“Shit,” I told my husband, pausing my game. “It’s dolls.”
He was an hour or so behind me at the time, enjoying some kiss-catch with Lady Dimitrescu, so obviously I didn’t want to spoil what was next up for him.
But… dolls.
Gareth knows I hate dolls the most in horror games.
“What do I hate the most in horror games, Gareth?”
“Dolls.”
Gore isn’t a problem for me. Jump spooks make me laugh. Even a queasy, pervasive, almost claustrophobic sense of existential dread is no biggie on my fuck-this-I’m-out-o-meter, but miss me with this porcelain and lace masquerade of Victorian naïveté, Capcom. I’m not stupid, I realise what’s up, and not just because of the creepy giggles. But those too.
“Dolls. It had to be dolls, huh.”
The dolls, it turned out, were not the worst thing about House Beneviento. And since making my breathless exit from that place, dolls are not what I hate the most in horror games anymore. So that’s innovative.
Resident Evil Village is the sequel to 2017’s Resident Evil 7. It’s been three years since protagonist Ethan Winters saved his wife Mia from a supporting cast of Texas Chainsaw Massacre extras, and the two of them now have a kid, Rose, who’s also a convenient distraction from their unresolved trauma and awkward questions about what actually happened at the end of the previous game. Until their boring suburban ennui is abruptly interrupted by some plot exposition and uninvited visitors, I mean, and – uh-oh! – Ethan must now save Rose from a supporting cast of vintage Hammer Film Productions extras. Same, but different, but mostly the same.
Because besides the narrative déjà vu, Resident Evil Village is also a lot like Resident Evil 7 in terms of gameplay and sequencing, but mashed up with the Euro vibes and crumbling baroque aesthetic of Resident Evil 4 – same disorienting level design, same limited ammo and clumsy inventory management and inscrutable font choices, same uniquely eccentric local weirdos out to get you for reasons that, even at the end, are hard to explain. So what’s different? The dolls, I guess, and the other, even worse thing. Also, instead of sort-of-zombies, most of the enemies in Resident Evil Village are sort-of-werewolves, and series co-star Chris Redfield makes his provocative beard-bro makeover debut.
Don’t get me wrong. Resident Evil Village doesn’t deviate much from its franchise conventions, maybe, but so what, that’s okay with me – it’s a Resident Evil game, and it’s exactly what I expect from a Resident Evil game, up to and including super intimidating bosses with names like “Donna”. I didn’t make that up, one of them is a Donna. She’s supposed to be Romanian, I think, but whatever, lol, it’s Donna. Iconic.
I loved this game. It’s occasionally frustrating – I couldn’t get back to some of the game’s locations after the boss encounter to finish up the puzzles and loot I’d skipped, for example, and the finale’s enemies, though infrequent, are much more difficult – but clocking at about 10-12 hours (exactly 11 hours, 29 minutes, and 46 seconds for me) with a new game plus mode so I can start over with my weapon upgrades and show these mutant assholes what’s what, those complaints are inconsequential.
