Want to feel zombies and degenerate villagers attacking you? It takes a strong heart to put on your virtual reality headset and launch two of the latest productions for Sony’s PSVR 2, Resident Evil Village et The Walking Dead : Saints & Sinners-Chapter 2 Retribution. We did it, to obtain moments of pure fear, a little nausea but also frustration in front of a still imperfect game mechanics.
We often have the impression of dealing with prototypes and unfinished experiments in virtual reality. The games are usually shorter there, the concepts compete in ingenuity but they rarely offer finished works. This is not at all the case with Resident Evil Village and PSVR2, which takes up the entire scenario of Capcom’s magnificent game released in May 2021 to which we gave 4 and a half stars out of 5.
We will not claim to have redone in virtual reality all the game that we had then completed in 9 p.m. The rhythm to tame such a format is much slower, you can’t spend three or four consecutive hours there without coming out with a serious headache.
No wonder, the original game already triggered this feeling of claustrophobia and danger at every turn. We passed the first three tables of Resident Evil Village PSVR2, where you don’t have the choice to play in the first person. It personifies Ethan Winters who wants to find his baby Rose in a cursed village in Eastern Europe.
Get used to the horror
From the first minutes, we are immersed in the horror of dozens of possessed villagers throwing themselves at us from all sides. Our two hands clearly visible, one of which is mutilated, we have to play fast to get out our weapons hanging from our chests. The knife is always available, a revolver is accessible on the left side and, by pulling the arm towards the right shoulder, one can take out his long weapon. These two weapons, as in any game Resident Evilare sometimes totally useless when ammunition runs out, which is inevitable.
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The first moments, being glued to these bloodthirsty villagers is simply traumatic. Their face approaches you, they bite you and you have to struggle to escape. After a few fights, however, you get used to the proposal, which is so exaggerated that it becomes unreal. An unsuspected advantage of the PSVR 2, whose image is not as well defined as on a television, is that the note has been forced to highlight the clues that allow you to solve the puzzles. Keys, documents and tools that might easily have been overlooked in the classic version are more visible here.
Bloody variants
The Walking Dead : Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2 : Retribution goes even further in the exaggerated and very assumed horror. The story, which can be completed in regarding fifteen hours, is however more tenuous. We personify a tourist lost in the city of New Orleans, post-apocalyptic version. We are stuck between the dead and groups of humans who are at war, with a perspective once once more in the first person, pursued by a man with an ax that nothing seems to stop.
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At all times, a flashlight hangs from your jacket, a backpack hangs over your left shoulder, and a long gun hangs over your right shoulder.
Here, we had fun offering bloody variants to cross our enemies, with an axe, a chainsaw or with big punches when we have no choice. We go from the streets of New Orleans to ill-famed corners, abandoned bars or ruined buildings from which the zombies arise. And while you sometimes have to rack your brains to get out of trouble, it’s more often regarding using your ammunition and weapons the right way. A long tutorial of almost half an hour prepares you for it.
Here too, the horror is so coarse that it quickly loses its traumatic character.
Fascination and reservations
Whether for Resident Evil Village or The Walking Dead, we are dealing here with finely crafted games, with a very beautiful design, especially for the first game. The mechanics are however very frustrating in both cases: if you quickly manage to grab your weapons in the classic version, by a few combinations of buttons on the controller, the exercise is much more complicated in virtual reality. You have to simulate the gesture of going to get the weapon, which promotes immersion but requires skill. Not easy when armies of bad guys surround you.
Same thing in hand-to-hand combat: make sure you have enough space because you will bump into the furniture in your room all the time. Make sure no one sees you. Looks ridiculous guaranteed.
Once once more, we have the demonstration of a prediction that loses feathers: no, virtual reality will not replace screens, not with current technology, at least. It is an absolutely tasty spice, impressive to experiment with, but which will not allow you long consecutive hours of adventures. Unless you have an inhuman tolerance for virtual reality.
Tested on PSVR 2 with copies provided by Capcom and Skydance Interactive
