Resident Evil Village

Review

After being rescued three years ago from the Baker’s house by Chris Redfield and his commando units somewhere in the Louisiana countryside, Ethan and Mia Winters have relocated at Chris’ request and recently welcomed their first child, Rosemary. The event that occurred three years ago is still fresh in their minds, and a sense of insecurity and fear is constantly looming over them even if they are trying hard to forget, to move on and enjoy their little bundle of joy. But one night, the living nightmare starts again for Ethan after Mia is gunned down in their apartment by their saviour, Chris Redfield, who was after Rosemary. Ethan refused to see his daughter taken away and tried to put up a bit of a fight but was knocked out cold by the butt of a sub-machine gun. When he woke up, he was somewhere close to a Resident Evil Village!

Resident Evil Village is the 8th game of the iconic first-person survival horror/ puzzle-solving series developed and self-published by CAPCOM Co., Ltd. The game was released on the 7^th of May 2021 on Steam as well as on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X and Xbox One. 

The game consists of the main story and the Mercenaries mode, which will unlock once you have successfully finished your first playthrough. There are four levels of difficulty, which are Casual, Normal, Hardcore and Village of Shadows. In my case, I decided to play my first playthrough on the Normal difficulty, and it took me around 11 hours to complete the game.

What an absolute piece of art this game is. From start to finish Resident Evil Village provides stunning graphics and entertainment with exquisite cutscenes, great gameplay and several  jump-out-of-your-chair moments. In terms of puzzles, it is more or less finding keys or objects that can give you access to a new area within the village or in the buildings you’ll be visiting during your gameplay. I was surprised about the amount of action this game provides! The element of horror survival is there, but it is far more subtle than the action you encounter playing this game. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mind it at all, and in fact I think the balance between the two is pretty much spot on. Nonetheless, it startled me a little bit as I was not expecting to be frequently attacked by a horde of enemies. But I did really enjoy the different types of enemy that I encountered in each of the main locations in this game.

Regarding the story, you play Ethan Winters who is on a mission to save his daughter and does not know why his daughter has been abducted by a woman named Mother Miranda. Very quickly into the piece, Ethan will be brought to Mother Miranda by one of her four Lieutenants name Heisenberg. There, he will meet the entire gang painfully, and he will be given a chance to escape at that cutscene. That will bring on a frantic pursuit which Ethan need to be quick to find his way out by navigating into dangerous rooms and make sure to keep moving ahead and not being caught. There are a couple of these pursuits in this which are very fun.  

To save his daughter, he will have to defeat all four Mother Miranda Lieutenants in four different locations and retrieve the four parts of his daughter, which will be in four yellow glass rectangles. I must say that I personally enjoyed Dimitrescu’s Castle stage the most, and the boss fight with the Mutated Alcina Dimitrescu was absolutely a hell of a battle. Then, the Reservoir and the Factory were pretty good too, but I am afraid the Donna Beneviento and Angie stage were a bit dull for me liking and frankly very easy.  

Ethan will start this chilling story without any weapons, and he will be given a gun by an NPC relatively early on upon arriving at the village. Unfortunately for him, he will have a small amount of ammunition, goods and money at first. So, he will need to search houses, open draws and wardrobes to find some new goodies. Don’t worry too much, a small black arrow will highlight the compartments he is able to open. He can also find goodies on surfaces and in wooden boxes with yellow paint on them. Most of the time when Ethan kills an enemy, the foe will most likely drop either some Lei (money), an object or ammunition. Don’t forget lo look up at the trees and on ceilings, you might also find interesting goodies.

In a few locations, you’ll be able to sell, buy and upgrade weapons, buy recipes for making ammunition or increase your inventory slots at the caravan of Duke the merchant. But all cost serious Lei, so bear that in mind. You can also get perks by providing Duke with specific meats so he can cook one of his recipes.

As I mentioned before, all aspects of the game are extremely well-done, and it was such a pleasure to run this game on my 4k monitor on the 3840 X 2160 resolution and using my Astro A50 headset. Unfortunately, I had a few crashes during my gameplay. The game just froze, which is always a bit frustrating. Thankfully, the game autosaves right after cutscenes, before encounters and after fights. You also save your game at the iconic typewriters. The game has full controller support in terms of the controls, but I personally prefer playing these types of game with my mouse and keyboard.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com

Resident Evil Village Steam Store page