Resident Evil Village

“How” is a word that has been on my mind a lot since this game came into my hands. How has Capcom managed to maintain the strength of the series and fans’ enduring love for it 25 years after the production of the first installment? How does this series maintain stability and renew itself at the same time? Of course, not the entire journey of the series is so beautiful. We know about the pitfalls, such as the sixth part, but we can say that with the seventh part, Capcom has returned to the right path, which returns to the roots of the original series, and now we find the eighth part, which is based on everything that was contained in the seventh part. The following words and phrases will tell you more about the latest experience in the Resident Evil series.

Gameplay and Story

The events here are considered a direct continuation of what happened in the seventh part, and the game will even ask you if you want to follow a recap of the events in the seventh part. Personally, I recommend watching it as it doesn’t last long. You may have seen the first minutes of the game in the promotional trailers, in which the iconic character Chris Redfield enters the hero Ethan’s house and shoots his wife. From here your journey begins as you make your way to what could be described as a very suspicious village.

Exploring the Village

As you explore this village, you will notice that the various houses you visit are empty, as if the residents had left these houses in a hurry. In each region you visit during your trip, you will find that the environment itself reveals a lot, explaining the mysteries and various events that took place in these regions. This is a point for the designers of these stages, because not only have they managed to transport you into this suspicious world, but they have also managed to illustrate various elements of the story through the environment and in a clever way.

The story here is interesting, grabs attention from the start and will satisfy even old fans of the series as it answers some questions about the general history of the series. The dialogues here are entertaining, although actor Ethan’s performance in one of the scenes is inconsistent. One final point regarding the events is the cast of characters in this part. Every character you meet wants to know more about them, whether they are good or even evil characters. I don’t remember finding any character boring, they were all special.

Gameplay Mechanics

The gameplay style is different from previous Resident Evil games, as here the village is the place you return to after completing each area, and in each area you are given a new purpose that allows you to further the village to explore and find treasures. As you play, you will find many different treasures and the contents of these treasures range from additions to your weapons to valuable items that you sell for a huge sum of money, as well as some enemies that you want to fight or avoid. This qualitative freedom gave the game a distinctive character, but I found it a bit distracting from the idea of ​​the game. The game fluctuates between action moments and other horror-focused moments, but it neither found a balance between the two nor attempted to mix them. The first half of the game leans towards horror and presents you with different types of horror such as the horror of monster fear that we are used to from this series and at other times you will witness psychological horror that focuses on the psychological factor concentrated. While I found the second half of the game to be purely action-packed, I personally enjoyed it, but failed to evoke moments of awe and fear throughout my adventure, so that feeling is completely gone here.

Gameplay System

As I mentioned at the beginning of the review, it is a continuation of the events of Part Seven and also presents a first-person gameplay style, which suggests that it is also a continuation of the philosophy of gameplay ideas from that part acts. However, the truth is that in terms of gameplay system it is heavily influenced by the ideas of the fourth part. Ethan’s movement here is faster than before, and he now has a bag in which he stores his ammunition and weapons, and like in the fourth part, there is a special seller where you buy weapons, ammunition, extensions for your bag and much more can other deliveries. This salesman is known as Duke and for some reason knows a lot about Ethan. At the same time, he is not a traditional seller, as he can develop your weapons and also your defense, energy and movement speed if you want to collect the necessary items. You will find a different category of weapons and different types of the same category of weapons. This is different from the different bombs. You can collect parts and upgrades for your weapons to make them even better. Aside from weapons, collecting is an important factor in the game. So collect everything you see, because you will definitely use it in the crafting menu, which you will use to craft healing and ammunition for your weapons and bombs.

Enemies and Puzzles

The enemies in the game are wild and impulsive and come in various forms, and it’s a lot of fun to learn how to fight each one. If we talk about specific ways to defeat them, they are not mandatory, but they make the task easier and if you wish, you can fight all the monsters in the traditional way. But honestly, the different ways to get rid of them are kind of a fun experience and I advise everyone to familiarize themselves with it. In each area you will sometimes encounter new enemies, which increases the fear factor in the game. But I’m sorry to say that the bosses disappointed me. I’m talking about the main bosses here because there are at least two of them that were fun to fight, while I didn’t find anything special about them with the others. On the other hand, the presence of a group of leaders from both sides was special and I really enjoyed their fight, and this point encourages you to explore the village even more.

Puzzles and Graphics

Of course, it wouldn’t be a RE game without puzzles, and unlike the seventh part, this new part doesn’t rely on shadows or light reflections. The puzzles here revolve around the environment in a very clever way and stimulate your brain by thinking outside the box, which made me even more excited about the different and varied types of them. I didn’t find any particular puzzle idea repeating itself, rather the game continues to present different ideas depending on the general atmosphere of the area you’re in.

Capcom’s newest engine, dubbed the “RE Engine”, is a magical game engine that renders the games, their worlds and their characters with the level of detail and quality that first-party studios are known for, but with a quarter of which the storage space that these huge games usually consume. The world in RE8 is full of detail, from the effects of the snowfall at the start of the game to the amazing reflections you notice in the castle and other areas. Added to this is the wealth of detail about the characteristics of enemies and bosses. These ugly and frightening shapes made me wish that the appearance of the games would not evolve, because the design of some enemies really struck fear in my heart. With the high graphics quality, fine details and of course the amazing reflections thanks to ray tracing technology, it’s safe to assume that the game’s performance at 60 frames wasn’t consistent all the time. Personally, that didn’t bother me because the game isn’t fast-moving. Of course, once you disable ray tracing, performance will improve.

Conclusion

Many will be happy to know that this part is translated into Arabic. This includes texts and lists. Personally, I found the translation good and describes things clearly. The game encourages you to play through it more than once, and on the default difficulty it was relatively easy, and as we’ve come to expect from this series, you’ll often miss secrets on your first playthrough and want to go back to them. Or finish the game again with the arsenal of weapons you collected in the first round of the game and then try to complete more. Among the various challenges through which you earn special weapons, some of which have infinite ammo. A final point of content is the return of the famous “Mercenary” mode, which puts you in different areas of the game and tries to get rid of enemies in order to collect the most points in a certain period of time.

In general, the smoothness dominates the game, from the lack of loading times to the high level of polish in the design of the levels and puzzles that don’t make you feel lost since you always know where you’re going without that Feeling like the game is encouraging you to progress. These factors, combined with the freedom and linearity of the game, make it not only a distinctive Resident Evil game, but also a unique horror game.

The game was tested on the PlayStation 5 version provided by the game publisher.