‘Resident Evil Village’ Review: RE’s Brand of Horror Stumbles to Find its Footing

In 2017, Resident Evil once again reinvented itself with Resident Evil 7. The shift to first-person gameplay not only brought the series back to its horror roots but drew inspiration from Hideo Kojima’s ill-fated P.T. on the PS4. Now here we are four years later with the debut of Resident Evil Village, the eighth game in the mainline franchise, and the official follow-up to the gameplay introduced in Resident Evil 7.  There has been a considerable amount of hype surrounding the game’s release ever since the reveal. Great marketing and a tall vampire lady awakening something in horny fanboys will do that. However, how does the game stack up to its stellar predecessor? Well, Resident Evil Village is a fun but peculiar game that tries to infuse some of the lessons it has learned from the previous entry, yet it still falls back on some of the elements from earlier games in the series that don’t exactly work. “Ordinary Man” Ethan Winters

I think it’s about time we admit that Resident Evil’s stories are about as bonkers as they get and that’s alright, which is par the course for Capcom games. There’s some charm to the “style over substance” aspect of the narrative. Ultimately, it’s the quirky villains and over-the-top characters who become the stars of the story. That’s no different here. Resident Evil Village picks up three years after Resident Evil 7, once again following Ethan Winters. After their ordeal, Ethan and his wife Mia have settled in Europe with their newborn b…