Operation Backlog Completion 2025

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Resident Evil Village

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  4 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Oct 222021
 

I don’t understand Capcom sometimes. I really don’t.

Last year, one of our spooky October games was Resident Evil 7, so it’s only fitting that we take a look at Resident Evil Village this year.

Village picks up after the events of Resident Evil 7. Ethan Winters returns as the protagonist, trapped in an isolated village full of monsters as he searches for his kidnapped daughter. Like its predecessor, it has a tone that feels very unusual for Resident Evil at first, this time leaning into supernatural horror with vampires, werewolves, and similar creatures.

It attempts to explain all of this, of course, and I didn’t especially mind that shift in direction in the first place.

No, my major concern ahead of Village’s launch was that it might focus too much on action, and the demo together with the reviews left me with mixed feelings. But I saw enough encouragement from other survival horror fans that I took the plunge and bought Resident Evil Village (shortly after launch, in fact; I just ended up taking a long break partway through it).

Now that I’ve finished it, I have more mixed feelings than ever.

There are a lot of great things in Village. I loved the exploration in the village and the first major area. Searching for keys, backtracking, unlocking new areas – the classic gameplay loop was there. For me, the merchant dragged it down a bit, since finding treasure to sell to a merchant so I can buy items and upgrades isn’t the sort of thing I look for in a survival horror game (and I wasn’t crazy about enemies dropping resources, either).

The system wasn’t terrible, but my initial satisfaction of returning to a previous area with a new key item that let me unlock more areas and find more items faded into emptiness when I realized most of the new items would be treasures to sell.

You also can upgrade your physical attributes by killing animals for meat and bringing it back to the merchant. I actually liked that, since it made sense and didn’t make me feel too overpowered. In general, this whole aspect of the game was something I would have preferred to do without, but could accept because of the rest of the gameplay.

One section of the game was also so terrifying, I’d rank it up there as one of the scariest moments in any horror game I’ve played. I loved it.

But then, in the latter part of the game, it shifted toward action. It kept some basic aspects of the structure but had a bigger emphasis on shooting things. Then it veered even harder into action from there. Honestly, it went so far, I might have found it endearing if I wasn’t worried about Capcom’s direction for the series.

Can they just not help themselves? Are they still trying to appeal to two different audiences with the same game? Do they really want to make an action game and used this to test the waters?

If you’d asked me in the first half of the game, maybe even the first 3/4, I would have recommended Resident Evil Village in a heartbeat. It had action trappings that didn’t take away from the survival horror gameplay, and it followed in the footsteps of Resident Evil 7. But if you asked me during the final sections, I would have said no, they’ve gone back to action horror, it’s not like the old games at all.

Remember when Capcom went through a period of claiming each new Resident Evil game had both action sections and classic survival horror sections? That’s what this is. This is the game they claimed to have made so many times, but coming off of the success of Resident Evil 7 and the Resident Evil 2 remake’s return to horror, I’m not sure why they decided to do it.

I don’t know how I feel about Resident Evil Village, and I don’t know where the series is going. Resident Evil 9 could be an incredible horror game, or it could be a return to action. It all depends on what lessons Capcom takes from Resident Evil Village.

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Dracula: Origin

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  3 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 202021
 

There was a time when I picked up a bunch of adventure games, one of which was Dracula: Origin.

Dracula: Origin is a point-and-click adventure game that puts the player in the shoes of Professor Van Helsing, on the trail of Dracula after an ominous letter warns that the vampire is coming for Mina Harker.

Despite what you might expect, it’s not even close to being an adaptation of the novel, though. In fact, partway through it introduces elements from H.P. Lovecraft, although as much as that made me smile, the story would have been fine without it.

The voice acting… isn’t great, but I got unintended joy out of serious, professional Van Helsing routinely crying, “Open!” upon unlocking a door or letting out a dismayed and confused “Closed…?” when he couldn’t.

The gameplay is fairly straightforward. You can click a spot to move Van Helsing there, or click on an item to pick up or a spot in the environment to interact with. Once you have an item in your inventory, you can make it your active item to use it in an interaction. There’s also a key that highlights everything that can be interacted with, always helpful.

Some of the item-based puzzles have questionable logic, and I admit I solved some of them by trying random items together until something combined (and one I had to look up entirely.)

Click for Dracula: Origin puzzle spoilers
You need uncontaminated water that “has never touched the ground.” I boiled water to purify it, but that wasn’t good enough. The solution?

Use the knife on the necklace to get a diamond.
Use the diamond on the mirror shard to get a rectangular mirror.
Use the mirror on the boiling water to get condensation.
Use the mirror on the flask to get a flask of condensation.

There are a handful of other puzzles as well, which can get pretty tricky.

Overall, Dracula: Origin was enjoyable enough. Nothing that really stood out, but entertaining enough if you enjoy classic point-and-click adventure games and are looking for a vampire story.

Celebrating All Things Spooky: The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  3 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Oct 182021
 

A years ago, we discussed The Darkside Detective, a humorous point-and-click adventure game about a detective who investigates supernatural incidents.

I enjoyed it enough that when the developers began a Kickstarter campaign for a sequel, The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark, I backed it and got a Switch copy. (It’s available on all major platforms.)

The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark begins with Detective McQueen searching for his partner Dooley, who has gone missing, and once again features six lighthearted supernatural investigations.

Oddly enough, I found the first case to be more frustrating than the rest of the game, with puzzle solutions that felt illogical and sections that seemed to be unnecessarily drawn out. This might be because the first case has you visiting several different locations and traveling between them, while the others are more contained.

Anyway, most of the game was quite entertaining, and while I’m not sure it’s as funny as the original, it still had a lot of funny lines.

Bizarre situations, a bit of fourth-wall-breaking, and in general the cast of characters being a group of weirdos is where most of the humor comes from. While the cases have an occasional serious moment or two, this is a game that focuses much more on its humor than on its plot.

And of course, it’s perfect for the Halloween season, with ghosts, vampires, and other supernatural entities at the heart of every case.

Six cases are available now, but three free bonus cases are on the way. I’ll be sure to return to The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark when that time comes.

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