Resident Evil: Village review

    I am a huge Resident Evil VII fan and it is easily my favorite of the franchise. Yes, even more than Resident Evil II where I developed my perverse sexual lust for Claire Redfield as a teenage boy. TMI? Yeah, probably. Either way, I absolutely loved how the game brought back survival horror as a genre when it had been almost gutted from the series after Resident Evil VI. The fact they managed to combine it with Southern Gothic horror made it also a unique entry into the series. I grew up in the Deep South and it is full of snarks, spiders, creepy inbred families, and isolated spooky locations. But enough about REVII.

Love the bosses.

      I was interested in Resident Evil: Village because not only were the previous two Resident Evil games good (the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3) but it was a return to Ethan Winters as the protagonist. As much as people said he was a flat character, I felt he was a likable everyman in a series that had become too bogged down in super-soldiers as well as action heroes. 

    I wanted to see what happened to him as well as his wife Mia. Early advertisements indicated something terrible was going to happen to Mia as well as Chris Redfield being involved. Also, that Ethan somehow would end up in a Transylvania-like B-movie environment with female vampires playing a large role.

    I was a bit skeptical but not too much. One of my personal bugbears about the series is the fact that relationships are permanently anchored in video games as is character growth. I think Nathan Drake was perhaps the only married man in video games that didn't have his wife horribly murdered. I also felt like the B-movie horror treatment of Transylvania had already been pretty heavily mined for Resident Evil IV even if that took place in Spain. I mean, how much could you do about creepy castles full of occult horror? Well, it turns out a great deal as Castlevania and Devil May Cry proved already.

Lady D is the best pony.

    The premise is Ethan has been living in witness protection, or whatever passes for it among the BSAA, within a community that is heavily implied to be Romanian. Apparently, Mia has been forgiven for all of her crimes as an agent of the Connections and has given birth to a young baby girl. Something is definitely weird, though, and Chris attacks with a small army of BSAA agents. 

    Believe me, I didn't need the game to tell me Mia's story wasn't over when Chris gunned her down and she reacted as if mildly annoyed. You get black bagged by the BSAA but your car is derailed, landing you in the middle of an isolated area that turns out to be infested with werewolves! Sorry, Lycans, which are werewolves.

    From there, Ethan proceeds to seek out whoever has taken his daughter from the dead BSAA troops as well as explore the village that has been overrun with monsters from Universal Pictures. You'll face werewolves, vampires, hallucinatory ghosts, and steampunk cyborgs that I assume are meant to stand in for Frankenstein's monster. Which is somewhat silly because Frankenstein has been a central part of Resident Evil's lore from the beginning (see the Tyrant). They're all controlled by a mysterious figure named Mother Miranda who basically is the Baba Yaga figure over them all. 

Block, block, block!

    The atmosphere in the games is fantastic and successfully invokes the Hollywood Transylvania aesthetics that it was going for. It does feel a lot like Resident Evil IV, so much that I think remaking REIV is silly, but that isn't a bad thing. Unfortunately, the storyline is borderline nonsensical. I don't expect high art from Resident Evil games but when the questions are simple, "Why didn't X tell Y what he was up to?" and "Why was Z chopped up if they're needed for a ritual" then you know there's something wrong.

    Some parts of the game are definitely better than others. The castle section of the game is easily the best part and Lady Dimitrescu an already iconic due to her design as well as personality. I also absolutely loved the "baby corridor" that is some of the scariest horror in the franchise. Still, the game peaks early and nothing is ever as good as Castle Dimitrescu. The factory section also feels like it detracts from the larger weird Gothic ambiance. 

Best part of the game

    Resident Evil: Village is a good deal more action-packed than REVII and there's the addition of a block button that allows you to push an enemy back. Lots of guns are available as you proceed through the story as well. I also appreciated the copious amounts of puzzles, even though they're not exactly genius requirements (example: put wine bottle in wine holder). Really, though, any game where you stop and look around at the creepy scarecrows and abandoned huts is something I believe works well. This is a gorgeous game and it makes up for a lot of the problems with the storyline. I'll even forgive a serious issue I have with the ending (one of my favorite characters is done dirty).

    In conclusion, I think Resident Evil IV is an excellent game and a big improvement over Resident Evil III's remake. I didn't dislike Resident Evil III's remake but that game was a little too short and felt more like DLC for Resident Evil II versus an entire sequel in its own right. I am extremely mixed in my feelings in some areas because the game is gorgeous but the bad story is contrasted to all the fun I had playing. So I'm going to give an 8.5 even though I might have been persuaded to give it a 9.

8.5/10