May 052021
Resident Evil Village will be released on Friday, reviews are out now, and a demo has been available, albeit one with some odd availability restrictions.
So, how are we feeling about the next Resident Evil game?
I haven’t talked about Resident Evil Village here a lot, but if you’ve followed my posts enough to see when it does pop up, you’ll know I’ve had mixed feelings ever since the game was revealed.
I was never pleased with the action-oriented direction the series took with Resident Evil 4 and the games that followed.
Resident Evil 7 and the Resident Evil 2 remake, however, were a triumphant return to survival horror that once again left me excited for the series.
Mixed reviews citing limited exploration and a lack of puzzles made me skip the Resident Evil 3 remake, and then Resident Evil 8, or Village, popped up with an awful lot of surface similarities to Resident Evil 4.
After my renewed hope for the series, I found myself once again feeling pessimistic toward what looked like a return to action horror. But I did try the demo, and that left me… cautiously optimistic. There are definitely action elements here; enemies dropping money that I can take to a vendor to buy and upgrade weapons is not exactly what I look for in a survival horror game.
On the other hand, the demo also included some locked doors and puzzles, and not just ones to solve immediately and move on.
Reviews came out today, and I read a few of them. I saw several references to the action being ramped up, but also some that mentioned backtracking and unlocking new areas. It sounds as though Village might have the style of exploration and progression that I look for in survival horror, which is a major thing the previous action Resident Evil games were missing.
If Resident Evil Village clearly followed in the footsteps of Resident Evil 7 and RE2make, I’d probably be getting it day one. Since it does seem like it veered back toward action a bit, I won’t be. However, I’ve heard enough now that I’ll probably give it a chance eventually.
What do you think of Resident Evil Village based on what we know so far?
I forgot it was coming so soon. I wish they wouldn’t increase the action, I thought they knew now that wasn’t desired by most. Sad to hear of the change back.
Yep, it’s out now. I’ve watched some parts of it. It really does seem like a mix, some parts have definitely gone back in an action direction, but there are also what seem to be some solid survival horror parts. So I’ll probably play it eventually.
Unfortunately, there’s a large number of fans who don’t see Resident Evil 4 as action horror, which means similarities to RE4 are seen as a good thing even by a lot of people who didn’t like the shift to action.
Huh, kind of weird. There’s even those awful QTE in RE4 so it’s definitely more on the action side imo.
Interestingly, I’m now hearing from people that Village is much more survival horror with just some superficial RE4 similarities.
That’s good to hear. Gotta check it out at some point.
Yep, I plan to as well!