Frankenstein’s monster

As far as horror games go Resident Evil has a stellar reputation good enough to become a movie franchise as well The latest installment is Resident Evil 8 or VIIIAGE as they would like to call it I am not calling it that The game is a fusion of some of the older games bringing in some new thrills and keeping the franchise freshThe story continues with Ethan Whisper three years after Resident Evil 7 He and Mia now have a child named Rose and they have moved to Europe to restart their lives The game begins when your wife is shot down and your baby abducted You get knocked out and wake up after the van you were being held in crashes From there you have to follow a narrow path in the dark snowy place as the game trains you about the basics It feels like RE7 in the beginning but the pace quickly changes from dark and scary to firstperson action when you come upon an abandoned village Your first task in the game is to survive and escape a horde of werewolvesThere are essentially four sections and four major bosses to get past The pace of the game through each section is different For example the area ruled by Lady Dimitrescu is slowpaced and more about stealth while the Stronghold is all about dealing with hordes of monsters Every section is distinct enough to not feel like they are part of the same villageThere is a lot of variety in gameplay and a lot of elements imported from previous RE games The environmental horror sections create a claustrophobic environment perfectly These sections are thrown in with a bunch of jump scares and that is what I enjoyed most The action provided a muchneeded change in pace They provided a different kind of tension more to do with ammo depletion and an onslaught of monsters to take care of That said the controls are a little clunky especially for action and Ethan doesnrsquot move like he is in an action game everything is slowpaced and at times it can be hard to adjust This does give you time to think and plan your moves but I sometimes craved some fast traditional actionRunning out of bullets is however less of a concern now than it was in some of the other titles in this series They have fortunately bought the merchant system back and this means you can stock up before you enter most areas of the game Resident Evil Village also lets you craft things and make them better you can make sniper rifles mines and all sorts of lovelies This means scavenging and looking for loot around in the game is more important than before It also encourages you to go around exploring the map which throws up some good surprises now and then not to mention jump scares Yes I do think jump scares are cheap but when they are paired with impeccable environmental horror they are acceptable to take things over the topThe puzzles in the game were a little disappointing They were all too easy and there were several hints around that told you exactly what you needed to do to finish the puzzle Thus defeating the purpose They were nothing more than a stopgap in most casesAs far as the graphics for the game go I am a little mixed about it The environment and mood set were perfect I even liked the monsters At the same time things like the movement of liquids and lots of small details of things in the environment looked very unnatural and put me off I was especially put off by how everyonersquos hands in the game looked Even the baby wasnrsquot spared from overly wrinkly and weird shaped hands Considering you spend most of the time looking at Ethanrsquos hands I thought they should have done a better jobThe big question is where will Resident Evil go from here will it continue this mishmash or will it take a completely new approach I for one want to see them improve on this Even though this went on and experimented with gameplay and varied pace I think it still lacks refinement If the next title could address the refinement and figure out a crazy good storyline we could have a winner on our hands Not to say this isnrsquot a winner I think Capcom has struck gold here they just now need to refine it to perfectionOverall Resident Evil Village is a very good game for the franchise Not only does it redefine itself it also gives the user a nice change in pace through the 15 hours of gameplay There are a few things that I didnrsquot like but they were small enough to ignore in the grand scheme of things If you have the stomach for a creepy horror action game get Resident Evil Village It is a lot of funResident Evil VillageRating 455Developer CapcomPublisher CapcomPlatform PC PS4 PS5 XBOPrice PC Rs 3499 Consoles Rs 3999