Recently I self-indulged a bit and got myself a PS5. I only had the original Playstation, so this allows me access to plenty of exclusives that, over the years , I had to miss.
For the moment though, I'm also using it to see some of the newest games at their best, since it's quite a powerful thing. And one of these games that I got new was this Resident Evil 8, or VILLAGE (written so the initial "vill-" looks like VIII, like 8 in roman).
There was a lot of hype about this game but what I've saw beforehand was not very inspiring, reminding me a lot of RE4 (which I hate)....but I gave it a try, and was pleasantly surprised. For starters, the graphics are still amazing, very realistic, painfully so when getting hurt. The gameplay is streamlined and it's a lot more action-like, with less focus on the survival part and easier to manage and kill enemies. You need to pace your resources but there's more of everything. The inventory is huge and it separates consumables and weapons from keys and treasures. There's an upgrade and shop system, and well, some parts of it feel a lot like RE4 but somehow in a better way (the shopkeeper even jokes, saying the same sentence and intonation from RE4 and saying he's joking, he knew someone who said that).
You continue after 7 playing as Ethan Winters, living in "Europe" (probably Romania), and in the first 5 minutes of the game Chris Redfield apparently kills your wife Mia and kidnaps your daughter Rose, only for her to be stolen from him 5 minutes later too. So that's the main drive of the game. Things are not really as they seem, spoilers ahead, just in case.
After waking up from the accident where your daughter gets taken by someone else, you end up in a village. At first the initial house looks very much like RE7, but soon enough you just go out and it's dawn, and you see yourself in a small rural area with a huge castle and some weird houses, windmills and a factory.
You discover the village has been attacked by these monsters that looks like a half-zombie half-werewolf, and after finding some survivors that die immediately afterwards, you're captured and brought to the presence of the 5 big bads of the game: Mother Miranda (the leader, like a religious local figure that has protected the town till she decided to kill everyone), Lady Dimitrescu (the lady of the castle, very very tall and drinks blood), Heisenberg (the one managing the factory, with magnetic powers), Moureau (an ugly half-fish person-monster) and Donna Benevento (a girl that has creepy puppets that talk for her).
These people have...charisma, really. Maybe except for Mother Miranda, who is more hidden, the other characters are quite interesting. They're bastards, but interesting bastards. You kind of wanna know more about them, as you see them verbally fighting to decide what to do with you.
After escaping their little games, you go back to the village and meet Duke, the shopkeeper, who seems like a weird 6th member of the family but that is trying to help you somehow. He's quite mysterious. He tells you your daughter may be in the castle, and you go there to find her. There Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters try to kill you to drink your blood, together with their zombie-like servants, but after some going around you do manage to kill all of them, in the case of the lady with the help of a poisonous knife that turns her into a monster, because otherwise she's perfectly immortal. This castle section was really cool and big, mysterious, and the vampire theme, while ridiculous, was cool. It was also very nice to see their total disdain for males (they call you man-thing), although they treat their female servants quite bad too. You end up picking up a flask, and Duke tells you that's your daughter, split in 4 pieces, but that your daughter is special and is not dead, she can reform if you gather all 4 flasks, in hands of the 4 lords (the bad guys, apart from Mother Miranda).
The castle occupies quite a lot of the map, but after finishing this section you never go back there. Next there's Donna Benevento and her house. She's in fact making you hallucinate. As part of these hallucinations there's this little segment of a very creepy autopsy you perform on a doll that represents your wife, and you discover clues hidden in the doll that allows you to escape and kill the creepy main doll, which in fact was Donna. I really loved this part too, it was like a ghost story, without enemies (except for a specific one that is best left to discover, that is extremely creepy and unsettling and not a doll) but with puzzles and mysteries. You do feel a bit of pity for Donna, she seems to have some mental problems or something, and she did attack you somehow but she could have killed you from the start and she didn't, it seems she wanted you to like her like a daughter or something.
Between these main sections you always return to the village for a bit, discover new areas in there and can gather some special treasures and recharge on ammunition. You also find out that all monsters are usually created though the use of the mutamicene from RE7, the mold thing, but with different variants and results, and that Mother Miranda was the one that found it, became immortal, gave immortality to 4 "childs" of hers, the 4 lords, and was isolating the village, getting tests subjects from it and keeping it uncommunicated from the rest of the world.
Next is Moureau, that lives in a reservoir with water. You find him fast, but he turns into a giant fish monster that is also blocking escapes with disgusting mucus-like substances, and you need to drain the water and fight him to escape. This section was a bit more painful, more generic, and you feel sorry for Moureau too, because he's not all that well in the head and he's not that much in control, it seems, and wants the approval of Mother Miranda.
Finally there's Heisenberg. However, he contacts you and tells you he wants to help and get rid of Miranda, but you need to prove yourself. He leaves his flask in a stronghold with the werewolf-zombies, and after defeating lots of them and returning you can access his factory, where you talk. He keeps saying you need to use your daughter to kill Miranda, but Ethan says his daughter is not a weapon and gets all angry about it, so Heisenberg pushes him into the basement of the factory, where a weird monster with an airplane engine in the thorax and chainsaws instead of propellers chases you, till you fall even deeper. This section is full of robotic zombies, improved by Heisenberg with metallic parts. While talking he seems nice and a person you can reason with and the verbal fight you have with him seems extreme, but in the notes you find later in the factory you do see he's quite psychopathic too and has conducted horrible experiments with people in there.
This area is long and dark and labyrinthic. After learning the paths it's not too bad, but it's quite hard to orient yourself and the map doesn't help, with levels and corridors that go up and down and up again interwoven with others, so when you see them in a 2D map it's quite confusing and then it's hard to find where you need to go. There are cool mechanics in there, but it felt claustrophobic and a bit too long. After clearing several floors and having to fight and kill the airplane-engine monster, Heisenberg drops you again to the bottom, which feels a bit annoying. In there you find Chris, who finally tells you that your wife at the beginning wasn't your wife, it was Mother Miranda, because she can transform into others and wanted to get the baby. This is very ridiculous in the sense that most of the tension between you and him could have been avoided with this simple explanation, but oh well...even other soldiers that work with Chris keep telling him later that he should have explained this to Ethan, so it's referenced inside the game that it's a very stupid decision.
Anyway, he gives you control of a special tank that is immune to Heisenberg's magnetic powers, and you get into an elevator to the top and end up fighting Heisenberg, turned into a metallic monster. This fight is ok, but if he had remained in human form and instead used his magnetic powers, there's no way you would have won, while as a monster and just hitting you it's relatively easy. Once the fight is over, Miranda appears, shows you she has your daughter and proceeds to rip off your heart with her hands, leaving you, Ethan, dead on the ground.
You continue playing as Chris now, raiding the village with other soldiers (that this time do not die), because the mold in there is going wild and Mother Miranda has made a mold fortress around a place where she expects to do some ceremony. Some guys from an organization that was good in RE5 but is now bad seem to be trying to access it too, but they're killed by the mold. You fight waves of werewolf-zombies and get into the fortress, only to find Mia, Ethan's wife, alive and relatively well. You also discover that Miranda learned that the mold keeps consciences of dead people that died around that area, and wants to resurrect her daughter's consciousness inside Ethan's daughter, and all her experimentations have been for that purpose, to find a worthy vessel, while her other "childs" were not good enough. They also explain that this mold is the original one that was used to develop Eveline from RE7 later on, and that Umbrella's founder met Mother Miranda and was inspired by her to do the viruses and parasites, even using her symbol as the company's symbol. Chris tells Mia that Ethan is dead but Mia seems not worried, and says that's impossible, because there's something she has kept secret...
...and you start playing again as Ethan. You're having some type of dream where Eveline tells you you're actually dead, and that you died in the first scene of RE7, after Mia attacked you and the dad of the family basically killed you. But Eveline resurrected you, and you're mold, yeah. Which explains also why your daughter has some mold-like properties. Here I feel totally vindicated from my theories, as I expressed in my post for RE7. I mean, it wasn't that hard to guess, but still, I totally called it. It didn't help that Ethan glued his hand back in RE7, has flashes from Eveline, he can glue his legs too in RE7, and also in RE8, after Dimitrescu cuts your other hand during the castle, you just put it back and use some disinfectant to heal it. I mean, it's quite obvious, but still nice to have guessed it correctly.
Anyway, even if you're mold, you're in horrible shape. You make your way to where Miranda is, and find her with your daughter. Your daughter does something to her, apparently trying to help you even if she's just a baby, which makes Miranda vulnerable. You fight her, and she's just very very tough, but you manage to kill her. However you're crumbling too, apparently, and you just give your daughter to Chris, and grab a bomb detonator and wait for the mold to come to you to detonate it, destroying everything and yourself, as Chris and Mia leave in a helicopter with your daughter. A final scene after the credits shows Rose, your daughter, older now after an indefinite number of years, visiting Ethan's grave. Then some guy in a suit escorts her out, saying they have a mission for her, and calling her Eveline. She gets annoyed and says her name is Rose, and pushes the guy but goes back to the car. This implies that she has some part of Eveline in her, and I really like this idea, because in her last moments Eveline sounded pitiful, she was a little girl that people experimented on and she just wanted a family and to be loved, so it does feel kind of nice to know she has had some type of redemption and can re-live a bit through Rose.
And that's the game. I really really enjoyed it, although it can be ridiculous at times or make no sense too, but I think it's a similar idea to RE4 implemented a lot better. It's not so much survival horror this time, it's more action-like, but the gameplay and the characters give it a life of its own and made me replay the game several times. After the first playthrough I got some bonuses and managed to get some infinite ammo for some weapons, which helped in me wanting to play it again. It was also nice to try and complete many of the challenges the game has, which return special points that you can use then to get special weapons and stuff. Some of the challenges are insane, but there's a lot of replayability value. People said the same of RE4, that it was a good action game, but for me in RE4 the story implementation specially ruined it, and didn't make me want to play it, while in this case I'm happy to replay. The only shame is that the 4 lords were dispatched very fast. They're very colourful characters, even if evil, and I wouldn't mind seeing more of them in other games or DLC, but well,for the moment that's all we'll get it seems.
Quite enjoyable and good, in summary. I'm pleasantly curious about what they'll do next after such strong 7 and 8.
