Review: Resident Evil Village
Patrick Meurs
58 seconds ago
Resident Evil has served us quite a bit of twisted and sickly trade since the very first game's launch in 1996. Starting with the good old zombie, in all its fucked up variants. Let's not forget mutant pets such as Dobermans and fuzzy fluffy spiders. Bring in a giant person with a personal vendetta, and Resident Evil is where it was pretty much until Part 7.
Since Part 7, Resident Evil has been on a revamped first-person path that Part 8 called Village trudges on. Ethan Winters has not suffered enough at the hands of the hospitable Baker family and is single-handedly thrown back into the misery by Chris Redfield. Because the franchise has now reached a big milestone, Capcom is pulling everything out of the Resident Evil closet to make it a hit. All very nice, but sometimes wanting too much can also lead to disappointment.
Winters is coming to town
So check, Resident Evil Village continues to build on Resident Evil 7, in which Ethan Winters and his chick Mia barely managed to deal with the Bakertjes and their moldy toco. Ethan and Mia have been doing pretty well since then, as long as Ethan keeps his mouth shut about that shit in Louisiana. Their happiness has since been sealed with a child, Rosemary. This happiness is allowed to last for about three years, because Chris Redfield - who made them move to stay out of the spotlight - is breaking domestic peace in the crudest way ever.
And then Ethan suddenly wakes up at the border of a completely rotten village. The local tourist office is nowhere to be found and only an elderly lady with a skull obsession babbles some nonsense about a Mother Miranda. Oh, and your daughter comes up too. Mother Miranda has her own reasons for taking a closer look at your daughter, so she turns out to be somewhere in that village. Ethan wouldn't be a proud daddy if he didn't turn everything upside down to find Rose, so the search begins. Unfortunately, the village is also on alert, as “monsters” rage through the hamlet like hooligans during El Classico.
Where this takes us is no longer a secret, since everyone has already seen the trailers and some demos have been released. Still, Capcom has pulled the wool over our eyes here, because the village square and Castle Dimitrescu are only a fraction of Resident Evil Village's playing field. The whole thing is four times bigger than expected, given Lady Dimitrescu and her three daughters make up only a quarter of the story. Village houses another three “family members” who each play a vital role in the whole plot, which is unfortunately enormously predictable.
Dazzlingly frugal
This predictability ruined Resident Evil Village a bit for me, despite trying to generate some “oh wow” moments through twists at the end. During my eight hours of playing time I already knew after an hour and a half to predict where this was going. Even the twists are spilled early in the game. Nevertheless, the biggest twist still works out at the end, but I would have preferred Resident Evil Village to really provide me with a mindblowing revelation.
Anyway, so be it. Fortunately, the ride there is a very nice one, with some exceptions. During Resident Evil 7, Capcom already showed what it wants to do with the series, namely, be cinematic, atmospheric and as realistic as possible. I would be lying to say this is not the case in Village. The storytelling is almost spot on. There are plenty of interesting characters and all have been worked out to perfection, including a superb voice cast. The environment also looks like a ring. Castle Dimitrescu in particular shines like a mofo thanks to the utilized ray tracing. The village - no matter how rotten it may be - is also bursting with detail. An excellent use of ambient sound often also adds the creepy factor that we want, so there is also a good atmosphere.
The graphic spectacle in particular fascinated me for eight hours, because I hardly found Village really scary. And I personally find that a shame. In Resident Evil 7 I spent much of the game on the edge of my seat because I really got the feeling that danger could lurk around every corner. Village almost never gave me this feeling. The only ones you try to hunt down are Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters, but that won't last forever either. As soon as you close the castle doors behind your ass, that feeling of being hunted doesn't really return. A mere scene in a house full of cliché - but extremely effective - porcelain dolls really triggered my horror senses.
Can it be an ounce less?
It doesn't help that the last quarter of the game is really too absurd for words. Lycans, zombies and vampires, I can live with that, even though none of them instill the fear that Resident Evil 7's Molded did. But Acte 4 from Village comes up with something that I think has nothing to do with Resident Evil anymore. I don't want to give too much away, but biomechanically engineered bullet sponges in an underground mass production facility… I don't know. In my opinion, the accompanying boss fight had more to do with Transformers than with Resident Evil.
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loved RE7 and expect great things about this sequel, we will see how it goes i hope to see a 90+! 
