Everywhere I look, the empty gaze of one – two, three, five; oh my god, dozens of – glassy eyes are staring back, watchful and hateful. They chitter merrily to each other as I tear through rooms, desperately seeking the outlier secreted somewhere in the mass of giggling, squirming china dolls. Twice I run out of time – I’m so panicked, I don’t even see the thing when it’s right in front of me – and then they swarm me, lifting horrifying, segmented appendages to attack, and I properly scream this time, loud enough that my next-door neighbour hears me via an open window and hesitantly knocks on the door to ensure I’m okay.
Resident Evil Village review
- Developer: Capcom
- Publisher: Capcom
- Platform: Played on PS5
- Availability: Out May 7th on PlayStation, Xbox and PC
It’s not entirely Capcom’s doing that I’m a screamy, jumpy mess – I effed myself up watching the (terrible) 1987 horror Dolls when I was still in junior school and my fear of those frozen china faces has never quite left me – but it’s as though the developer reached into my brain, jotted down my worst nightmare, stuck it in Resident Evil Village, and then forced me to relive it.
It is to the developer’s credit, however, that this neat, traditional home is such a triumph of understated spooks and masterful level design. Later, when I’m lost within a labyrinthine factory that long outstays its welcome, I’ll realise how unusual – and special – House Beneviento is; even if I wasn’t quite able to appreciate it while I was trapped there, racing through shadowy corridors and frantically hunting for a place to hide. It’s terrifyingly brilliant and brilliantly terrifying in equal measure.
Village picks up where RE7 left off, and we reprise our role of Ethan Winters, he of I-can-staple-my-severed-hand-back-on-with-chem-fluid fame. I’m not going to go into any of the specifics because even a light tease will spoil not just the story but the pacing, too, but just like RE7, Village is very much a game of two halves, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. It’s a shame, really, because the first half of Village is bloody spectacular – literally.
Early locations like House Beneviento are Resident Evil Village at its best. Later, when you’re touting a small armoury and blasting away wave after wave of Lycans – a fancy word for werewolves – you’ll forget how small and weak you felt in earlier segments. It’s not that I stomped through the entire game feeling bigger and stronger than I was – your supplies are rare and not always easy to spot, so, observing full survival horror tradition, Ethan is often on the cusp of running out of supplies and crafting ingredients – but there’s a surprising turn in the final act that means the game you finish is very different to the one you began.