Resident Evil Village 3rd person

So, ahead of the Resident Evil Village Gold Edition launch on October 28th, we decided to give Capcom's new demo a whirl on Xbox to see how the game holds up from a fresh perspective. One of the big features of the upcoming Gold Edition is the ability to play the whole game in third person mode, and based on the demo's short but sweet castle section, we can safely say it feels pretty darn great.

If you played the demo that Capcom dropped way back at Village's launch in 2021, you'll know what to expect here. The Gold Edition demo mirrors that one, providing a taste of Castle Dimitrescu, along with a few slices of combat against some of its creepy inhabitants. You'll be doing most of your limb slicing with the game's basic pistol (and a knife for backup), and it all feels really nice to use at a smooth 60FPS on Xbox Series X.

Resident Evil Village Gold Edition

In fact, we'd say we felt a tad more accurate in third person over first person, especially with the pistol. You have what feels like a bit more time and space to survey your surroundings and line up the perfect shot, and we felt like we wasted much less ammo dispatching our foes in the Gold Edition's new mode, at least compared to the same section in first person.

However, we did run into one small niggle in the game's under-castle section, down in the cellars. Village intends to make things feel cramped and claustrophobic in this area no doubt, but the third person camera probably hampered us a bit here. It was nothing major, but the game had trouble for a brief few moments just trying to keep the camera in a natural position while manoeuvring in such confined spaces.

Resident Evil Village Xbox

General exploration feels very similar to the first person mode of course, so there weren't any real differences there compared to the base game. Again, this is all going off the roughly half an hour's worth of early gameplay that the demo serves up, so things may change as you progress through the full campaign.

We can definitely see ourselves playing Resident Evil Village again in third person mode, once the Gold Edition drops next Friday. While the mode doesn't change any of the fundamentals of Capcom's gothic horror adventure, it provides a fresh way to play, and one we prefer based on this early section of the game. Resident Evil just works in third person, and we're glad Capcom has enabled us to play this way in another Resi title.

Will you be trying out the Resident Evil Village Gold Edition? Let us know in the comments below!