Resident Evil Village is a great step for survival horror that understandably got forgotten fast.
Each section of this game feels wholly unique from the other. You'll have some more traditional RE chapters of navigating areas while solving puzzles and getting keys between pure puzzle or pure action segments along with a hub area that opens up as the game goes on, letting you get special challenges and rewards for going out of your way to get them. The ability to have varied game play and game design is a strength of survival horror I'm glad to see still alive in a big AAA title.
That unique strength is somewhat of its problem at the same time. There are a lot of set pieces and flashy moments to this game, but at the same time it has the feeling of being led around a theme park when comparing it to both the traditional RE games and more modern ones like RE 4. You don't have some of the same opportunities for routing and doing multiple runs in the same way as either of these games. Having a merchant you can just run into in a safe room or the hub isn't the same as enemies starting to get harder to deal with or you getting low on ammo and having the chance to upgrade or get new weapons.
So by the end of the game I had the feeling of this being this super cool experience that I'm really glad exists but won't be going back to until it's mostly out of my memory.
Each section of this game feels wholly unique from the other. You'll have some more traditional RE chapters of navigating areas while solving puzzles and getting keys between pure puzzle or pure action segments along with a hub area that opens up as the game goes on, letting you get special challenges and rewards for going out of your way to get them. The ability to have varied game play and game design is a strength of survival horror I'm glad to see still alive in a big AAA title.
That unique strength is somewhat of its problem at the same time. There are a lot of set pieces and flashy moments to this game, but at the same time it has the feeling of being led around a theme park when comparing it to both the traditional RE games and more modern ones like RE 4. You don't have some of the same opportunities for routing and doing multiple runs in the same way as either of these games. Having a merchant you can just run into in a safe room or the hub isn't the same as enemies starting to get harder to deal with or you getting low on ammo and having the chance to upgrade or get new weapons.
So by the end of the game I had the feeling of this being this super cool experience that I'm really glad exists but won't be going back to until it's mostly out of my memory.