This game marks the 25th anniversary of the Resident Evil series and is the 8th numbered entry in the classic survival horror saga. Village Resident Evil, as it is known is available now on Xbox Series X/S, Playstation 5, Steam, Stadia, PS4 and Xbox One.
Over the last two years we have got the Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes which were not only a throwback to the older games in the series, but also a throwback to the older over the shoulder style which had been abandoned for Resident Evil 7 in favour of a first person view. Well the first person view is back, but where as 7 was itself a throwback in many ways to the atmosphere and horror of the early games in the series, Village Resident Evil 8 has a greater focus on action.
In the game you once again play as Ethan Winters, who was the protagonist of Resident Evil 7, and this marks one of the very few times that a character has served as a main playable character in two consecutive entries. The only other time this has happened was when Chris Redfield was a main playable character in both Resident Evil 5 and 6.
As a quick heads up this review with contain minor story spoilers, but nothing major from the game, and I will mention events from past games in the series for context.
Ethan starts the game with his wife Mia and their baby Rose, and very unusually for a Resident Evil game, the game has the first few minutes take place in what can be considered ‘normal life’. Last year’s Resident Evil 3 Remake had a very short period of normalcy before the outbreak started, and this is an interesting thing to include in the series, which may be fun to explore more in future games.
After you put the baby to bed Mia is suddenly shot and killed and you learn that series hero Chris Redfield is behind the execution. Ethan and Rose are quickly whipped away into the special forces vehicles, but a short van crash later and Ethan finds himself alone in the dark…not to be confused with the alone in the dark series.
Ethan and Mia were in some kind of witness protection programme and in an unspecified European country. Ethan makes it through to a Village and it doesn’t take long before he discovers there are werewolves running around.
In terms of the series it feels a bit odd for there to be straight up werewolves and witches which this game heavily focusses on, but as with all the mutations throughout the years there are explanations as to why humans may be transforming into wolf like beings instead of the standard zombies.
As an enemy the werewolves are very much like the villagers and other similar enemies from Resident Evil 4 and 5 in that they can run, are intelligent and can use weapons. I did feel that they often just crept around in front of you and were easy to line up for headshots, and do feel that being this game’s zombie equivalent did make werewolves seem a bit weaker than they should have. I feel that in the context of the over all series a werewolf should be at least as much as a threat as a hunter or licker and after mowing down ten or twenty werewolves their menace lessened.
Also on the werewolves I feel there was missed opportunities the game didn’t include any usual Resident Evil dog style monsters and a mix of possessed villagers, wolves and then werewolves could have made each unique and scary where as the all in one lycan soon lost its scare factor on me through over exposure.
As mentioned earlier, the game has a greater focus on action, and it’s clear that Resident Evil 4 is the biggest influence on this entry. We lose the item box of the early games which returned in Resident Evil 7, and instead have a Resident Evil 4 style inventory screen which means you have to move about items to fit in your bag and key items are held separately.
In addition to this a new merchant character is introduced and fulfils the same function as the merchant is Resident Evil 4 did in that you can buy and sell items and also upgrade weapons. A new feature here is that you can kill non monster animals and collect their meat which the merchant, whose name is Duke, will cook for you to upgrade certain abilities such as speed and health. Duke also plays a part into the story of this game unlike the merchant of RE4 and this is to mixed results.
Where as the RE4 merchant fulfilled a purpose of letting you buy and sell weapons, his presence could be questioned, but quickly ignored. For logic of the story it makes no sense that someone would be able to freely move around with all this weaponry as baggage and not be killed or be trying to do anything other than sell items. The RE4 merchant was mysterious and once you understood he was only there as a gameplay mechanic you could just ignore him. With Duke this isn’t the case. He is much more involved in the plot and in the know of who has taken Rose and who the villains of the game are, but it’s never explained what his role is and this feels odd.
The game’s previews and demo made a big deal about the castle that you will visit in the game and the very tall woman and her daughters who are all very witchy, but these characters perhaps don’t play as big a role as you may have expected. Instead the game features several enemies and locations that connect to the village, and in this sense it makes the whole village have a similar feel to the mansion from Resident Evil 1 or the Police Station from Resident Evil 2. Bit by bit you will open up and unlock more areas to visit as the map gets fleshed out and you will continually head back to the central areas which you will learn like the back of your hand as you did Racoon City Police Station.
The game really does retain the feeling of past Resident Evil games, and is a good blend of the exploration and puzzles of early games with the action of 4 and 5. This does have some more elaborate and wild sequences as the later games in the series became known for, and whilst it is more action based than 7, it isn’t as all out action as the games have sometimes been.
One pro tip I can give any first time players of this game is that as soon as I realised that the game had taken the inventory and weapon upgrades from Resident Evil 4 I felt I knew exactly how to play for an easy time through the game. Simply put…kill everything! Whenever you kill a werewolf or monster the game will give you either ammo or cash which can be used to further upgrade your weapons. Realising this I made a point of killing everything and found that I almost never was at risk of running out of ammo, and by the half way point of the game was comfortably overpowered so that I was almost never killed.
Much like Resident Evil 4 the game gives you the ability to start a new playthrough after you have completed the game, and you retain all the weapons and upgrades you had from the end of the previous run. This means in subsequent playthroughs you feel super powered and this is great for speed runs. Other games sometimes allow you to earn or unlock bonus weapons, but it’s not the same as when you get to have your own inventory carry over and this is something much more satisfying as you start a new game with everything you had earned previously.
The in game tasks that you need to complete to unlock new weapons and skills from Resident Evil 3 remake is back and this adds a huge amount of replay value to the game as it will take most players at least a few playthroughs to unlock all of these.
For the most part I really enjoyed the game, but there are a few areas which I wasn’t such a fan of. Enemies wise, I’ve already mentioned that the werewolves could have been used better in my opinion, and although this game has more variety of monster than Resident Evil 7, there perhaps aren’t as many iconic feeling enemies as in other games in the series.
There are a couple of variations to the werewolf theme, and some creepy dudes dressed like Igor from Young Frankenstein who wield swords. Again I didn’t quite get the sense of who these were or how they factored in story wise, but they actually felt like they should have been the first enemy and the werewolves saved for fewer, but more challenging battles. Then there are the flying demons which are terrifying when you first realise that there are giant man sized human bat monsters. Later in the game come some of the scariest enemies in the series, and to avoid giving away too many spoilers of who or what they are, lets just say they feature some upgrades and modifications that put them in line with the blind Garradores from Resident Evil 4.
Another thing I wasn’t such a fan of with this game was that after the initial set up to the story, it felt quite a lot like a long fetch quest before there was any more major plot points. Of course other games are often just about escaping monsters or rescues just as this one is, but with the tease that series hero Chris Redfield has potentially turned bad I would have liked if that side of the story had been explored more in the early part of the game.
These are all minor nit picks however compared to my biggest gripe with this game, and that is that it is very often too dark. Maybe other players didn’t experience this, but there were many times where I just felt that the village or caves had areas which were so very visually dark that I couldn’t see if there were areas I was meant to investigate. In certain areas of the game I would frequently resort to continually checking the map to see if an area still had items to be found as this game brings back the map which highlights if you the player still have items to find or not. If there were items I explore, but if not, I would just run through the areas as quickly as possible as the often too dark screen would start to make me feel ill.
Resident Evil 2 remake had areas which were too dark, but you’d always switch on a torch, and what’s frustrating in Village is that there were times where you turn on a torch in this game too. It’s just a shame that you couldn’t choose to turn this on as going in and out of houses in the village where it was often super dark inside was just unenjoyable to the point of distraction.
All this said, and the game is still a main line Resident Evil game which is 100% worth any survival horror fans time. The Resident Evil series is in an interesting phase as we reach it’s 25th anniversary and it’s clear that with both the Resident Evil 7/8 first person games and the over the shoulder remakes the series is still continually finding ways to evolve.
Whereas the remakes play on nostalgia whilst remixing the story enough for both excite and enrage long times fans in equal measure, 7 and 8 are taking the series forward and it will be very interesting to see what comes next. The series has always been at risk of just repeating the formula of new location, new zombie outbreak, but it’s clear Capcom have had a plan that refreshed the story and gameplay with 7 and that has very much continued with 8. This game also gives an indication of what the future may bring and as you’ll see when you play it, it may not just be more of the same.
Conclusion
The game is an exciting new entry in the long running Resident Evil series, and for this alone you should play it. It doesn’t feel as instantly a classic as either RE7 or RE2 remake, but have the feeling this will be a game that continues to grow on players the more it is played. It has an excellent balance between action and puzzles and as a first person adventure this is every bit as good as Resident Evil 7 which will also please fans of the iconic Resident Evil 4. The only let downs are the overly dark areas sometimes distracting from just enjoying the game, and that my expectations of the story were slightly higher for what it was. Again this is perhaps Capcom giving us months of teases which seemed to make certain characters or enemies seem a bigger deal than they turned out to be, but again now we’ve all had a chance to absorb what we actually got I’m sure quite quickly these will be appreciated more rather than what we didn’t get. This is an overall fantastic game which you would be wise to play and experience for yourself!
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