“Title’s a bit unwieldy, don’t you think?”
When I’m not scared shitless by the impending doom of living on our planet under late-stage capitalism, I play video games. This is a generalization, of course; I do much more in my life besides those two things. But some days that’s about all I can do, and that’s ok. Some days, especially days when the world’s getting you down and you really need to take a step back from it all because it feels like the future’s imploding, it’s good to be able to just sit down and play a video game, or read a book, or watch a movie, or go for a run, or anything that gets your mind off whatever it is that’s bothering you. For me, that happens to be video games, and it’s one of the reasons that I play them pretty frequently. They’re one of the few things that lets me turn off the voices in my head.
Anyway, that’s a roundabout way of explaining why I stayed up until 4AM one morning back in May (sorry, Cheyenne) to complete one of the best survival-horror-action games I’ve ever played. It is also the only game of that genre that I’ve actually finished, either. It’s good. Let me explain why, and also finally answer the question that’s been on my mind since the game first came out; “Is Resident Evil Village Spectral Crown but with zombies?”
This is going to be a shorter review, in part because it has been like six months since I played the game since I’ve delayed writing this review since then, and in part because it’s been a long week and I’m ok writing just a shorter piece today. But even if it’s shorter, there will be spoilers! THIS IS YOUR OFFICIAL SPOILER WARNING!
My interest in RE: Village first began when they announced it back in June of 2020, and looking back, it’s insane to me that they announced it at all back then. I mean, I think we were all just starting to realize that COVID wasn’t something that was going to go away any time soon, and work-from-home was still pretty new to most people, relatively speaking. They must have been pretty damn confident that they’d be able to keep up with the pressure of a global pandemic to get this thing out in a timely manner. Although I’m guessing it was probably more than halfway done by then. But either way, like most of the internet, it wasn’t until that third trailer where I really took notice. Oh, man, that third trailer. Talk about leveraging assets. That shit got people talking, for one reason or another. I was focused on the many superficial similarities between RE: Village and my own Spectral Crown at the time, and certainly not other, uh, factors. I don’t think I can quite convey to people not interested in games the absolute tidal wave of “conversation” that came in the wake of that third trailer, though. Or maybe I can, considering that big vampire mommy Lady Dimitrescu found her way into pretty much every corner of the internet at that point. It was a big deal, is what I’m saying.
And then a few months went by, and I didn’t particularly pay attention to anything else about the game. I was still planning on buying it, if only because I really wanted to know just how closely this thing resembled Spectral Crown (and if I’d have any grounds for an absurd, cash grab copyright infringement lawsuit), but then the reviews started coming in once the game actually came out, and I realized something. I realized that the game might actually be pretty damn good, and then I knew that I had to play it. Even if I bounced off of RE 7, for whatever reason, the reviews made it seem like I’d get more mileage out of this one. So I bought it, and I played it, and I loved it. Like, really, really loved it. I think I finished the game in the span of a week because I was just so intent on beating the thing and seeing all it had to offer, and then I stayed up until 4AM that one day because I got to the end-game and I just couldn’t put the thing down. I still can’t believe it. I’ve never done that with practically any other game, especially a big AAA game like this one. I mean, I stay up until odd hours with games, but it’s usually a smaller indie game or Minecraft or something. But never 4AM, and never a mainstream game like Resident Evil. That alone should be review enough. Just play the damn thing.
But I might as well explain why, I suppose. There are a lot of reasons, frankly, and there’s so much I could talk about for this game. Maybe I’ll go over this with my big highlights? Or maybe I should take it beat-by-beat, and go through the checklist of games review journalism? Or maybe I should just tell you the moments in this game that I still find myself thinking about months later? How about all of the above? I don’t know, I don’t write these things very often. Maybe let’s just take it beat by beat to start out.
First, the visuals. I was running this game on the beast that is my home-built desktop, but even that wasn’t quite enough to get the absolute best this game had to offer. I think the thing got ray-tracing support later (not that I really know or care what that means), but you’d need a monster of a PC to run it like that. That being said, even running at mid-to-high graphical settings, the game looks incredible. It’s got superb art direction and a huge array of graphic features to tweak with, too, just to get the smoothest possible shots. Huge props to the Resident Evil team for making it super easy to play with the graphics settings. So no issues on that front, and no issues with bugs or glitches, either. It ran perfectly fine for me.
Next, the gameplay. I gotta say, just as every review ever about this game has pointed out, it feels great to play as a first-person shooter. Silent Hill or Resident Evil 1 this is not; while the first half is pretty heavy on horror tropes, any sense of fear quickly dissipates after the second main area. It’s a shooter, not a crawler. While I definitely scavenged for materials pretty hard, I ended up with so many bullets by the end of the game that I could have easily spent half the time looking for materials and would have been fine. Oh, that reminds me; the primary gameplay loop of this game is explore an area, shoot some monsters, look for treasure, fight a boss, repeat. For the majority of the game (not all of it, mind you), this is the gameplay. And it feels great; the progression is rock-solid (though it has a tendency to lean too hard into a power trip if you’re thorough enough), the exploration is fun, the rewards are almost always interesting, the gunplay never really gets stale, and the levels are varied enough to keep my attention, with one exception in the final stage. Plus, the unlockable Mercenaries mode and the incentives to replay the game after you beat the main story is a neat bonus that I wasn’t actually expecting. Overall, even if it’s on the shorter side (say, ten hours to beat if you’re good and fifteen hours to beat if you’re me), you can easily squeeze thirty or fifty hours out of it without having to dig for extra challenge.
And finally, the story. Frankly, the story isn’t what I’m here for. It isn’t what any of us are here for. It mostly serves as a vehicle to shepherd Ethan Winters around to different locales while keeping the dramatic tension high; gotta find that key to open that door to kill that thing to find the pickled, beating heart of my infant child. I mean, it’s Resident Evil, so the story is wacky and kind of nonsensical. If you’re looking for something thought-provoking or human, this isn’t really the game you want. But if you’re looking for beefy military guys beating the shit out of werewolves because of a hyper-regenerative 100-year-old mold queen and her evil, mutant children, then yeah, Village all the way. Most of the actual “story” part of the story is exposition-dumped right at the end, with breadcrumbs along the way, but the last couple scenes are genuinely affecting. Or at least genuinely affecting in the way that you’ve gotten emotionally invested after now spent twelve hours with this Ethan Winters guy trying to save his baby because his wife got shot in the head. No tears were shed by heartstrings were tugged, in a post-ironic melodramatic kind of way.
I think that’s just about everything, as far as the big game review parts are concerned! Now that that’s out of the way, I can get into the real meat of this; my random thoughts about the game itself, and why the thing has stuck with me for so long. First, the giant meat baby in the room; if you’ve played this game, you know what I’m talking about, but final spoiler alert for those who haven’t! That second area? That second area? Oh, man, that mansion is one of the coolest damn levels in any video game I’ve ever played. It is far and away the single scariest moment in the game, and the minute that THING pops out of the doorway, I about shit my pants. I have not been as genuinely frightened by anything in a game since I played PT the first times. Which, of course, is likely intentional on the game’s part; you get your guns taken away, locked in a spooky basement with twisting hallways and obtuse puzzles, while a radio babbles in the corner and there’s weird fetus and abortion undertones. The mansion level is basically PT if it was a full game, and it is one of the highlights of the entire Village experience. It’s such a shame, then, that nothing ever comes even remotely close to being as scary or tense. Sure, Dimitrescu’s castle is pretty frightening, but once you know what to expect and how to avoid Lady D and her bug girls, it’s not too bad. But oh, if I could go back and re-experience that mansion for the first time, I would do it in a heartbeat. It’s so, so good. And also the last moment of horror in the game. Oh well.
Resident Evil Village is not a scary game, except for the fetus part. It is a horror game, sure, but it’s horror-action. I mean, the village itself is kind of an open exploration zone, and it’s very tense when you have no ammo, but by the end, nothing stands in your way. The castle is tense for the same reasons, but the third area, the Moreau’s reservoir or whatever, isn’t even like an explorable map; it’s just one big set piece after another, and eventually, you fight a boss. And then there’s Heisenberg’s factory, which is just like Dimitrescu’s castle but a bit boring. The monsters are cool, but the scares are predictable and the map is so damn dense that it’s hard to find your way around. And the final boss isn’t even Heisenberg, which is kind of lame. Also, I love Heisenberg’s character so much. He’s so funny, I just can’t help but love him. Some of the shit he said made me literally laugh out loud. Except… is he a Nazi? Like, he’s clearly German, he’s got this focus on factories and machines and building an unstoppable army, he’s an egomaniac with a world domination bend, he does cruel biological experiments on unwilling victims, the area outside his factory is littered with World War 2 tanks (that he’s taken apart to experiment on), the whole thing takes place in a non-specific central or eastern European country, and it’s just a little sus in my opinion. He’d definitely be a Nazi in any other game. So maybe I shouldn’t love him so much. But he’s just so cool.
Speaking of cool, the ending of the game is fucking batshit crazy. First, you have to fight your way through ancient ruins in what feels more like Halo’s firefight mode than survival-horror, then you get to Heisenberg’s labyrinthian factory, then you fight a man with a warplane propeller for a head, then you drive a tank and blast Cronenberg-Heisenberg to ashes, then Ethan dies, then you play as Chris Redfield and use tactical airstrikes to kill hundreds of werewolves, then there’s that plot exposition dump and you find out Ethan’s been dead this whole time and is actually sentient mold (I’m not shitting you), then you fight the final boss and Ethan, knowing he’s going to die, sacrifices himself to blow up a giant mold-baby and save his daughter. There’s even a post-credits scene where his daughter is grown up and now works for someone as a special agent. It’s fucking nuts and I absolutely adore it. Although the final boss fight is a little bit anti-climactic, in my opinion. Mother Miranda, the main antagonist, is kind of lame compared to the other bosses. They got such interesting designs and then Miranda’s kind of just spider-lady with wings. Eh. Could be better. But everything else is wonderful in the most ludicrous, over-the-top way.
Oh, and I almost forgot about The Duke! How could I forget The Duke? He’s another character who is super cool and I also love him. He’s just this very kind salesman guy who is also maybe a god or ghost or supernatural being who helps out Ethan throughout the game and cooks him dinner and is just a very jolly fellow overall. He’s even got some important story beats, though it isn’t really all well explained (or explained at all, actually), but there’s just something about him that is very friendly and welcoming in a game that’s all about being torn to bits by monsters. Whenever you bring him food to cook (which also serves as a permanent upgrade system), he says stuff like “To hunger is to be alive,” and that really resonates with me. He gives off the same vibe as the bonfires in Dark Souls, or upgrade stations in Metroid; gratification and relief. Also, he’s just got a bunch of pretty funny lines. Honestly, for a game as “dark” as Resident Evil Village, it never takes itself too seriously, and it’s all the better for it. There are a solid handful of moments that are genuinely funny (usually in a campy sort of way), and at least one that still makes me chuckle just thinking about it (blood warning on that one though!).
There’s just so much about this game that I really, really enjoy, and continues to live in my memory rent-free. I mean, I did minimal research to write about pretty much all of this, and after not having played the game for six months, I’d say that’s a pretty good deal. Sure, I could go back through it and tell you the things I didn’t like about it. For example, the scene with the ancient ruins was alright. Like I said, Heisenberg’s factory is the weakest level in the game, despite being the last one. I would have liked more levels, frankly, or at least one more with the tension like the mansion. It would have been nice to be able to go back to levels after completing them, instead of just closing them off, making some progression stuff easily missable. I never felt like I quite moved fast enough, or did quite enough damage as I should have been. For all the publicity screen time Lady D got, she’s barely in the game. More to do in the village would have been cool, though there’s a solid chunk of option exploration. DLC would be nice, though maybe now I’m just getting greedy. But these are all just things I can think of off the top of my head, and, again, I haven’t played the game in ages. Also, I can’t speak to how it compares to other Resident Evil games. Everyone says it’s the bastard child of RE4 and RE7, which makes sense to me, but everyone also says that RE4 is still better. I have no idea if that’s true or not, but RE Village is significantly less consistently scary than RE7. I never felt the tension of resource scarcity in Village that I did in RE7, and overall, Village was maybe a little too easy. I’m not sure if I ever even died. But that’s probably a good thing, considering if I had died, especially early on, I probably would have been too unnerved to continue playing.
So that just leaves one question left; is this game a fancy version of Spectral Crown? And my verdict is: no, of course not, that’s ridiculous (though not impossible, considering that the game received some plagiarism backlash. Several times, I guess.). The part that’s most similar, Dimitrescu’s castle, is maybe 20% of the game. Yes, it sees Ethan crawling through a fireplace and the spooky basements of a gothic castle with strong female leads, but the similarities are superficial. The rest of the game is nothing like Spectral Crown, with Village leaving its castle behind in favor of haunts of different styles. Which is a little sad, frankly; I would have loved more time in Dimitrescu’s castle, and the tension of avoiding a singular big bad is really great. But it’s still a highlight of the game.
Anyway, what was the point I was trying to make here? I got kind of carried away. Oh, yeah, I really, really liked Resident Evil Village. I thought it was a great game and well worth my time, as far as video games go. And what more can you ask for, really? It’s not some sort of ground-breaking technical or gameplay innovation, it’s not some sort of massive open-world to get lost in for hundreds of hours, it’s not some sort of complex, heartbreaking narrative that will teach you someone about life and about yourself, it’s not something that’s going to sit in my chest long-term with some sort of sentimental or nostalgic fuzziness, but it is a kick-ass game that blew away my expectations for it on several levels, even if it slipped under my expectations on others. And as my first real experience with a Resident Evil game, I’m hoping to find the same level of quality from the backlog of others on my list. Maybe once Resident Evil 4 gets the remaster treatment I’ll figure out why everyone loves that one so much, too. Because I get it now. I finally get it. These games are awesome, and writing about this made me temporarily forget my all-consuming existential dread. And for a review like this, that’s all you need to know.
