/VERDICT
Resident Evil
Village is a
decent, if rather
inconsistent,
addition to the
long-running
horror series.OVERALL SCORE
70 %
ramshackle reservoir area dotted with sinking windmills,
evoking shades of HP Lovecraft’s story The Shadow over
Innsmouth. You’ll also descend into a vast subterranean
factory, filled with dark corridors prowled by fearsome
undead cyborgs.
These wild swings between settings mean Village has
few slow moments. Each location is a complete refresh,
where the rules by which you previously played may no
longer apply. Your route through the game isn’t directly
linear either. Completing each location unlocks more of the
central village, letting you access new houses from which to
gather more resources.
There aren’t many proper puzzles in Village, but there
are plenty of secrets to find, such as Treasures. Located
in secluded corners of the world, these valuable
artefacts let you step off the beaten path and
explore Village’s nooks and crannies. When
retrieved, they can be exchanged with the game’s
merchant – a giant fat man known as the Duke – for
new weapons, equipment and character upgrades.
Village’s pace and variety lessens the impact of the
game’s two major flaws. Firstly, Village isn’t especially
scary. The bosses can be intimidating, while playing hide
and seek with Lady Dimitrescu in her castle is undoubtedly
tense, but none of it generates the heart-stopping dread you
experience in Alien: Isolation or even the more formidable
parts of Resident Evil 7.
The exception to this rule is House Beneviento, which
is not only the scariest location in Village, but might be the
most frightening sequence in the whole Resident Evil series.
Still, one terrifying hour in a game that’s approximately 12
hours long isn’t much of a hit rate.
A bigger problem than the lack of scares is that Village’s
combat is middling at best. Feature-wise, it offers some
improvements over Resident Evil 7. Ethan is nimbler
this time, being able to move faster, hop over certain
obstacles and even barricade doors with conveniently
placed bookshelves.
He also has access to a much broader arsenal, including
pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, pipe bombs, grenade
launchers and more. Yet the result, oddly, is less engaging
combat. The primary issue is that common enemies, such
as Lycans and zombies, aren’t very threatening and they’re
easy to evade on all but the hardest difficulty setting.
It also has little of the spectacle seen in Resident Evil
- Aside from popping the occasional Lycan head, your
weapons don’t visually affect enemies much, while
subsidiary mechanics, such as barricading rooms, only
occasionally feature in a meaningful way.
As with the horror, there’s only one sequence towards
the end where the action kicks up a gear, and you can see
the spirit of Resident Evil 4 beneath Village’s skin. These
issues prevent Village from competing with the best
Resident Evil games, but they don’t stop it from being an
enjoyable adventure.
Part of the appeal is simply exploring the remarkable
world Capcom has created, because Village looks incredible.
Capcom’s RE engine excels at creating realistic-looking
environments and characters. The quality of texturing on
surfaces such as skin and plastic is phenomenal.
More remarkable still is how Village delivers performance- it’s the best-optimised game we’ve played since Doom
Eternal, delivering seamless frame rates at 4K on our
GeForce RTX 2080 Super. Yet unlike Eternal, Village also
supports ray tracing, in what’s probably the smoothest
implementation of the technology yet.
The character performances are also outstanding.
Village’s story is typical Resident Evil shlock, but the
adventure is brought to life by the acting. It’s enormous
fun to be around the four main villains, particularly Lady
Dimitrescu and the factory owner Heisenberg. All the
performances are great, even that of the genetically
milquetoast Ethan Winters.
Ultimately, Village is a pacey and entertaining, if rather
familiar, ghost train. It doesn’t bring much new to the series
and can’t compete with its best entries, but its kooky
characters and great variety help to compensate for that.
Just bear in mind the eye-watering price tag when deciding
whether to pay Village a visit.
RICK LANE