Resident Evil Village: New benchmark in survival horror
Three million copies of RE Village were sold within the first four days of its launch, making it one of Capcom’s biggest titles
Resident Evil (RE) Village has become a major hit due to the popularity of RE 7's soft reboot and recent remakes of the older games. It is the tenth main installment of the RE series and is a direct continuation to RE 7: Biohazard.
Three million copies of RE Village were sold within the first four days of its launch in the market, making it one of Capcom's biggest titles.
The major antagonist in RE Village - Lady Dimitrescu, has proven to be an excellent marketing tool for the game, to the point that Domino's Pizza began using her to promote their pizzas. In fact, this tall vampire lady's viral nature has led gamers and fanatics to spread the name all over the internet, earning RE Village a huge followership.
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Watch the trailer of Resident Evil Village here
RE Village holds on to protagonist Ethan Winters but replaces RE 7's southern madhouse with a campy gothic setting, complete with dark castles and witches. The game seems a bit over-theatrical with the characters and the whole environment setup. All of this loosens the game's shocks a little – the developers might have done it intentionally – but it does not completely eliminate them.
RE Village, like its contemporaries, continually uses the sense of being tracked, even though you are not. Being pursued is not a novel trope: it energises gothic legends that the RE series has been built upon, such as the darker monsters in Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Leatherface's solitary cyborgs.
After Resident Evil 4, the trader - The Duke - makes a comeback! He is a fantastic character that adds some plot development flair to RE by allowing you a few different ways to invest your money. You can purchase more ammo, for example, which is still scarce in RE.
The castle, like the best RE events, is a dangerous puzzle box that you must encircle and backtrack through to unlock new areas and advance forward. This is also accurate of the village for the majority of the game. There are also plenty of clues and surprises to uncover off the beaten path as you widen the map, in addition to the story's drive to new areas.
Even if it does not quite touch the high notes achieved elsewhere, the continual changing of styles and thoughts works well and generates constant suspense over what is coming. The pace is uneven, however, and main beats can appear oddly short or excessively stretched based on how much you play in scenes.
It is worth remembering that no matter how you play it, it is not the longest title - even after scouring the globe for clues and collectibles, my save just clocked in at 10 hours. If you take a more direct approach to complete the story mode, you can finish it in around five-six hours.
It is the one place where consistency is continuously poor in a series known for its puzzles.
Most of the puzzles sound phony, with the exception of one genius set-piece series - there is a treasure map that leads to an obvious, totally unhidden locked gate you previously passed during a scripted sequence and one puzzle simply has the solution next to it. It is not like you have to decipher anything to get the solutions, you just have to press a button.
Now, let us talk about some technical aspects of RE Village.
It is a brilliant game; Capcom has produced incredible graphics that look great even without ray tracing (RTX). The cramped sentiments of this survival-horror shooting are supported not only by detail but also by the environment and art design. The character depiction in recent RE games has always been pleasant, and Village builds on it while still using the same "RE Engine" as DMC5.
Faces, characters, and graphics are all highly realistic. The textures are very precise and do not distort when seen close quarters. The lighting is also great, despite the fact that almost all of it was pre-baked during the authoring phase.
RE 8 utilises the same RE Engine that has been used in several other Capcom games after 2016. The game works flawlessly on all modern graphics cards thanks to DirectX 12 support. There are a bunch of new options for adjusting the graphics accuracy according to your hardware specification.
For a game in 2021, the output is actually quite impressive. In general, RE Village is extremely well optimised, hitting outstanding FPS ratings even at the highest settings.
The game is being sold on steam for $59.99. If you have not already played RE 7 which I recommend you to do so, you can buy the complete bundle of RE Village and RE 7.
RE Village is currently available for PS4, Xbox One, PS5, Xbox series X and series S, Google Stadia, and desktop computer (Windows).
