Resident Evill Village’s “8 Hours in Village” Demos Impressions
Resident Evil Village is going back to its roots and bringing back the creepiness of the series while bringing some strong action and immersive storytelling.
To start off with the village demo, the atmosphere of the game was beautiful in a creepy way. I was like “yeah, it’s still the Resident Evil I remember!” There was the creepy tall grass in the area, I heard the moans and groans of the villagers, chains clanking in the distance, and Ethan breathing in the cold air which all of that had me feeling nervous of not knowing what’s ahead.
Capcom released two early access demos for Resident Evil Village for PS4 and PS5. They named it “8 Hours in Village” because they were giving players an 8-hour window to try the 30-minute demos. I played both demos, one of was to explore the mysterious parts of the village itself and the other was focused on the castle area. The Village area demo released on April 17th and ended on April 18, and the Castle area demo released on April 24th and ended on April 25 (those dates are reflective of the North American times).
Now, since the demo was thirty mins, I wanted to see as much as possible. So, in a natural fashion I tried to speed run the game which worked out surprisingly well. I found a shotgun which sadly I didn’t get to use because I was dodging through the tall grass avoiding the new Lycan zombies and I didn’t want to waste that one bullet the shotgun came with. I did find three bullets later but at that point it was too late. At some point I heard a cry for help so I knew I would meet a new character. That’s the reason why I want to play this game, no matter which Resident Evil game you play, they always have a cast of characters that gives insight on the type of crazy world/area you’re in. In this case with Resident Evil Village, you’re in an old-time looking farm village with its towns people worshipping Mother Miranda.
I eventually made it to a house where the cry for help was at and a lot happened there (which I’m not going to go into for the sake of spoilers). But after the events that happened in the house and escaping you eventually reach the castle, and the demo ends there. It’s cool how it ended at the castle since the next early access demo was inside the castle where it continued from. From playing the first demo, the game seems pretty good! I want to know more about the areas and its people, the creepy lore, easter eggs, and the enemies that will be there.
The second demo in the castle took more of an action approach and kept the creepiness I felt in the village area as well. As Ethan, you now explore the castle of Dimitrescu. I’m glad to say even though it’s a demo, the castle is huge with a bunch of rooms to explore and puzzles to check out. It gave us a glimpse on how many floors and rooms there can be with us being able to check out the map too. You even get to meet the wonderful duke with his expansive shop. The game looks even more polished than before, sadly like the previous demo you don’t have that much time to explore since it’s only a 30 min experience, so I rushed through it again but this time it was more worth it.
I had some exhilarating combat against the cult zombies using the shotgun to pick them off and I was running away from one of the daughters. In terms of the feel of the demo, you can see how worried Ethan is looking for his daughter Rose and hear him breathing nervously in the cold hallways and when an enemy approach you. When you use the weapons like the shotgun or the pistol the PS5’s adaptive triggers are insane! You feel the weapon jammed up if you try to shoot while reloading, you can feel the pressure with every shot, and even when you open the door you feel the weight of it.
The only thing I want for this game is to not be short. Every new Resident Evil that released so far have just been 6-9 hrs. In terms of the locations, it’s either a simple small city or an old small homestead fighting the same people, but Resident Evil Village looks like it might push the franchise further with the number of creepy characters like Dimitrescu and now Mother Miranda. With its locations I want to see more and hope the castle and the locations around it isn’t small and come with cool weapons and tools to use in your journey trying to save your daughter and finding out how Ethan is tied into all of this. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s Wesker’s son or something, but we’ll see when the game comes out May 7th.
There is also a demo that released for all consoles and PC May 1st where it is a 60-minute demo. You get to choose where you want to spend your time in the demo, whether it is in the village itself or in the castle. The demo was originally for May 1st to May 2nd, but it recently got extended for an entire week since people didn’t have chances to play the previous demos because the dates and times the demos were available. The final demo ends on May 9th 5pm PDT. Hope you all enjoy it!
