect this won’t be more than a minor headache for the average player. Nevertheless, it’s unfortunate when these types of gameplay devices are used because, at least in my experience, they tend to interrupt the flow of the game and pull you out of the experience more often than they successfully result in that cinematic payoff.

There are no surprises here as far as the weapons and inventory management are concerned, especially for those who have played Resident Evil 4. You get an assortment of handguns, shotguns, a sniper rifle with the world’s most useless scope, the series’ ever-present magnum, and more. You’ll be able to craft ammunition, healing items, and explosives with materials you find scattered around the areas you explore, and beyond that, you’ll occasionally meet up with the Duke – an eccentric and nigh-on omnipresent merchant who somehow knows Ethan well enough to want to help him out for a price, of course. Managing your inventory is more or less Tetris style, so you’ll have to make sure you’re efficiently packing if you want to collect everything you come across and maybe even buy inventory expansion upgrades from the Duke. Enemies will drop currency, but also valuables that can be sold to the Duke to fund your needs. The Duke is also well-versed in weapon modification, so he can also upgrade your weapons if you wish. Furthermore, the Duke can cook special meals that permanently increase things like your health, movement speed, and more if you can bring him the ingredients. The Duke really is quite the Renaissance man.

So, you’ve successfully survived your journey and are wondering what’s next. Well, other than that we already know there is DLC content on the way, Resident Evil 8 gives you a few more things to consider while you wait. There’s the usual higher difficulty levels to attempt if you’re feeling like more of a challenge. There is also a substantial list of goals to try to achieve during your subsequent playthroughs that once completed nets you points to spend in the bonus content menu. The bonus content ranges from unlocking the Mercenaries mode to unlocking more powerful weapons, unlimited ammo for said weapons, 3D models, concept art and more.

Mercenaries mode is similar to what it’s been in Resident Evil games before, essentially being a mode with several stages to unlock that have you kill several enemies as fast as possible for points. You can pick up blue orbs that grant abilities or passives that can stack across stages, as well as yellow orbs that give you bonus time. As you progress throughout each stage’s checkpoints, you’ll be able to buy items or weapons, and of course, upgrade those weapons as you would in the base game. You’ll get a letter grade going up to SS rank based on your performance, and you’ll be rewarded with things like more starting money to help you get better scores as you repeat these courses. It’s a nice addition to see return and does add quite a bit of replayability alongside the many challenges posed for campaign reruns that are sure to keep completionists busy for some time at least.

As I’ve mentioned before, Resident Evil 8’s art team has done a tremendous job here and has created one of the more visually impressive games I’ve played in some time. There is a staggering amount of detail in both the environment and characters and it sets a high bar for the series moving forward in this regard. Perhaps equally impressive is how well the game scales while still looking great. In a time where a game’s performance across platforms can be a wild ride, Resident Evil 8 scales well enough that it’s doubtful anyone will be disappointed with the presentation. If you’re on a powerful enough PC, cranking everything up results in a particularly fantastic bit of eye candy that will perhaps make it easier to look past the fact that it doesn’t come with a mouse sensitivity slider, or that the UI is a bit awkward when using keyboard and mouse. The sound design is also of note here, with great voice-over work that’s paired with sound engineers who know how to make a character sound like they’re in the appropriate environment and not in a sterile studio. Sound effects are gruesome, impactful, and satisfying, and while the music doesn’t frequently make an impact it’s always fitting and well done. It’s just a really damn impressive package altogether.

That’s sort of how I feel about Resident Evil 8 in general – it’s just an overall great package. It does fall short in providing a consistent horror experience which is a bit damning given it’s a horror game, but it’s not without its moments. It does a great job at marrying many of the best parts of games from the series’ past, and while that sometimes makes it feel like it’s stuck in that same past, its polish makes it easier to enjoy regardless. Despite some fairly minor blemishes and a lukewarm serving of horror, Resident Evil 8 feels like another step closer to the series finding its footing again.