Resident Evil Village
PlayStation 4
Nostalgia Factor:
Resident Evil is one of my most beloved video game franchises of all time. It’s also one of my most reviewed franchises of all time, as I’ve reviewed 12 Resident Evil games (15 if you count re-reviews) for this blog.
Coming into Resident Evil Village, I actually knew very little about the game. I like to come into games as unspoiled as humanly possible – and that’s exactly what happened here. All I knew was that it was a first person game (like Resident Evil 7), and that it brought back that game’s protagonist – Ethan Winters. As far as the gameplay, the story, basically anything else went: I knew nothing. And I expected nothing, too. As much as I liked Resident Evil 7, the series has been spinning its wheel for years and years now. My expectations for this game were at an all-time low.
Would I end up liking this game, or would it be another disappointing entry into one of my favorite series of all time? Time to find out.
Story:
Ethan and his wife Mia are living a pleasant, relaxing life after the events of Resident Evil 7. They have a nice house and a new baby named Rosemary. Things seem to be going well for them… until their house is raided by Resident Evil mainstay Chris Redfield. Chris kills Mia, takes the baby, and places a stunned Ethan into custody. After blacking out, Ethan wakes up next to a transport vehicle, which has crashed in the snow. He wanders around the vicinity looking for clues as to his whereabouts when he discovers a village nearby. Very quickly Ethan finds out that something is terribly wrong in this village, as he is attacked by a number of vicious, wolf-like creatures. Ethan discovers that this village is under the control of the mysterious Mother Miranda and her four minions: Lady Dimitrescu, Donna Beneviento, Salvatore Moreau, and Karl Heisenberg.
These minions have split Ethan’s daughter into four different “pieces” which they intend to use in some kind of evil ritual. Using the village as a sort of central hub, Ethan goes to each of these minions’ locations to take back all of the flasks containing his daughter’s remains. This is the main object of the game. Once all the flasks are collected, the quest to take down Mother Miranda begins. Chris Redfield arrives in the village and explains to Ethan that he didn’t actually shoot his wife Mia – he had shot Mother Miranda, who had altered her appearance to look like Mia so she could steal baby Rosemary. I don’t want to spoil the game’s ending too much, but shit hits the fan quickly. Explosions, big guns, mutated creatures. Mother Miranda is eventually defeated, but at great cost: the life of one of Resident Evil’s major characters!
The game’s story was pretty fun for me – at least in the beginning of the game. As things progressed I began to care less and less about the story and more about its exploration and gameplay. There are so many plot holes and things that don’t make sense. I just went with it and tried not to think about it too much. By the end of the game, the story goes completely off the rails as it does in many other Resident Evil titles. At least nobody punches any boulders.
Gameplay:
This game plays out like a perfect combination between Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 4. At first I didn’t really see the RE4 connection. That became clearer and clearer to me the deeper I got into the game. Initially, I expected this to be more of the same in regards to Resident Evil 7. The first person perspective, the exploring, the slower pace. And then the game just explodes. That whole sequence with all of the wolf creatures swarming you is similar to the sequence early on in Resident Evil 4 where there is a mob of villagers coming after you. That’s when things really began to click for me.
The village looks a lot like the village in RE4. Despite the first person perspective, the combat plays out more like RE4 than RE7. You can shoot wildlife, collect gems and treasures, interact with a merchant. You hit crates and vases with your knife to find health and ammunition items. The scenery, the gameplay, the weapons, the boss characters: this game basically IS Resident Evil 4, but from a first person viewpoint. And that’s a fantastic thing.
You’re going to find yourself using this game’s map quite often. The map tells you if you’ve discovered everything there is to discover in each particular area of the game. If you missed a health or ammo pickup, the location will remain colored red on the map until you pick it up. Once you’ve fully explored an area, it turns to blue. Using the map is a great way to determine where you need to go or what areas you still need to explore. I was constantly opening and closing my map every 20 seconds, which I’m sure would have been annoying to anyone unfortunate enough to watch me play this game. Luckily I am not a streamer.
Exploration in this game is just so darn fun. I’m very OCD in my approach, and I love it. Unless there’s something in a room (like a puzzle) that I absolutely CAN’T clear until later on in the game, I won’t leave that room until I fully explore it and turn it to blue on my map. Same goes for outside areas too. It pays to be meticulous and to check out everything. I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun trying to find all the little secrets and items in a game before. Again, this brings me back to Resident Evil 4. I was the same way with that game too. It helps when your environment is so detailed and rich as it is in this series.
Not only is exploration a blast, but combat is a ton of fun too. I am not going to lie: I HATED the combat in Resident Evil 7. I’m glad they shifted gears and made it more like RE4 for this game. It’s so fun. Enemies react differently to where you shoot them on their body, and there are different strategies you can employ to take out groups of enemies at a time. You’ve got grenades, mines, that kind of thing. Nothing is more satisfying than getting a bunch of enemies bunched up in one location and then taking them all down with one shotgun blast. Nothing. The game does devolve into more of a shooter/action title as things go on, but I’m okay with that. On the whole I prefer the RE series when it is slower and more survival horror-based, but I don’t mind it here. You get a lot of that survival horror stuff in the beginning of the game, sure, but overall that’s just not what this game is. It’s an action game.
Before I move on, I feel I need to give a shot out to the section of the game where you explore Lady Dimitrescu’s castle. Lady Dimitrescu acts like a Nemesis/Mr. X type character, stalking you around her castle relentlessly and putting fear in your heart when you hear her footsteps. This is one of my favorite parts of this whole game, and it sucks that it is so short. I knew basically nothing about this game coming into it, but I HAD seen all the memes and all the hype surrounding Lady Dimitrescu. I really had high hopes that she was going to be a bigger part of the game, and it sucks that she wasn’t.
Graphics:
This game is absolutely stunning. So much detail was poured into the creation of the village. You get a genuine sense that this could have been based off of a real, decrepit, junk-filled village located somewhere in the remote USA. The atmosphere that permeates the game is fantastic. I haven’t been more engrossed and sucked in by a video game in quite some time.
Visually, my favorite part of the game is, again, from Lady Dimitrescu’s castle. There are some areas in the castle that remind me of the castles in RE4, with the brick walls and the red carpet and the gold trim and the wooden furniture and all that. It is jaw dropping seeing how photo realistic these areas are. And I played the game on a PS4. Why exactly do we need a PS5, again?
Sound:
There’s not much I can say about this game’s sound other than that it sounds great. The stars here are the voice acting and the atmospheric sound effects. The music I didn’t care much about, as I really didn’t notice it much as I was playing. I certainly don’t remember any of it.
Overall:
This game was such a pleasant surprise. Considering I came into this with low/no expectations, I was completely blown away by it. I was not expecting one of my favorite games ever (Resident Evil 4) to essentially be brought into the new generation of gaming, albeit from a first person perspective. And that’s essentially what this game is: a new, spruced up version of Resident Evil 4.
There were many times this question entered my head as I played the game: do I like this more than Resident Evil 4? RE4 may be one of my top 5 favorite video games of all time. If I liked this more than RE4, that would essentially by default put this game into my personal top 5. In fact, a different question popped into my head later on in the game: is this my favorite game of all time, period? There’s almost never a dull moment to be found here. The exploration is fun, the combat is satisfying, the presentation is remarkable. It’s rare that you encounter a game that you enjoy 100% of, and Resident Evil Village manages to accomplish this task. While I’ve cooled off a bit on the “best game of all time” thoughts (the game goes off the rails a bit towards the end) – the fact that it even entered my mind as a possibility should say a lot about its quality.
I certainly was not expecting to like this game as much as I did. I came into this expecting, at best, something on par with Resident Evil 7 – which I gave a B+. Village completely blows RE7 out of the water. In fact, this is probably my favorite game in the entire series since RE4, which came out 17 years ago. It’s fantastic from start to finish, from top to bottom. If I could muster up one complaint – it would again be about how the story goes off the rails in the later acts of the game. But that’s a minor complaint. When I review games, the fun factor is my #1 deciding factor on what kind of final grade I give a game. And I can’t say I’ve had more fun with ANY other video game in the past 5 years or so. This game is that good.
THE GRADE:
A+
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