Imagine my surprise when there I was, looking through the headlines this morning, and I heard that Biohazard Village had released. "What?" I thought "A surprise release out of the blue, well that seems pretty hasty, even for Capcom!". What a huge shock it was, afterall, for the latest Resident Evil game to drop on September the first with absolutely no fanfare, for less than 2$, and sporting the traditional Japanese title of the series rather than the international one. Why, if I didn't know any better I might even be suspicious of such an out-of-nowhere release, especially coupled with the curiously low effort Steam page. It's almost as if someone- Yes, of course this isn't the actual Resident Evil, but boy did I know the second I heard of this ballsy attempt at identity theft that I had to cover it in another of my favourite little rabbit-hole dives.
I had to move quick for this one, because more than just looking like a badly made game, 'Biohazard Village' had the boon of sharing a title with a game which is undoubtedly trademarked in Japan at least. I mean, I'm not expert on legalities or anything like that but even I could tell this title wasn't long for this world, and that's likely why the game was never more than 1.20$ on steam. (Of course, with a launch-day discount.) Yet even with me looking this up literally the second after I read of it's existence, on September 2nd, I was too late. (Stream certainly is fast when the shovel-ware crap actually has some legal paperwork against it, ain't they?) Lucky for me, some incredibly foresightfull folk, some Library of Alexandria-level preservationist, managed to capture a late hour snap-shot of that page on the wayback machine, so we can do a little bit of time-travelling to look back ourselves. (What a wonderful world we live in; where nothing is ever forgotten and all is eternal in memory if nothing else. And we wonder why The Patriots wanted to censor the influx of 'useless' information that they saw as detrimental to the evolution of humanity, what short-sighted fools.)
So what can we see straight up about this blatant Resident Evil rip off without having to engage any remote brain power; well how about the logo which, alone, would be enough to set off the nervous chattering of litigator's teeth. So the devs used the trademark-neutral Biohazard warning sign for their logo artwork, completely fine if appropriately unoriginal, but then they decided to spell out the title with the Roman Numerical VIII superimposed over the word 'Village' which just boggles my mind. Why even bother do that? This isn't the eight entry of your franchise, that just highlights the connection! And this wasn't even a holdover from the team ripping off the artwork for the original game either; it's in a different font with different colouring than the Resident Evil VIII logo, meaning they specific made this title card to infringe on Capcom's copyright as much as humanely possible. (Great publicity move, I'm not gonna lie.)
But what is this game about, honestly and truly? Because maybe this just a highly suspicious and hilarious mistake, and this game actually is about a village in the middle of nowhere that suffers from a toxic waste leak. That would be fine, if it were. The game would still be subject to one hell of a slap back from titling but at least one could conclude the mistake was innocent. Let's look to the description: "BIOHAZARD VILLAGE - This is a third-person shooter in which you will play as a girl fighting against a zombie in a town where a man-made disaster has occurred. People turned into zombies" Oh. Okay then. 'Man made disaster' - 'zombies', this is certainly stacking up in the wrong direction I'm not gonna lie. Also, the description said 'town' when the title clearly states 'village'. (Those are different things, if that even needs to be said.) "There is only you, your weapon and a huge number of zombies in the post-apocalyptic village. You must win to survive." Sounds like a lot of thought and effort went into constructing this little masterpiece, doesn't it?
And as though to dig that final nail into their own custom-tailored coffin, for some unfathomable reason 'Forest Games' thought it clever to literally have the protagonist's model (for this is a third person game) literally be Claire. That is Claire Redfield; instantly recognisable and beloved Resident Evil protagonist who's mere silhouette is enough to set off every single copyright infringement alarm at Capcom HQ. Again, this is a choice that makes no sense given, as far as we know, Claire doesn't even appear in Resident Evil VIII, making the bait even weaker. Unless the Devs were literally hoping for that base recognition to kick in before any other logical part of someone's brain did, impelling them to buy without a second look. Or thought. (Surely this cost more to put on the Steam Store than it was ever gonna earn in pity purchases.) Also, for some reason it's Resident Evil 2 Claire, but in the original's garb rather than just ripping off the model for the New Claire which has been exported for over a year now. Why bother with any pretence anymore? Why not just literally steal Capcom's assets? In for a penny- as they say.
What are the selling points for a game like this, you may wonder, how do they plan to rope in the unexpected consumer who, by the grace of all the gods, might not have heard of the most popular horror franchise in the world? Well the Steam page has some blinding sales points right there to pull literally anyone into it's gravitational magnetism. You have 'Third Person'; yeah, already noticed that one myself, but they might be trying to tell us all that this is a retreat back to the more personable days of recognisable and fleshed-out horror protagonists that don't just exist as analogues for the player. I dig it. 'Cinematic Picture'; okay, this one is less apparent but perhaps they wanted to hint at a the cinema inspired eye of the auteurs who framed this piece of art, taking cues from classic cinema in an almost Kojima-esque manner. And then there's 'Post-apocalyptic atmosphere'; which isn't so much a feature... but could be indicative of the unflinching manner in which Forest Games seeks to explore the raw symptoms of the human condition by stripping away the pomp and obfuscation of life, allowing that crass, rough, real body to be revealed through it all. Truly these people are visionaries, give them their medal right now.
You might be wondering about this 'Forest Games' and who they are, well for one I can say that they have an absolutely terrible studio name if they intend to ever actually be taken seriously. (Which I'm not entirely sure they do.) Try to look them up and the first thing you're going to see is the very popular horror video game 'The Forest', meaning I had to go through their publishing tag to even find them. All to find out that the studio had literally one other game, (Or at least, one other surviving game. Who's to say how many copyrights they breached?) which appears to be another horror game released literally half a week before this one, boasting what looks like entirely paid-for assets and story about a pandemic. (hmm... I wonder where that plotpoint came from?) To be fair, at least that game, 'Panic Station' doesn't appear to be a direct rip-off as far as I can tell, and doesn't feature a 'More like this' bar that literally links searchers to the series they are imitating. (Come on Steam, what are you doing?)
Now one could, and has, argued (down in the reviews) that this is likely just a joke game and thus is worth cutting a little bit of slack. However, this is a joke game that requires a fee to entry, and once that happens it becomes a little bit more of a questionable affair when it's a game made to emulate the appearance of another anticipated title. (Even if it costs barely a pittance.) I almost see this like the video game equivalent of those straight-to-dvd films that are made to look as similar to another movie as possible in order to siphon off of it's popularity to make quick buck, not as the harmless parody that it was perhaps meant to be seen as. All that being said, with the speed at which Steam cracked down on this game I think it's safe to say that they probably didn't break even, hopefully discouraging a potential cottage industry before it spawns. (or encouraging them to be more crafty in the future.) But hey, even if this was a serious attempt to capitalize on other's successes, at least it spawned a funny story or two along the way. Still, have to rate the game a 2/10: "Not enough Chonkers Chris."
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