Resident Evil Village is a Bad Game

This rant has spoilers so be careful reading if you haven’t finished Village.

So I’m a huge fan of the Resident Evil series. In particular the remake of 1 for GameCube, 2 for last gen, and Resident Evil 4 for literally every man made device available were my favorites and needless to say I was rather excited for Resident Evil Village as the talk about it was that it was a love letter to RE4 and combined all the good elements of 7 with all the good elements of 4. So to all I have a question.

Am I alone in hating this?

After playing through the rather shockingly short game that was Village I was astounded at just how unappealing they managed to make this game. The sense of tension of 7 from the first person perspective and horror elements? Gone. Completely non-sensical it’s all in your head moments ripped right out of a Ubisoft game (Doll house)? Check. Recycled enemy who just kind of lazily follows you around a house creating zero tension? Check. Laughably bad story even for a RE game? It’s all here.

From the moment I started this game I was stunned at the good press it was getting. Those things I mentioned are just pieces too. The game itself plays so terribly that those other issues are impossible to overlook. The game just feels *bad*. Shooting is a chore and the enemies dodging is no problem in an actual shooter, but the way Ethan drunkenly sways the gun towards the horrifying ‘sort of wolf men’ is just painful.

Thinking of a Ubisoft it’s funny too because Capcom took another page from them. *spoilers* Talked up a villain that was really fun and different and then immediately killed her so you could go fight such fascinating creatures such as Magneto and a special fish boy.

*More spoilers* Speaking of that doll house I found it just plain pathetic. The game randomly decides that despite the fact that they’ve been an action packed horror themed roller coaster that now they want to be P.T. and despite the fact that it makes no damn sense how anything with this dollhouse works. (Ethan’s magical, vanishing weapons. ‘Scary fetus’. Random, insane puzzle doll specifically designed for Ethen to escape house. Stupid hallucination ploy.) I don’t even want to bring up how stupid Chris was in this game and how he caused everything bad that happens because he’s such a colossal dumbass... And finally the shop keeper uttered his desperate, developers screaming please god love this game line of “Whaddya buyi.. haha, no. Just something an old friend used to say” line that I gave up.

I hate this game. I think it has no idea what it wants to be and bounces from attempting genuine horror even if it makes no sense to just wanting to be Resident Evil 6. You literally fight a transformer in a go cart that has a chain saw for blocking attached to it. It is a stupid, thrown together venture that to me signals the inevitable backslide into silliness and irrelevance that was brought on by games like RE6.

I... didn’t like this game. I wouldn’t be so hard on it either except I’m stunned by how unanimous the praise is. People keep saying it’s the best RE since 4 and I just get set off by that because wow... to me it’s kind of a shameless, desperate attempt to capitalize on the vibe of 4 because they knew the game just wasn’t there.

What do you guys think? Did you guys actually like playing this? Did anyone else get frustrated by it? Am I the only one that had a mini stroke when Ethan just slapped his stump for a hand back on and the healing fluid also healed his cut up jacket?

Edit: Just to be clear, it’s okay if you loved it. I hated it, but I just have thoughts on it and wondered if anyone felt the same. If you loved it that’s awesome and I’m excited that you loved it.

I feel the polar opposite way. I'm enjoying the lunacy of the story (that hand-healing moment you mention is an all-time great gaming moment for me) and I think the pacing is amazing. "Action packed horror themed roller coaster" is a perfect description. Combat has felt pretty good to me given the way the game handles its first person perspective and movement speeds.

Agree that it's nowhere near as scary as 7 but to me that's ok.

Hey, are you okay? Not everybody likes everything sorry this didn't work out for you. It's probably my favorite resident evil. The doll house is annoying on replays but I did enjoy a nice chance to slow down and enjoy some atmosphere. Of course chainsaw go-karts are stupid, but what are you saying about resident evil? Do you think this is always been some type of literary work of art? It's about zombies and shooting shit. Seven was certainly more tense, the dev's intentionally rolled that back to make more of an action-packed 4-esque experience. Maybe the tension is what you liked seven, a good explanation for why you didn't care for this one. But maybe take it down a notch

I haven't played the game, just read/heard/seen a lot about it, so please take this with a huge grain of salt. But from everything I've seen...

It's campy. It's stupid. It's ridiculously over the top. It's supposed to be that way. You're supposed to laugh at how dumb it is. If you were wanting a straight-faced "true horror" experience, this isn't it. But it's not trying to be that, either.

I enjoyed it, alot of people enjoyed it. I feel like you just want to let people know you are different, and thats cool. But you seem like you have a real axe to grind for whatever reason.

Also, turning off movement and aim acceleration in the camera options, tightens the controls and removes the "swinging" feel of the aiming.

Dont feed the trolls. We should all know this by now.

Is it really that difficult to believe that people feel differently about a videogame than you do?

@rich666: I’m not trying to troll anyone. I think I just really liked 4, this really wasn’t for me, and it’s making it worse having other people say it’s like 4. This isn’t intended to be hateful. Just overzealous probably.

@alistercat: no, not at all. I’m just surprised I’ve heard no one say otherwise about it I guess?

Dude, you're free to not like whatever you want and for whatever reason. But it doesn't help calling out others who don't feel the same way.

@sahalarious: I’ll try to do that. You know why I think this was really disappointing? I think you’re right. The tension of the first person one RE was nice and what I actually hoped was they would have the first person ones be super tense and the 3rd person ones be kind of fun and goofy. Instead they combined them and maybe I’m just mad they didn’t go the direction I wanted.

I'm sorry that you didn't enjoy it, but personally I loved it. I really enjoyed how camp and OTT it was (something Resi has done ever since the start - even 7 with it's more serious tone is still very silly throughout. It also managed to make me like 7 more because it justified where that game ended and actually made good on the story and on Ethan as a character beyond merely being a faceless protagonist. They even went so far as to specifically tie in & address all the ridiculous OTT injury/recovery sequences from 7 in a way that felt narratively justified. Now I don't think it handles everything perfectly - some of the decisions made right at the end didn't quite land for me although I still enjoyed the way it wrapped up overall.

I can understand why it might disappoint someone who was particularly into the "scare factor" of 7 (a game that was, for my tastes, a little too intense in parts). I do think they also fell into an awkward trap of having everyone fall in love with an early antagonist only for them to take up a relatively small amount of screen time (it'd be the equivalent of if everyone had been besotted with Bitores Mendez in 4, I suppose). But Resi games have almost always put their best foot forward, and honestly this is probably one of the more consistent entries throughout (the fishman segment dipped a little for me, but it recovered better than the back chunk of 7 IMO).

@jasonr86: I changed it up as I wasn’t intending to call people out. Hopefully seems less like that now.

Maybe you did have a little mini-stroke lol

This is the most fun I've had with a RE game in forever. I skipped RE7 when it came out, and this one actually made me go back and play that one too. Both are great to me in their own ways.

I think it's fair if you can't get into the schlocky horror-themed fun in this new one, but to me it's a party. Each 'biome' has something cool and fun to offer. I see a lot of people complain about the factory level but it gives me creepy Tetsuo: The Iron Man vibes - I really dig it. Played through Casual in a little over 7h, and Hardcore took about as long, skipping most of the treasures and shit.

Brief and to the point, two thumbs up to this game. I guess I can see the point of most people's complaints, I just don't share them. And that's not very upsetting to me, personally.

@miserywizard: blah. I feel like I need to just play it again. Honestly, I’m probably being way too hard on it anyway because it’s like the only game this year that I was excited for to come out and it didn’t match up with what I was hoping for. I also might be slightly mad at it too because it never told me there was a shove so I got the whole way through without knowing you could push enemies away...

@benwayne: I think that's fair. Stuff not living up to expectations is tough to deal with, sometimes.

Hopefully you can let some of that go, and see the game on its own merits. That's not to say it all has to work for you, but try to find the good stuff in there, and enjoy it for what it is.

It's nothing like other RE games, and it's even another departure from RE7, but it has the RE spirit in spades. It's kinda serious, kinda dumb, spooky and hokey and everything in between. It's a fun ride, overall!

@miserywizard: I did just realize that I called out the story of Village when in RE4 the midget overlord of an ancient castle had an animatronic statue of himself that was the size of a building chase down Leon until it collapsed into a bottomless chasm soooo... perhaps I should reel it in a bit.

RE4 also has many of the problems you mention?

@benwayne: I wasn't gonna mention it but yeah lol

Sounds to me like you had too high expectations for this game. They did not live up to them, and naturally that makes you angry at the game. So i bet you´re not alone in this.

I like RE a lot too. But i have zero interest in this one. I know i would have a miserable time playing it from the things i have seen, read and heard.

It´s a dumb action game, and from what i can gather thats why quite a lot like it too.

I totally see where you're coming from with a lot of this and still mostly disagree.

It sounds like, from the subsequent replies after the OP, you were kind of thrown off guard by just how insanely campy this game is? Like, you heard "7 meets 4" and went "oh sweet the horror of 7 meets the combat of 4," not, "a slightly more action-y approximation of 7's combat with dollops and dollops of cheese."

I absolutely agree Moreau and Heisenberg and Beneviento are less interesting than Lady Dimitrescu (though I do have a soft spot for Moreau's sad sack-ness, and Heisenberg's Nick Cage-esque delivery, but the doll, she suuuuucks). And yeah, the doll section falls pretty flat. And yes, the enemy variety is better than 7 but worse than 4.

Finally, Chris -- what a dumbass. It is *hysterical* how hard they go for the Call of Duty feel in that second to last section of the game. And if I was a fan who took the series a *teaspoon* more seriously, then I'd fucking hate it. But as someone who laughed at the dumb shit in 5 and 6, and was A-Okay with the fan service merchant reference and the "boulder punching" reference from Heisenberg -- I was laughing the whole time. Moonlit woods with silenced weapons and a squad at night? Check. Fighting in a European village you see from a mountainside above? Check. Airstrikes? Check. Night vision? Check. It's sooooooo stupid. You're right that there are some intense RE6 vibes in that section (like, what separates that from any of the other snowy European village Call of Duty Chris missions from 6?), but what saves it for me is that I think Village plays leagues better than 6.

And that last point is just a subjective thing, I guess. I will add the caveat I played with a mouse and keyboard, but I think the shooting was perfect for what this game wanted to be. But, that's a "feel" thing, I get it. There are people who liked how 6 controlled and I think they're lunatics.

Most of the Resident Evil games are bad because they want to be survival horror but in actuality they are action games which is why they all end with a bad guy getting taken out by some big dumb weapon or explosion and why they continually give you bigger guns and more ammo. This is why RE6 is the best one because it's the most honest at what the franchise is. Village is just as dumb as every other one but it's more dishonest because it does a good job at making you think it's more open ended than it actually is. Resident Evil is at its best when it embraces the cheese and campy action bullshit because this is a franchise where parasites and biohazards are shorthand for giving people dumb superpowers.

If you think about any aspect of the story of Village for longer than a minute it all falls apart but there are moments near the end that come close to just embracing Resident Evil's true self which is what makes it better than most but still not the best. Which is RE6 always and forever.

@donchipotle:

I didn't hate it, I enjoyed it, but only because of how dumb and goofy it was.

I definitely hear your complaints about the near polar opposite tone from 7, which I HAVE seen echoed elsewhere. It does have me worried that they're doing the same thing they did with 1-6. Just slowly ratcheting up the action game to game until it's just an action game again....but in 1st person.

I don't hate how they explained Ethan, it was super dumb, but it still fits into the absurd anime(because let's be real, that's what RE is and always has been) tone the series has had.

I look forward to what they do with 8, but am hesitant about what that game will be tonally. Especially with how the post credits scene seems to setup Rose.

@lapsariangiraff said:

@donchipotle:

No it isn't, I genuinely believe every word I say. Every time I tell people RE6 is the best one/my favorite they act like I kicked their dog.

@alistercat: Playing down someone's opinion is a real funny way of acknowledging differing opinions.

@donchipotle: Its more like I have that response a dog would have where you just tilt your head cause you heard a really weird noise.

Nothing weird to be heard

Every game deserves at least one fan.

@donchipotle: I wish I could follow you down that road, lol.

In theory, I love RE6. I have never held the tone or relative seriousness of any Resident Evil game as some kind of sacred cow. These games are fun B-film schlock, and embracing that lets them have more interesting and varied moments and gameplay.

So I'm not someone who doesn't like RE6 because "rrrr it was so dumb these games used to be scary" -- eff that, Chris microwaving a mutant hand is comic gold. I can get in a motorcycle chase in a Resident Evil game? Great!

The problems start when I pick up the controller...

Because good god does it control poorly. Like, really poorly. The aiming is rough, like they cranked up the speed of your turning and aiming but didn't finesse it any more than that. The reticle/aiming jump every time you shoot a shot both looks unpleasant and gives you no sense of where you're actually shooting (people complain about the swimmy laser sight in 4, but at least there it hits where the laser is pointing every time). That, in combination with the bullet sponge enemies who have next to no hit reacts or skin deformation unless they're almost dead or get knocked over, means there's no feedback, and makes the fights feel like garbage in comparison to 4, 5, 7, Village, 2 Remake. The same issue plagues the numerous boss fights. They look great, but boil down to "shoot them a lot," which, you could say is not a first in Resident Evil, but unlike the boss fights in 4, 5, 7, or Village, they don't have courtesy to give you a really obvious "you're damaging them!" feedback.

Then there's the movement, which, is a hyper-jittery mess where the greater movement speed in still cramped Resident Evil environments make precise movement a hassle. They made melee simpler but more rote by just letting you hit the button over and over instead of having to stagger a guy. There are cool dive and rolls options, which are fun, but... never, ever required by the enemy or encounter design, so it's really just an extra bell and whistle you never get to use in a cool way, you just kinda goof off with a co-op partner with it. (Okay, yes, there are those quasi-platforming sections where you have to crawl or roll underneath spinning blades, but c'mon. You're given a John Woo backwards dive onto the ground and the thing you want to do with it is crawl underneath blades? That's not the fantasy.)

Also, the cinematic camera, and its tendency to take away your controls to show you mundane stuff like, a bridge lowering, or an elevator arriving, or a door opening, is fine. The problem is when they do that over and over and still let enemies attack you while the cinematic is playing. So in the Leon campaign in the underground lab, I see this drawn out animation of a door on the other side of the room opening, and when it cuts back to me in control, I'm mid-zombie chewing my face QTE and I have just .5 seconds to mash A and live.

And, this is a smaller thing, but for all the action schlock, none of the setpieces play particularly well or are very fun. At least the mech fight in Village does exactly what I ask it to. In 6, the jet sequence, the motorcycle chase, the rope climbing -- all these bespoke, visually amazing setpieces control horribly.

I wish I loved RE6. It's just, for me at least, unlike most other Resident Evil games, it just didn't play well enough for me to enjoy the schlock. I am never getting that 20 hours of my life back. I am sincerely glad you enjoyed it though, and wish I could say the same.

I will say though, Leon's jacket in 6 is the most bitching jacket he has had in the entire series, and I actually own a real life version of it and get real life compliments from real life humans about a damn video game jacket, and that's cool.

No it isn't a bad game. It isn't the best in the series by a long shot. Sits somewhere around the middle. Also everyone needs to know that Resident Evil 5 is the worst in the series not 6. Go back and play them. 6 has more going for it than 5.

@taylorwmartin: 6 is absolute dogshit. Sorry 5 is miles better than it

5 is a great coop game. Just a mediocre single player game. 6 has nothing going for it. It's an absolute waste of space. And majority agree.

I'm not sure if you know this, but you're just no fun.

I uninstalled the game after just a couple hours because I thought that it felt like garbage to play. Bummer too cause I was really looking forward to it.

I just woke up, but:

Remember folks: Just because a game doesn't satiate your interests doesn't inherently mean that the game is "bad".

@taylorwmartin: I've played both 5 and 6 recently.

5 falls apart in the last half, but the first bits are a better playing game than 6. Every criticism I can lob at 5, I can lob at 6 tenfold.

Weird, obtuse boss fights?

Annoying encounters with enemies with guns?

Relying on increased action with controls that were never intended to handle them?

All of these were present in 5, but increased exponentially in 6. I say this as someone who loathed 5 when it first came out, and was therefore really excited for 6. Then I played 6, and immediately thought, "you know what, we gave 5 a bad rap at the time."

It's that bad.

Pff, RE8 is a fantastic game!

RE6 is an awful game but it is a truly inspired co op experience if you drag someone along to help roast the whole thing.

Just a reminder it's perfectly fine that people don't like your particular thing. I don't see anything in the OP that isn't well thought out.

@wollywoo: Haha. Yeah... I’m aware. Sorry about that.

I never really liked Resident Evil 4 despite everyone loving it at the time and I had a great time playing through Resident Evil 5 with a friend. I also think Dark Souls is probably the worst of that series and vastly prefer Dark Souls 2 which I realize is a hugely unpopular opinion. Sometimes you're just the outlier I guess and thats fine. I also understand the need to vent because when you have such a strongly inverse reaction to everyone else it can feel like you're crazy and need to write out the things that bothered you just to make sure they still sound as bad on paper as they did when you played through them. Just know that you're not crazy for "not understanding that others might like a thing you don't" or alone in being that one guy/girl that doesn't like the thing millions do and is trying to make sense of it. It kind of sucks to be the odd one out because you get a lot of reactions like you see in this thread but it is what it is I guess.

For whats it's worth I'm nearly done with Village and as a person that generally thinks all Resident Evil games are different shades of bad I'm having a pretty decent time with it. The aiming on a controller kind of sucks even when you turn down the acceleration and all that. Regular enemies are spongy even on normal difficulty and the mini-bosses are way worse in thatregard, barely register hits and don't even offer unique rewards or items for all the resources you waste on them. Those would be my main criticisms at this point as I haven't finished it yet. The story is goofy and I'm down for that and the locations are fun, varied and generally don't outstay their welcome. I'm not in love with it but as a non-Resident Evil fan it's pretty alright.

I really enjoyed it, best one since 4. But i can see its not for everyone

Funny.

I'm a big fan of 4, then hated 5 so much that I just dropped the copy back to the store I bought it in. Nothing to do with the race stuff, just don't like the design. 5 is a run & gun game while it does not let you run and gun at the same time.

Never touched 6. 7 and its first person view does not appeal to me at all. Loved remake of 2, less so with remake of 3. As for Village, the dead wife bit just put me off so much. Well, "universal acclaim" is an illusion, don't take it too serious.

@humanity: To be fair, I think Giantbomb staff member can sometimes be outliers. Take the late Ryan Davis for example, his opinion that MGS4 is a good entry point for newcomer just raised my eye brow and made me think "You all were high when this site started."

I played all RE games, I believe I am good at them (and I like all RE styles: fixed camera, third-person, and now first), but when I started the game, I started on hardcore, and the first ambush surviving of the Lycans was too much for me at the time and I was stuck on it for about an hour. I did a stupid thing by restarting the game three times, alternating between standard and hardcore which means I had to skip all the cutscenes and run through the gameplay bits again. I wasn't satisfied with beating the part on standard after knowing what to do so I kept restarting. It didn't occur to me to just turn the difficulty down in the options menu... Anyways, that all rubbed me the wrong way. I've beaten the game three times and opted not to jump into a fourth to do a three-hour run. I got all the best weapons incredibly early, making Village of Shadows easy, aside from the Chris' part where you have to aim the beam at the mutamycete, so I've had my fill of the game for the moment. While I still think the game is good and extremely well-made, it is perhaps my least favorite RE game since RE4. Yes, I am in the minority, but I thought RE6 was great, and I liked RE5 too.

It's somewhat weird because RE4 and RE7 are my favorite RE games and RE8 combines those two, but there were too many negatives that detracted from the experience. This game is not so friendly to replays like previous RE games in my opinion as there are too many down moments. The intro is slow, and the dollhouse really kills the momentum even if it's an interesting point on the first playthrough. I feel like villains didn't have enough time to shine either, and for story purposes, it almost makes sense, but it's not the direction I wanted to see. The shooting feels adequate, but it doesn't feel as good as previous entries to me and it feels the same on all playthroughs due to how linear it is. The puzzles were jokes. There's one statue puzzle in the castle that has a description more confusing than the actual puzzle. That said, I don't mind that too much because I don't actually play RE for the puzzles (glad it wasn't like the puzzle in Code Veronica with the paintings)

The story wasn't terrible by RE standards, but its connections were lazy. I wouldn't say I hate Ethan as much as some others, but he is boring and his lines were often bad (even in 7), and unfortunately, as much as I loved 7, he is not what I loved about the game so having him back to continue that story was, again, not the direction I had hoped for. I am probably wrong, but this felt like it was developed with something similar to the 'Bioware Magic', where an incredibly talented team was tasked with making another RE directly after 7, and they quickly pulled ideas out of their butts but ultimately made a well-made game. Oh, and The Duke won't take off like RE4's merchant, he just didn't have the repeatable lines that you can alternate between for humor. The easter egg was good though.

The visuals are great, the designs of locations and enemies are cool, the voice work is great (though some of it is more RE overly dramatized line reads), the variety in the areas you go to is interesting, and despite thinking the villains should have had more spotlight, they were still interesting nonetheless. I do like that they closed off Ethan's story in an interesting way, but it's, like I said, not really what I cared for. While I will of course be interested and excited for RE9, or a new remake, when I finished RE8, it did honestly make me a little less excited about where it goes next. I wasn't trying to, but I beat Village of Shadows in four hours, and now, I don't know when I plan on going back to it. I've uninstalled it off my console.

@lapsariangiraff: Respectfully disagree my friend. Don’t get me wrong 6 isn’t a great game. It’s just better than 5. I go back and play through all the games every couple of years. 5 is always the worst. 6’s Leon campaign alone is better than 5. Im a big fan of the characters and story of the RE franchise(Ridiculous as they may be). 5 shit all over Chris, Jill, and Wesker. At least 6 gave us Chris and Leon meeting for the first time.

@infantpipoc: weird, your taste exactly mirrors mine. Agree on all counts except I did try RE7 just to see what it was.