Enter the Village (RE8 review)

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WARNING: This post may contain spoilers for Resident Evil Village, I will be putting my thoughts about the game here and some key plot point might be revealed. THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO EITHER SCROLL QUICKLY TO SEE COMMENTS OR BACK OUT. IF I SPOILED THE GAME FOR YOU, DON'T WHINE AT ME.

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NOTE: Keep in mind I'm just a regular player, not a pro or a video game journalist, so if I ever get something wrong, just let me know and I'll edit. I'm posting this while my experience with the game is still fresh in my mind.

 

The Resident Evil series had a long, rocky road ever since Shinji Mikami's iconic series debuted in 1996, with small batch of games that varied in constistency, quality-wise. Resident Evil 4 turned the series in a new direction while getting rid of fixed camera angles and rigid controls, with the series getting a few slipups in the form of follow-ups Resident Evil 5 and 6, along with the atrocity that was Operation Raccoon City. You'd be forgiven to think Capcom lost their touch and couldn't do good horror anymore, but recent years proved the big C can still give you goosebumps and cold sweats thanks to series semi-reboot Resident Evil 7 and the Resident Evil 2 Remake, with the only real downer being the RE3 remake that would follow shortly. 

Resident Evil 7 was somewhat divisive, although it enjoyed great success. The shift to first-person view with the promise of VR support could have been red flags that the game wasn't a proper RE title and just some gimmicky attempt at trying something new. WRONG! While the first-person view was a dramatic change, the core concepts of the classic series were firmly in place, with a focus on resources conservation, puzzle-solving and key hunting. Set in a creepy old house in the bayous of Louisiana, RE7 brought a colorful cast of creepy villains trying to dispose of series newcomer Ethan Winters as he went to look for his wife Mia. Despite some rocky sales figure, the game still gained enough popularity for Capcom to recoup their budget expenditures and that was enough to warrant a sequel.

Winters' back

The game begins with RE7 protagonist Ethan Winters and wife Mia taking care of their baby girl Rosemary, having you take control of Ethan to bring Rose to her bed before having dinner with Mia. It's clear from their interactions they're still not entirely over the Louisiana incident, with the two arguing about it until Mia shifted the subject to dinner being served. Out of the blue, a bullet goes through a window and hits Mia, followed by more shots fired by a group of armed men led by none other than Chris Redfield, who proceed to kidnap Ethan and his daughter Rosemary. Ethan is as confused as the player by Chris' actions and after Ethan wakes up near a crashed truck, he makes his way to an old village where he hopes to find answers as to her daughter's whereabouts. During his investigations, Ethan ends up fighting off mutated, werewolf-like men wielding primitive weapons and acting like tribal savages and meeting some of the few survivors in the village. The village is the hub connecting various locations such as Castle Dimitrescu and the Beneviento Estate, a village also littered with treasures for Ethan to find.

Village of the Damned

The game's main location -the village- immediately brings memories of RE4's fanatical spanish community, with the village ruled by important figures part of a cult-like quinted consisting of tall vampire-like lady Alcina Dimistrescu, creepy living doll Donna Beneviento, metal-controlling tinkerer Heisenberg and deformed, patethic mutant Moreau, all working to achieve leader Mother Miranda's mysterious goal, using powers bestowed unto them through bioweapon experiments. Where RE8's village differs from its RE4 counterpart is in the villagers themselves, mere victims of Mother Miranda's experiments which gave birth to the lycans, packs of wolf-like mutants infesting the village and killing its inhabitants. It's a small village that's seen death and destruction, with damages houses and collapsed carts and vehicles blocking most of the paths leading away from the village center. The wintry, daytime decor might not be as claustrophobic and athmospheric as the Bakers' house but it still leaves you with a feeling of dread, that something's not right in this village that surely used to be a lot more alive, if not particularly welcoming. Broken windows, ransacked homes and the odd blood trails all make for a sinister backdrop which a lot more open but not necessarily safe, as Ethan has to use the building's multiple accesses and environmental aids to keep from being overwhelmed. The buildings have sack of floors you can attack to blind enemies and furniture you can push to block doors, or even basements from which you can escape. The village is also littered with treasures you can collect and sell to another RE4 analogue, the Duke.

What're you buyin'?

Like Resident Evil 4, Village has its own merchant in the form of The Duke, a morbidly obese figure who seems to know a lot about what's going on in the village but is somehow more interested in offering Ethan his services rather than hinder his efforts. Appearing at various points in the game, the Duke can sell weapons, ammo and supplies, also offering weapon upgrades and, later on, the possibility of cooking various meats for permanent health upgrades. As the game progresses, new items are added to his stock and saving up Leis (the game's currency) to afford better weapons is a must. Ethan can fill up his coinpurse by killing creatures but also by selling the various valuables he can find around the village, some of them requiring to be combined from different parts to attain their full value. The Duke is a welcome return of RE4's mercantile feature, although some might complaint that the ability to buy ammo could throw the whole ammo conservation angle out the windows. But it's balanced by the upgrades and evolving stock that pushes the player to conserve ammo so as not to waste their hard cash on this important, finite resource.

Speaking of resources, the game's crafting system returns, with Chem Fluids being still as important as ever, with the difference that handgun ammo doesn't required them anymore. Handgun bullets can be made simply from junk parts and gunpowder but more powerful ammo like shotgun shells require chem fluids and grenade rounds even require herbs to craft. Managing crafting ingredients become as important as conserving ammo and more important than managing inventory space, as I didn't find inventory to be as much an issue as in any of the previous entries in the series. Key items and treasures take absolutely no space in your main inventory, which is reserved for weapons and consumables, completely eschewing the item box that had been the series' mainstay for much of its longevity. It does smoothen the pace, however and saves the backtracking for non-key items you might want to get later but are entirely optional.

The Five Horsemen of the Zombocalypse

One of Resident Evil's defining element is its bestiary, the series offering all manners of mutated, hideous creatures to fight or avoid and on that front, it's slightly more varied than RE7's selection of enemies. From lycans to zombie-like creatures, with flying monsters and mechanical monstrosities, RE Village is occasionally capable of offering some truly monstrous foes but most of the monster selection feel restrained. Up until Heisenberg's Factory, your main enemies are the agile lycans and the zombie-like sword-wielding Moroaica, with Dimitrescu Castle introducing the flying Samca while the Factory pits you against the Haulers, which are essentialy tougher Moroaica. The game does have sparingly-used Varcolac, which is a mutated splicing of mold-infected humans spliced with wolf DNA, but they appear in key points and serves more as mini-bosses than regular enemies. Later on, the player faces the biomechanical Soldat enemies, tough humanoid enemies fitted with various mechanical enhancements requiring the player to hit a glowing weakspot to defeat them. The game does spices things up with a few boss fights that pit you against the huge hammer-wielding Urias or the propeller-headed Sturm, as well as a fight with each of Miranda's four children in their mutated forms, requiring slightly different tactics to evade their attacks and hit their weakpoints.

The player visits Alcina's castle as the first point of exploration in search of Ethan's daughter, where he has to deal with Alcina Dimitrescu and her three daughters, each representing a mini-boss to be completed before facing Alcina herself. The castle is the area that was seen most often during Village's marketing, with Alcina Dimitrescu's reception exploding Capcom's expectations. Sadly, our lovely vampiric giantess' abode is the most underwhelming part of the game, without being necessarily bad. the castle is reminiscent of the regal victorian elegance and spookiness of the Spencer Mansion, with the odd puzzle and items and keys to find. Unfortunately, Alcina is very downl=played here as she will only stalk the player through some parts of the castle and only chasing once you're in her line of sight, continuing the emerging trend of Capcom taking the "endless stalker" concept and going downhill ever since RE2 Remake stressed players out with Mr. X's incessant chase. Alcina is hardly a threat, easily avoided most of the time and outrunned without a problem. She only gets stressful when you take a wrong turn and end up in a dead end or when one of her daughters gets in your way. She can't even enter the Merchant's Room, where you can shop with the Duke at your leisure and use it to get Alcina off your back. All this exploration leads you to fighting each of her daughter with no variety in how to dispose of them, requiring you to expose them to cold temperature through shooting windos, opening the roof with a lever or blasting open a wall with pipe bombs before finishing the job with conventional attack. And all this leads to a pedestrian showdown with Alcina's mutated form, which eschew the small glowing weakpoints the series is so fond off for simply shooting at her humanoid torso protruding from a huge, monstrous body. It'S safe to say Alcina Dimitrescu was probably not intended as the game's main star, unlike what Mr. X and Nemesis were made to be in their respective games.

Next is probably the game's high point next to the factory, which is the Beneviento Estate which offers a more claustrophobic horror experience offering the kind of tension Castle Dimitrescu entirely failed to deliver. Stripped of his guns, Ethan has to explore a small, oppressive estate and then disassemble parts of a mannequin made to look like his wife Mia in order to get what he is looking for and escape the estate. The entirety of this area is done without weapons and other items in a pure survival-horror segment which gave me cold sweats thanks to the tense, athmospheric corridors and the darkness that falls upon the estate once the power goes out. And at that point comes the creepiest, most "OH GOD NO" moment in the entire game: As you follow a trail of blood in the shine of your flashlight, you come face to face with the monstrous Baby, a large fetus-like creatures that follows you through the house, requiring the player to strategically use the bed acting as the only hiding place to evade the monsters and finally get to the showdown with Donna Beneviento, which is a living doll cald in a wedding dress. The "fight" is more of a game of hide-and-seek, where you have to find the doll three times so Ethan can stab it in the head to finally reveal the doll's true nature and manage to escape the estate.

Following the Beneviento Estate is an encounter with the pathetic Salvatore Moreau, an hideous mutated man that can't even manage to intimidate Ethan, who puts him down at a few occasions. After Moreau escapes with Ethan's objective, the player has to explore a small mine to find a key and then goes on a short boat ride leading to a run on the rooftops of a flooded small shack village, with a giant fish-like mutated Moreau giving chase. The player has to try and form paths to get across the water while avoiding fish-Moreau's jaws, in order the drain the water from the village, culminating in a rather simple boss fight with a mutated Moreau who mostly uses green puke to burn Ethan or block his way, with the occasional acid rain which forces the player to take shelter. The Moreau segment is a far-cry from the Beneviento Estate, with barely any enemies to dispose off and a boss fight that was a little more exciting than Alcina's, though not by much in my opinion. The whole segment is mostly running and activating switch, with no freeroaming exploration like in the castle.

Afterwards, Heisenberg contacts Ethan and send hims to the Stronghold, where the player fights lots of lycans as they wait for a gate to open, discovering the Stronghold is the Lycans' den. It's an action-packed sequence that offers explosive barrels for player to use against the lycan onslaught, ending the Stronghold with a boss fight against the Urias, a giant hammer-wielding lycans that hits like a truck and occasionally summons a trio of regular lycans ot his aid. 

And finally, Heisenberg's Factory has Ethan meeting with one of Miranda's children, who wishes to kill Mother Miranda with Ethan's help, which Ethan refuses. What follows is another more claustrophobic environnement which now features tougher enemies that require using the environment and firing at their weak spot to defeat them. There's a little item hunting that involves the use of a casting machine to make keys and other important items, while dealing with the dangerous Soldat enemies that chase you through the factory with their drill-arm. And as you get through the occasionally maze-like factory, you end up fighting the Sturm, a large humanoid mutant with a large propeller in place of its head and torso. That was was a little more tense and exciting although the strategy is a simple as can be, exploiting the Sturm's attack pattern to hit a glowing weakpoint. Once this is done, Ethan gets some exposition from Chris Redfield, revealing Miranda's true nature before seding Ethan on his way with the use of one of Heisenberg's machines. What follows is a simple but satisfying boss battle against a giant, metal-covered mutate Heisenberg with the use of a small tank-like vehicle armed with a chainsaw, machine gun and a canon.

The Boulder-Puncher

After an encounter with Miranda that doesn't go so well for Ethan, the game switches to a fun, action-filled sequence as Chris Redfield as he goes through the village blasting lycans and Varcolacs left and right. It's simple, straightforward, not very scary but enjoyable, with Chris having access to a lot of ammunition and strong weapons that included a pointing laser that marks specific targets for an aerial attack. It's a nice break from the careful, conservatory nature of the rest of the game and allows the players to go all-out as one of the franchise's most iconic characters. It's a pretty short sequence but a fun one that offers another hammer-wielding Urias to fight and a little bit of lore from documents scattered in Miranda's laboratory. Chris finds out Mia is alive and was imprisoned in the laboratory for Miranda's experiments. Shortly after we learn of Ethan's true nature and Miranda's ultimate goal before we get to the final boss fight with the Duke's help. a short run later and the player is facing Mother Miranda in a long, varied boss fight requiring constant movements and good use of high-damaging weapons on a rather easy target. It'S as straightforward as can be despite a few variations in Miranda's attack pattern but it's a boss fight worthy of topping those eight hours of exploration and item-hunting, followed by a huge explosion in pure Resident Evil fashion. Cue the credits and then, an after-credits scene and finally the game ends with the possibility of overwriting your game as a "Completed Game" save.

completing the game gives the player Completion Points, which are accumulated by, well, finishing the game and allows to unlock games modes and features in the Extra Content Shop, including the long-running Mercenaries mode. In this returning mode, the player can buy weapons and supplies from the Duke before going through stages divided in areas to kill enemies and rack up points in the hope of unlocking new weapons, stages and other bonuses. It's a fun, arcadey distraction after the slower-paced exploration of the main campaign.

Goodbye, Village!

In conclusion, Resident Evil Village is a worthy entry in the series, even though it doesn't have the same dirty, spooky athmosphere RE7 offered and not even close to Capcom's masterful stroke that was RE2 Remake, which would be an unfair comparison since RE2R was build on the solid foundations of a game that cemented Capcom's position on the throne of horror gaming. Village's athmosphere is a little hit or miss, but each segment has its own personality, making for an uneven tension but some more varied places to explore. The monsters are fine for the most part but the most disturbing of them all appears only once as a threat to be avoided while trying to escape a creepy house. And the story, as always, is Resident Evil's silliness, with a revelation about Ethan that's a little weird to accept but does explain how he survives wounds that should've been fatal. RE Village is a worthy entry in the series and thanks to Mercenaries mode, you can still add to the eight hours of gameplay the game has to offer.