Conclusion & Comments

After completing my benchmarks and analyzing the data we can see the pros and cons for the 466.27 and 466.11 drivers. Nvidia definitely released some nice optimizations for the Ray Tracing and CPU performance. Overall the game played fine with little to no issues which is expected from Capcom’s well developed RE Engine. I did run into an issue regarding the new 466.27 Nvidia Game Ready Drivers which I explained at the beginning of this article. The new drivers were performing fine, but began to crash my system which forced me to fallback to 466.11. The 466.11 drivers performed very well, but if possible you will want to use the 466.27 drivers for specific RE Village optimizations.

Just as previous RE titles gave you plenty of graphical options, RE Village gives you plenty of graphical options to set as well. I love that Capcom shows us a reference image for each graphical settings and Capcom also lets us know what each graphical settings would change. For instance you have a box on the left of the reference image which shows checkmarks for different areas (Image Quality, Model Quality, Lighting Quality and so on). There is a bar that lets you know how close you are to maxing out the specific option.

Due to a few driver issues I was able to compare both drivers while playing the "Village" area. This area revealed some nice information for the pros and cons of each driver. The older 466.11 will play the game fine and give you slightly better frames per second at 4K on average. With the min FPS I was able to gain approximately 8% without Ray Tracing enabled. With Ray Tracing enabled I gained 6.66% (this game is hunted!).

The CPU comparison was nice to benchmark as well which shows that the newer driver (466.27) is better optimized for CPU performance. So there is a tradeoff for both drivers. You can either shoot for higher FPS with the older driver or get more stability and optimization with slightly less FPS with the new driver. The latest driver from Nvidia should take care of any engine related issues as well.

My Thoughts On The RE Village Demo

I am a long time Resident Evil fan and I have played nearly all of them. I had high hopes for Resident Evil Village since it was a “new” title that wasn’t a remake of a previous RE title and that it followed the highly acclaimed Resident Evil 7 story arc. I’m sure plenty of gamers will enjoy RE Village, but after playing the demo I can already tell you that this game isn’t for me. I expected much more from the graphics\models after playing RE7, RE2 and even RE3. I saw the writing on the wall with the RE3 remake release since it felt rushed to the market after the success of RE2. Oh and don’t get me started on one the best ideas and game releases Capcom has had in years, Resident Evil: Resistance. RE: Resistance was only playable by purchasing RE3.

Unfortunately for Resident Evil: Resistance it wasn’t properly supported, became a tacked on extra to RE3 and had a lot of potential and then died a horrible death since no more balancing updates will come to the title. Very eye opening to what Capcom is becoming after fans have shown them much love after several releases: RE7, RE2 and Devil May Cry releases.

Resident Evil Village does heavily feel like a spiritual successor to Resident Evil 4 and most people would think that would be a good thing. RE Village is cheesy and I don’t mean cool Resident Evil 4 levels of cheese, I mean cringe worthy cheese in my opinion. The voice acting, character models were over the top and didn’t feel like a Resident Evil title to me based on voice acting alone. I have seen two Resident Evil releases, RE3 and now RE Village, that has me worried about the upcoming RE4 remake from Capcom and future Resident Evil releases, especially if RE: Village is successful in terms of sales. RE: Village will more than likely be successful in terms of sales.

Gameplay, Graphics & AI

The enemies are not scary and the “jump scares” did nothing for me. The graphics appears to have taken a hit in image quality when compared to previous RE titles; and even the older Devil May Cry 5 title, which also runs on the RE Engine, looks better in my opinion. When running through the village the vegetation looks very outdated and aligned more with a late Xbox 360 title or early Xbox One title. Some of the textures don’t appear to be high quality either.

However, the Castle looks pretty good and well-polished, however the Castle has more darker scenes and when you look around you can clearly see some less polished areas like the bricks and certain objects & textures. The initial boss battle did nothing for me and doesn’t have the same type of “fear” or “concern” that was found in Resident Evil 7 or RE2. The voice acting was over the top and although Resident Evil 7 broke away from the traditional Resident Evil zombie settings and provided a great supernatural experience, RE Village continues that supernatural experience, but in a less convincing way. If the initial boss battle is anything to go by then I know for a fact RE Village won’t be for me.



When it comes to the common enemies, they are over the top and mostly stare you down before attacking you on the normal settings. You can easily run from them in the open areas and after entering a house or a specific area they will simply leave you alone and go back to their NPC programmed spots on in the level. What!? In Resident Evil 4, RE2, RE7 and even the 2002 Resident Evil 1 Remake on the Nintendo GameCube (in specific areas), enemies would pound on the door or window and even break it. They would be relentless in their search & destroy missions and RE4 would have enemies surround the house and bring ladders! Not in the Resident Evil: Village Demo, if you enter a house and create enough distance between yourself and the enemy (not a lot of distance by the way), no matter how many enemies are pursuing you, they will turn around and run back to the natural “waiting” location on the map.

The game also needs a FOV slider for PC since everything felt far too large and very close in my opinion. It seems like this title will be one of those Steam Sales titles that I’ll pick up in the future when it’s dirt cheap.

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