Capcom Xbox Resident Evil Village

Saying the Resident Evil series is an old franchise would be a major understatement. The series saw it’s first release in 1996 and in the 25 years of it’s existence - the franchise has managed to release 27 games while also managing to make its way to the big-screen. While not all of the games might have been as successful as Capcom would have hoped - some did manage to establish genre-defining standards such as the Survival-Horror genre which was introduced by the first game and the “over-the-shoulder” camera perspective which was introduced in Resident Evil 4.While many consider Resident Evil 4 to be the best game in series - some were not happy with the fact that RE4 leaned more towards action than survival horror and for a while - it seemed like Capcom was sifting the series from a survival-horror title to an action focused title. No where is this more apparent than RE6. Resident Evil 6 was probably the point where Capcom had to take a step-back and really consider if the series was in-deed having an identity crisis. Then in 2017, Capcom released Resident Evil 7.Resident Evil 7 (2017) was the first game in the mainline series that adopted a first-person perspective and introduced a whole new cast of characters (along with some old ones) and a new story. Capcom wanted to bring back the element that made Resident Evil one of Capcom’s more successful IP…horror. Resident Evil 7 upon release was not only a commercial success but revitalized the general public’s internet in the series as a whole and now fast-forward 3 years and we have the Resident Evil: Village - the latest installment in the series.StorySet three years after the events of Resident Resident Evil: 7. Ethan Winters along with his wife (Mia Winters) and daughter (Rosemary Winters a.k.a Rose) are re-located to a remote town in Europe by Chris Redfield. Ethan tries to live a normal life until one day when Ethan’s home is raided by Chris Redfield and his Houndwolf Squad. Mia is assassinated in the raid with Ethan and Rosemary being taken-in. During transportation - the truck has an accident, leaving Ethan to wondering into a small remote Village. Ethan soon finds out that something is very wrong with the village and the leaders/lords of the Village has his daughter. Ethan must now face the nightmares lying within the Village to save his daughter along with finding out the village’s ties to the Dulvey incident from 3 years ago.The Resident Evil series does have a somewhat rich lore (if you take the effort to read through them) and that is mostly due to the series being one of Capcom’s most successful IP’s, which in-turn helped the franchise receive newer installments. It definitely wasn’t because Capcom had envisioned a narrative heavy experience such as ‘The Last of Us’. Instead - Resident Evil is popular for it’s gameplay more than anything and narrative has always acted as a Butcher’s Twine for the series - This is the same for Re:Village… to some extent. That is, this time around Capcom has managed to deliver an experience that has a much more emotional touch to it. The story’s theme in simple context revolves around parenthood and the shear-lengths a parent will go for their children. It was certainly a more touching way of portraying the game’s story which I very much enjoyed. I also enjoyed the fairytale theme they went for the enemies than your typical monsters you found in the past games. I do think Capcom missed an opportunity at further detailing the lords backstory to make them more interesting as the the interactions with them felt abrupt. I know they had files that shares their history but I doubt more than 40% of the total player base will ever bother finding all the files.GameplayWith RE:7’s major success, the team stuck with the style that game had adopted - which was a First-Person Perspective but also at the same time incorporating other elements from their past games such as Resident Evil 4. This made RE:Village experience one pivotal change in it’s style of play, that is it became more action oriented than the slow-paced horror that was RE:7. Much like Resident Evil 4 - you are equipped to the brim with weapons and ammo and can easily finish the game killing every single enemy (provided you play on normal) if you’re low on ammo or health - you have two options; either you can craft more ammo or health in the crafting menu by collecting crafting parts and resources scattered around the game world or purchase them directly from the Duke who basically acts as Re:Village’s version of the Merchant from Re:4. You can purchase items from the Duke using the game’s in-world currency which are dropped by enemies or in breakable crates. You can also get in-game money from the Duke by selling him valuable items that again - you get either as enemy drops or from breaking crates. The Duke can also cook meals that that upon consumption will provide you with permanent stat buffs such as increased health or defense. But you will need to find the ingredients first which from my personal experience are easy enough to find.Something else that seems to have had an heavy influenced by Re:4 is the game’s inventory system. The on-hand inventory box which you use to place your equipment is also exactly similar to re4 where it’s a grid based system that will force you to use the limited space you have the most efficient way possible. Also much like 4 - your items such as keys, valuables and crafting items have their own separate space so will not take up space in your inventory box. I should also mention that the game does not have an item box, which are usually located near save spots that are used to store any excess items you may have that you do not want to get rid off in order to make room in your on-hand inventory. I should also mention that herbs are no longer direct consumables for health and are now instead a crafting item used to craft health.Now, let’s talk about the most interesting and new thing in this game… The Village.When developing the game, the team wanted it to have a more open-paced feeling as compared to past games. It’s not to say past Resident Evil titles weren’t open to a certain decree. But they always had this sense narrowness to it’s open nature. So Capcom designed the Village to be this somewhat large hub-world that connected to the much more linear boss/lord worlds. The Village is not exactly completely opened at the beginning of the game - locking you off from some parts but instead slowly opens up as you progress through each lord’s domain which are themed after a popular European folklore. As more and more areas of the village are opened up to you - you get to explore newer parts and collect any rewards scattered across the Village.Due to this design - The Village has this feeling of being a sort horror themed Ferris Wheel where it is the central joint that connects the other worlds (boss worlds). In short, RE: Village’s gameplay takes more inspiration from 4 than any other title while still maintaining some aspects of RE7. This swift from pure horror to a more action focused horror experience might upset a few fans - but it still is by all accounts extremely enjoyable.PerformanceI shared a simple table that I made which details Capcom’s official performance disclaimers. I also have another pair of tables sharing the minimum and recommend specs for PC players.If you went through the table, you can see that on next-gen systems - it claims that the game runs at 45 FPS with Ray-tracing on but I personally noticed that this isn’t the case and the game instead ran at 60fps with occasional dips. The game does manage to maintain a almost solid 60 FPS with Ray-tracing turned off on the PS5 and this also seems to be the case for Xbox Series X. The series S does run at a lower FPS with ray-tracing turned on but surprisingly at a solid 60fps with the feature turned-off. I’d personally recommend that most player turn the feature off for a better performance since I think it’s not a feature that most people would notice unless they were looking for it.When it comes to resolution the game supports 900p,1080p,1440p and 4K. Base last-gen consoles ie, PS4 and Xbox One/One S will run the game at 900p@45fps (which is mostly accurate from what I’ve seen as the game struggles to maintain 60fps); top-end consoles from last gen ie, PS4 Pro and Xbox One X offers two options which are 1080p@60fps (performance mode) or 4k@30fps (resolution mode) performance mode does maintain a decent 60fps experience while 4k tends to leave the frame-rate uncapped meaning it fluctuates around the 30-40 range. Next gen-systems (PS5,Xbox Series X/S) can run the game at a peak performance of 4k@60fps with the option of turning Ray-tracing on or off (Series S peaks at 1440p and cannot output at 4K resolution for this title but does offer Ray-tracing capabilities)But in all honestly? Capcom’s crowning achievement has to be their RE Engine. Resident Evil: Village is using a slightly optimized RE Engine and the engine helps give the game a much more photorealistic look. Capcom’s level design team also manages to do a great job at giving the game a great sense of scale by masterfully blending the back & foreground while at the same time increasing the FOV (field of view) which helps you see more per frame. The RE Engine in all regards is truly a technical marvel due to it’s shear scalability and adaptability to different game genres and how well it works with very little compromises. If I’d had to nit-pick and point at any issues with the visuals it maybe be the lack of finer details on certain assets but that’s not a particular issue pertaining to this title alone and is something you’d notice with any game.AudioSomething I find surprising more often then not is the fact that Audio and Sound work are most times the last thing many people think about when playing video games. But sound as much as vision plays a key role in the whole experience and no where is it more true than in horror titles such as Resident Evil.Sound helps make the whole experience much more intense and memorable and Resident Evil does a great job of conveying this style of immersion. Voice work is also much better as compared to Resident Evil 7 where certain performances felt off.One thing that I did have an issue with was in terms of audio direction with respect to enemy location. Most titles now support some form of surround sound and that’s the case with Village but I’ve had more than a couple of times where it felt like the sound was coming from a one direction only for the enemy to appear in a different direction. I also noticed an issue with the what I’d like to call “distance of sound” which made me mis-calculate the distance of enemies behind me.ConclusionResident evil is a franchise that has managed to do one thing that most titles do not… evolve. Resident Evil started as a fixed Camera Angled - tank control game with limited resources to a first person action-horror and everything in the middle. This philosophy of constant change has managed to keep the series relevant and fresh even after 25 years. Where the series goes from here and in which way is anyone’s guess but one thing is for certain, Resident Evil is here to stay.ScoreStory 9/10Gameplay 9/10Performance 9/10Audio 9/10Final Score: 36/40(I played the game on a PS5 using a digital copy of the game purchased via PSN with a total play time of 30 hours and any video or pictures provided with the review are some that I captured during my play session or created by me using relevant data secured from other sources. The ‘Story’, ‘Gameplay’ and ‘Audio’ are entirely based on my experience with the title and only consists of primary data while ‘Performance’ is comprised of both primary and secondary data.)