Resident Evil Village may not be the scariest Resident Evil to date, but it might as well be the prettiest, captivating, intriguing, and most story-filled Resident Evil. This post may be more biased than the other ones, but the more I think about it, the more that I can say that this is absolutely one of the greatest RE games, even up there with 4 and 2.
Let’s start with the basics. Three years after the events of RE 7, Ethan and Mia Winters move out to Europe to try to escape the horrors of Louisiana, and also to try to safely raise their child Rose Winters. Suddenly, Chris Redfield storms into their house, kills Mia, and takes their child. With Chris established as the new potential villain, it’s up to Ethan to avenge Mia and find their child Rose. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy, as Ethan must encounter vampires, werewolves, possessed dolls, and a hunchback thing, while also uncovering the secrets as to why Chris did what he did. Typically, Resident Evil games don’t dwell too much on its story during the gameplay, that’s done through its documents and references to past RE games. This time however, the story is super investing. The game picks up right from the get go, and continues to dive deeper and deeper into its mysteries, all while mixing in its classic Resident Evil survival horror. I absolutely love the story of this game, and it’s super enticing, making you want to progress and see the next cutscene to see what’s going on. I love it.
Now before I praise this game, I will go over the scare-factor in this game, as like I said, it’s not all that scary, and for a Resident Evil game, it can be hard to overlook that. While some parts are scary (Lady Dimistrescu’s Castle and the BABY- DEAR LORD THE BABY), that’s only a fraction of the whole game. In its defense however, some Resident Evil games aren’t scary, and still turn out to be great, namely RE3 Remake and RE5 in my opinion. But that’s all it is: an opinion. You can’t really definitively say if something as a whole is scary or not, as many players will have different reactions to different parts of the game, and that’s okay. I personally think stalker enemies in games are the scariest thing ever, which is why I was terrified during the Mr. X segments in RE2, the Jack segment in RE7, and the Dimitrescu segment in this game. Someone may not even be phased by those types of parts, and it’s all fine if that’s the case. Now with that out of the way, now I can hype this game up tremendously.
I feel like with this being the first next-generation Resident Evil game, it must be addressed that I played this on the PS5, and it is the definitive way to play the game in my opinion. The game has been optimized for the hardware, meaning there are no load times/ loading screens, it looks absolutely gorgeous, and the Dualsense adds so much more to the game than it may seem. For anyone who hasn’t used them before, basically the triggers simulate and replicate how the guns would feel in real life. So, with a pistol for instance, it takes no effort to aim with the gun by holding the left trigger, but you feel some resistance with the right trigger when firing. Shotguns and heavy artillery on the other hand requires much more force to press down on the trigger to even lift it up and aim, and then on top of that, you still have the same resistance with the right trigger when firing too. All of this may seem intrusive to one’s experience, but if anything, it adds to the tension and realism to the game. You can damage enemies much faster with a pistol than a shotgun, and previous generations of consoles had barely any difference to its usages, other than recoil. Now, you need not only the aim and steadiness for these guns, but now it requires much more energy and effort to get your shots in. Add this into a frantic encounter with an enemy, and you may end up dying if you are too slow with your shots, when you might have gotten the shot off with any other controller. What I’m trying to get at is the Dualsense’s adaptive triggers, in addition to its super detailed haptic feedback, light bar, speaker, etc. truly makes RE8 the best on PS5.
Side note before I finish things up, something I’ve never touched on in the past, but should start doing more often is how outstanding of a performance every character’s actor portrays. Each protagonist, villain, companion, all bring life to this game. Normally I do pay attention to a cast’s performance in a video game, but for some reason Resident Evil 8 in particular really stood out to me with the acting. I love it.
All that being said, Resident Evil Village shot up very quickly in my personal list of favorite Resident Evil games. It nails everything that Resident Evil does well, and I had an absolute blast from start to finish. Totally top 3 for me at least. I cannot wait to see more from the franchise in the future.