Resident Evil Village (Multi)
By: Capcom
A CENTURY ago, a woman with the kind of circus-big proportions of Lady Dimitrescu – Resident Evil's unlikely star – would have had PT Barnum charging two bits a gander. Add some heavy foundation and vampire fangs, though, and the elegant dominatrix has been titillating Twitter ever since fans caught a glimpse of her nine-foot proportions.
Our gore-guzzling giantess is only one of four supernatural bosses in the eighth Resident Evil – though with countless spin-offs and re-makes, the franchise totals 20-odd games. When Resident Evil 7 broke series records, it was a given that Capcom would continue the tale of Ethan Winters, who kicks off Village in domestic bliss with his wife, Mia, raising their newborn girl in Europe.
Things head south pretty quickly, though, and Ethan soon finds himself in an olde worlde village plagued by supernatural goings-on. With zombies staying six-feet under for this one, Village goes all-out with the Hammer Horror tropes.
Stake-sharp in its genre references, the Mittel-European setting, complete with gothic castle and creepy dollhouse, boasts a veritable compendium of horror stocks-in-trade – from werewolves and vampires to cyborgs and freaky dolls.
At first glance, it couldn't be further from the biohazards of previous efforts, but with the series' trademark pulpy fun and daft dialogue, it all comes together for arguably the best modern Resident Evil.
While the previous game was a down-on-the-bayou mash-up of mouldy monsters and Deliverance-style shenanigans, Village throws the entire kitsch-en sink of horror at players. Returning to Europe for the first time since the mighty Resident Evil 4, it feels most like a re-imagining of that 2005 blockbuster – complete with its iconic merchant, now a plummy-voiced giant rather than masked cockney.
For the most part, its 10 hours of gameplay play it safe. There's beefy gunplay, inventory management, saving progress with typewriters and – a series first – butchering livestock to cook up stat-boosting recipes. Most of your time, though – much like a trip to Ikea – is spent slowly fetching pointless objects while avoiding shambling ghouls.
By leaning on camp fantasy, however, only the most lily-livered will find it particularly scary, while a lack of combat strategy means even its bosses can be polished off with little more than an itchy trigger finger. But if the new hardware doesn't bring much in the way of gameplay leaps, the series has never looked so crisp, with nippy loading and – on PS5 – incredible 3D sound design.
Gorgeously appointed, Resident Evil Village is simply more of the same, offering a four-courser of comfort food to series vets. And if being stepped on by an oversized lady is your kink, then more power to ye.
