These sites are ad—free

Bring back Lady Dimitrescu, in VR please

I looove Resident Evil -games. I’ve been a RE fan ever since I played Resident Evil 2 back in the end of the 90s. The series has seen a many changes over the years and the big one was when they moved from third person view to first person. I personally didn’t like that, because I don’t generally like first person games. I see them more difficult to play.

Resident Evil 7 was released back in the 2017 and it was also available for PSVR. Back then the image quality for PSVR was in its infancy, but I still liked to play the game on PSVR system. Resident Evil Village (RE8) came out just a couple of years ago, it was also first person view and I knew it will get either PSVR or PSVR2 mode. Well, I was right since the PS VR2 version came out February 22, 2023 when the system was released.

Can Resident Evil Village VR Mode bring more survival horror to the game?

Going through settings

First thing the game made me to do was to go through a tutorial of the VR verison of the game. In the beginning I did find all the things very difficult. Using the guns and loading them was somewhat made realistically, where I had to physically put in the magazine and load the gun. I noticed that the systems didn’t work properly most of the time and I knew it would be a huge problem in the game. Thankfully there was simple options for the gun usage and I chose them in the settings. If you’re not a very familiar with the VR (like me) and all the fancy things it can do, I do recommend using the simpler settings. There was also settings for the VR and other options. Just like in the Resident Evil 4 VR Mode, I used to adjust where my guns and pouch were for easy access.

Story, Gameplay, Controls and Visuals

The plot in Resident Evil Village VR Mode is as following; Ethan Winters (main character from Resident Evil 7) goes after his kidnapped baby daughter Rose. He is finds himself in a rural village where he soon finds out to be run over by monsters. He has to survive all kinds of enemies and peculiar evil characters and go after every trail that might lead to Rose. So, this is the plot of the game and it was well-written, developing to more complicated and interesting as you go onwards. If you are a Resident Evil player and you have played the first games, you will get a lots of origins story in the end.

The gameplay was very much like the original game; it’s a first person survival horror but this is just in VR. The main thing in Resident Evil Village VR Mode was to handle guns/weapons, kill enemies, collect loot and other items you find, solve puzzles, find key items to proceed to next area, kill bosses and maintain your weapons and items. The gameplay was rather fluid and I liked the pace of it. It was also kinda straightforward even though I did find myself lost couple of times, but the map was very helpful in that situation.

OK, here comes the controls… it was good and bad at the same time. I went through the tutorial, which was a good thing, where I learned how to handle weapons. The shooting and handling the weapons did work well in the game. Controlling the character’s movements also did work fine. But they should’ve simplified opening the doors of cabinets and handling many other items. There were a lots of issues with things that should’ve be simple. Many times I thought the game had glitched out since I couldn’t do some simple thing or I got stuck on a puzzle because I didn’t know how to move the parts. It was rather annoying and I almost died couple of times because the villains were after me and I’m fiddling with this key that opens the door… ugh, it was a lot sometimes—but I understand that it just added to the survival horror aspect. There was also a weird bug where my guns/weapons didn’t load. There are some weapons you keep in the inside of your jacket and opening it will display them, but sometimes they didn’t load at all or took forever to load and I was in situation where enemies were attacking me at the same time.

Visually the game looked very much like the original game. The characters were realistic and scary. Lady Dimitrescu was afraidingly tall and other bosses and villains were also fear inducing to deal with in VR. Environments were realistic and all areas well-designed, even though looking things little bit closer in VR they looked rather low quality and bad. I did noticed some pop-ups here and there, but nothing major.

A free DLC

I played the game in Casual mode (the easiest setting). I personally could never play the game in any othert mode because I’m not skilled enough. I’m “an average everyday player”. It took me 8 hours to finishd this game and I didn’t find it to be too difficult. Resident Evil Village VR Mode is a good game but if you’re awaiting a perfect game control-wise, this isn’t it.

If you own PS VR2 system and want to try some survival horror at its best, I do recommend this. It wasn’t perfect, the somewhat annoying controls did snatch one point out of this nearly perfect experience.

Resident Evil Village VR Mode is only availabe on PS VR2 at the moment.

SCORE:

4/5

“Lady Dimitrescu was afraidingly tall and other bosses and villains were also fear inducing to deal with in VR”

RELEASE DATE: February 22, 2023
GENRE: Action / Horror
DEVELOPER: Capcom
PUBLISHER: CE Europe Limited
PLATFORMS: PS5 (reviewed)

These sites are ad—free