The Haunted Hoard: Resident Evil Village (PS5)
Resident Evil helped zombies take off in popularity in the 1990s with their viral origin for the walking dead, but over time the series focused on building up its own monsters and undead creatures. For the eighth installment of the main series though Resident Evil would go back to taking cues from other works of horror, taking players to Eastern Europe where much of early Western horror finds its root. Vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein… these old stories used to make readers quiver in fear but now seem quaint compared to the bloody monsters of the modern era. However, mix together the body horror and mortal peril the Resident Evil series does so well with inspiration from those old myths and stories and even what’s old can be absolutely terrifying.
Resident Evil Village is a direct follow-up to Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Ethan Winters moving far away from Louisiana following his horrific experiences with the mold-infected humans. While he can’t take his mind off the past, he has managed to start a new life with his wife and newborn daughter Rose, and a shred of normalcy seems within grasp for him after that harrowing experience… only for his wife to get gunned down and his baby kidnapped. Ethan has been through hell once to save someone he loved, and with his daughter on the line this time, he immediately sets out save her despite having not much more than a fire in his heart to start with. Quickly he finds himself in over his head when he learns his baby was taken by a woman named Mother Miranda who the residents of a small European village pray to but at the same time are exploited by, Miranda and her four lords caring little if the people live or die once they release their monstrous mutated humans upon them. To have a hope of seeing his daughter again, Ethan must survive the dangers of the village, face down the four lords, and confront Miranda before it’s too late.
Ethan Winters may not be the most charismatic of heroes and since this is a first-person horror game focused on fighting off the dead with firearms, you don’t actually get to see what he looks like. However, he does almost feel like an excellent everyman because of the way he reacts to the scenarios he finds himself in. He gets angry often and can’t articulate his thoughts very well besides basic threats, and the moment the player might ask why Ethan doesn’t do something he’s often just about to try it. Ethan calls his enemies weak insults or delivers weak one-liners well after they are dead, having just enough energy to do what he must to work towards saving his daughter but not having the mental fortitude or roguish charm an action hero might bring to a rescue mission. Ethan does, admittedly, survive some absolutely absurd amounts of damage, able to pour some medicine on most any injury to fix it right down to having his hand completely lopped off, but the player still is able to die if they take too much punishment that isn’t part of a scripted scene. Having a hero who doesn’t walk away from every encounter with such gruesome and deadly creatures squeaky clean does make the setting feel like it has teeth to match its supposed danger, especially since much of the game and Ethan’s own comments do seem to emphasize he’s in over his head.
The four lords you must take down to get to Mother Miranda are actually the most interesting characters of the game, much of the development and motivation applied to the cast going towards these four boss characters who each have their own segment built around the horror they represent. The abnormally tall Lady Dimitrescu is the first you’ll face, coming in swinging with a castle that looks straight out of Gothic horror as she and her daughters evoke classic vampire myths. All of the monster myths pulled from for Resident Evil Village are given a biological explanation tied to the series’s reliance on trying to ground even its most absurd monsters as having come from some specially developed virus or parasite, but if you aren’t spending much time picking up notes that explain things the antagonists can feel almost supernatural. This is especially true of House Beneviento. Castle Dimitrescu lets the player fight back against the creatures of the castle with their weapons, but House Beneviento shifts things into more psychological horror, the estate off in a foggy forest where you find yourself without weapons to defend yourself. Creepy dolls are scattered around the still interior, but as you explore more and more, you see disturbing and unbelievable sights before things culminate in one of the game’s more memorable and shocking moments that pays off that buildup and unease wonderfully.
Moreau the fish-man has a fishing village as his domain and the horror there certainly leans to more disgusting and sickly sights, a moist and dreary location coated with grime and slime that doesn’t go so overboard it will make you nauseous. Some of it is grotesque, Moreau himself the most pathetic of the four lords. Beneviento is appropriately the most unhinged for a woman who hosts the psychological horror portion, and Dimitrescu carries herself with an air of class and dominance like an old European aristocrat to continue with the Gothic horror inspiration. For our Frankenstein stand-in though, we reach Heisenberg who might have the most compelling character motivations of the bunch as he has bigger ambitions than just being the fourth lord to fight in your quest to reach Miranda. Heisenberg is the most grounded and human in appearance, speaking with Ethan on the same level at points, but his work might be the most inhuman with how he tinkers with melding man with machine to create better workers and killers. The degree of charisma he has feels on the other end of the spectrum to Ethan’s, but his factory again lets us tap into another area of horror with its dingy and dark cramped spaces full of oppressive industrial technology.
While the four lords are definitely the main attractions, the village mentioned in the title has its moments as well, the town essentially a hub you return to between your work elsewhere. The game kicks off its action here with an overwhelming attack from deranged mutated humans named Lycans for how closely they resemble wolfmen, and they only get more like werewolves as their more powerful variations are introduced down the line. While the Lycans are essentially the basic enemies of this game, none of them are fully pushovers, dodging if you take too long to line up a shot, rushing in at speed to attack, and placed in many ways where their presence or their numbers can make them terrifying for the threat they present. There are moments you are meant to feel like you lack the means to hold them back and fleeing is sometimes a better option than wasting all your ammo trying to take them down, but there is some background difficulty scaling to ensure that a struggling player won’t be underequipped while someone who is doing fairly well won’t be handed as much ammo.
The player gets more access to different areas of the village as the game progresses, this area having both distinct moments like trying to sneak around while a creature tries to hunt you down and scenes to build up the world where you find some survivors out near the farm. The slowly opening village contains many treasures and goodies to find as well, the map helping with this search by color-coding areas you’ve cleared out or still contain something to uncover. The game does mark some of the best treasures at one point but others you can never know if an area just has a little bit of ammo laying around or something truly special like a new weapon or expensive treasure. The Duke also has his cart hitched near the village, this portly purveyor of goods cropping up during the adventure to run a store where you can buy items, upgrade weapons, and even cook food for upgrades to things like health and blocking strength. He’s not merely a merchant though, the friendly but sophisticated Duke actually impacting the plot at points as he seems the only person Ethan can consistently turn to for information or help.
When it comes to your weapon options, Resident Evil Village runs a remarkably tight ship, none of them feeling pointless even if some of them are niche. A handgun is a reliable tool where ammo is most abundant and thus taking out Lycans won’t deplete your reserves if you rely on one, but the shotgun’s much rarer ammunition means it’s the weapon you’ll want to whip out when you need to deal heavy damage quickly so you don’t end up dead yourself. The sniper rifle doesn’t have a lot of moments where it can snipe enemy after enemy from range, but it packs a punch and if you can put some distance between you and the target that ammo you built up for it waiting for the right moment finally comes in handy. Pipe bombs are good for breaking up crowds or hurting big monsters, landmines fill the same role but you can lure your foes to an explosive surprise, and the grenade launcher’s explosives have some fairly clear use with their high damage output, but the flashbang ammo variation is actually incredibly useful in the factory for stunning the machine men who try to cover up their weak spots. Throw in a magnum as the ultimate case of low ammo but high damage output for those panic scenarios and a knife for when you have literally nothing else and you have a tool kit you’ll constantly need to swap between to survive, the balance in provided power meant to not leave you feeling helpless but the enemies usually able to keep putting up a fight either through their resilience, unique design features, or sheer numbers. Admittedly there are some late game portions that strip away some of the horror elements tied to the action, but not to the degree they undermine the experience nor are they present for so long it leads to a paradigm shift in how you approach the game.
The design put into the appearance of the monsters and the ambiance of the game world is spectacular as well. While there are a few cheap scares such as a pig rushing at you, most of the game’s horror comes from simply taking in the situation you find yourself in. The dark, cold, hostile village ripped apart by the Lycans, the cramped shadowy halls of the factory, the repulsive egg like sacs around Moreau’s domain, the game immerses you in its atmospheric trappings and makes sure the monsters match it in their terrifying appearances. The boss monsters have forms you’re excited to see but taken aback by, many of them matching their story segment’s intended type of horror. Many of the most striking designs are enhanced by the surprise of first meeting them, and some creatures are more terrifying for the darkness that hides their features from you. There are some unfortunate moments though, even on the PlayStation 5’s powerful hardware the truly wolflike Lycan’s have some bad hair effects if viewed from certain angles, but Resident Evil Village does have some creative ways to reinterpret how its bigger monsters might work, the game not going in the expected directions you’d think when you hear about bosses who are inspired by Dracula and Frankenstein.
Between all the shooting and exploration though, Resident Evil Village has some puzzles to add some variety. The efficacy of these puzzles vary, some of them clearly existing mostly as a means to send you looking around for objects so you can get into trouble or trigger new setpieces such as the four masks in Castle Dimitrescu not actually requiring much thought to figure out once you have them. A particular segment involving a riddle can easily be solved by accident, and fiddling with switches while a lake monster is meant to be a present threat but doesn’t seem like it wants to bother you weakens the danger of the scenario for little reward. However, for every puzzle that might just be putting a few objects in place without much thought, there are some that are interesting on conceptual levels or require a keen eye. House Beneviento definitely has the most successes like the mannequin you inspect and take apart or the music box where assembling it tests your observation skills, but it does feel like the game might be afraid to let you think with putting clues that give too much away for some puzzles or even marking important objects and areas in yellow far too often. Guiding the player forward is fine, but the lack of subtlety in doing so can ruin the immersive design featured elsewhere.
At least the combat has a place to shine unimpeded in the unlockable Mercenaries mode where the game lets you embrace the action component after you’ve already finished the story and absorbed the horror elements without such arcadey trappings. In Mercenaries you try to get points by killing enemies consistently across repurposed areas from the story, able to buy upgrades, weapons, and ammo between rounds and able to pick them up and other bonuses by searching around the battle areas. Other Resident Evil games with this mode presented this mode in multiplayer though and the mode likely would be more enjoyable if you could bring a friend along, but enemies do manage to be more than fodder in this mode and the way the game rewards you for planning your approach to killing creatures means the action still has thought even when it is leaning towards video game scoring systems instead of working towards tone or mood.
THE VERDICT: Resident Evil Village not only reimagines classic horror monsters under its lens of biological mutation, its four lords split the story into different forms of horror. Each new major location tries to get under your skin in a new way while still providing interesting challenges, these mostly leaning towards excellently balanced combat where every weapon has a place and you often feel at risk of running out of ammo at a key moment. The puzzles do have their moments when they’re allowed to have some room to test the player a little, but the focus given to other elements like the sense of place and monster designs means this isn’t just a mindless action game. Resident Evil Village embraces many types of horror and pulls them off surprisingly well while remaining cohesive, Capcom bringing plenty of creativity even when it’s deliberately building off classic horror genre ideas.
And so, I give Resident Evil Village for PlayStation 5…
A FANTASTIC verdict. Even when Resident Evil Village is at its most action heavy, it almost feels like the game is taking you down another new route for experiencing horror. At House Beneviento you are helpless and unarmed, but drop by the Stronghold later and you’re likely packing a lot of ammo to deal with the hordes of enemies coming your way. However, when you drop by the factory you still see you’re not going to be able to blast your way to Mother Miranda as the game becomes more claustrophobic and the cold unfeeling metal restricts you as you try to handle the approaching enemies. You won’t always be at the edge of your seat or gripped by unease due to rising tension, but Resident Evil Village isn’t only targeting that way of experiencing fear. The danger of the unknown, the feeling of being overwhelmed, the incomprehensible, the uncanny, or the sickening, you’ll run into these all as you make your way through Ethan’s journey. Since he’s not some battle-hardened hero despite how easily he can patch up some wounds, you still feel vulnerable and out of your depth, the game playing with what is even available to you or asking you to adjust your game plan beyond just shooting at the nearest dangerous thing with your strongest gun. It does feel like Resident Evil Village could afford to have some more faith in the player by not painting so many important objects yellow and letting some puzzles require a bit more thought, but it does have some successes to show in those regards as well and it doesn’t compromise its atmosphere and exceptional environmental art design too much. Toss in some striking monster designs and Resident Evil Village really does feel like the full package for someone looking for a horror video game, it not necessarily doing certain concepts the best but able to combine them all into one experience successfully and without ever feeling like it diverged too far from its core.
Resident Evil Village knows when to stay focused and when to shift to something new, each new area feeling distinct but the return to the village between them grounding things and giving you a nice expanding hub where familiarity and new dangers can mix. The lords do so much with their concepts and mix their inspirations with new ideas so they too can tap that same vein. Old ideas are made new again and melded together in a way where seeing what lies ahead can be captivating and terrifying. For a compelling tour of the many approaches video games can take to horror, drop on by the village, but be warned as even after reading this there are still many unexpected but fascinating terrors to be found.