crushed under the weight of having to be a Resident Evil game and having to have herbs and a suitcase and a mansion area and a whole heap of gibberish the series calls lore. the beginning and end credits are presented as this very handsome, vaguely handcrafted Kubo-esque fairytale aesthetic that's screaming out to be its own game. but it's something that winds up looking like utter nonsense when bookending a standard AAA Resi Evil title.

still, if you can swallow the big pill, accept and get over all the typical series convictions, what's here is a plenty fun, goofy borderline camp RE game. no more zombies or plain old dumb charmless mold monsters. it's all werewolves and scythe wielding vampires. the atmosphere is right out of Bloodborne, if Bloodborne had a Call of Duty mode.

in my limited experience with RE (consisting of just 7 and the 2 and 3 remakes), this feels like the most honest the series has been about its typical action detour. it kind of starts at about a 7 on the action scale, gives you access to a gunsmith early, and it seems genuinely thrilled with your desire to shoot everything in its gooey face. at the climax it turns it up to 11 and dials directly straight in to Modern Warfare mode. i'd be kind upset if i were committed to the series and its horror posturing, but I just want to shoot scary monsters, honestly. so i had a ball. still can't help but be disappointed in the amount of dumb exposition the game dumps on you at the end tho and how it hinges on all these nonsense explanations for the supernatural. i wish the game could cut through all the Umbrella stuff and just be a nightmare game. there are sequences in this game very clearly inspired by PT, one by SOMA and Observer, seemingly. one where you fight a fish. and a penultimate boss fight that's like fighting the Truckasaurus. these don't need to be explained away. the game would be better served with a better sense of unreal dream logic. but oh well. i guess i'll have view the game through that lens myself.

there's a moment very early on in this game that i can only describe as the toxic masculine urge to carry on as if it's nothing wrong, and the timing of it is the most i laughed all year. i still think about it and chuckle. ✋