Resident Evil 7 was the game, that prompted me to give a chance to other games in the franchise. Resident Evil 8 was the game, that prompted me to solidify my belief, that it was a mistake, and that I should not do that again. The only thing I really liked in this game was the night-vision filter.
It's not like I was expecting much of the story. I've been shown time and time (and time) again, that it's not the strong suit of the franchise. But where other games had atmosphere or at least somewhat interesting experiences, this one was... Generic? It felt like a b-movie of b-movies, completely and utterly silly. I hoped, that it being much shorter than RE4 will be a saving grace, but no, it was not. Especially considering the utter dump of the ending that this game got. So many stupid things, so many poor dialogues...
And the gameplay felt completely unoriginal, too. It was not necessarily bad, but it was even more tedious, than in RE4, and that's considering that RE4 was tedious simply because it was padded out. But, at least, in RE4 you always felt like you are going forward thanks to its level design. Here, though, you are forced to backtrack by that same design. Don't get me wrong, level design in general is still quite strong here, there is a definitive attention to details, and areas mesh together quite nicely, but the fact that you kind of have a "base of operations" in a survival horror (as the ads claim) just does not work in my head.
Of course, this could be a complaint with RE7, too. But what got me with that game was this thick sticky atmosphere, especially in the very beginning and, to an extent, during the ship episode. They also used first person perspective quite nicely there, it really felt immersive. But in RE8 all of that was lost. It's now some kind of a stupid fairy tail with werewolves and vampires, that do not even fit anything that was previously in the franchise.
There were only 2 moments in the game, that felt like they were trying to be atmospheric. One with Angie, where you are in kind of escape room scenario, but it was ruined by for me by introducing this ugly baby-thing, that you need to escape at certain points. What was bad about it was that... There was no real challenge with that thing, you just needed to run in a specific pattern, and that's it. The other one was with Moreau, which was bringing a sense of danger, but it was highly scripted and timed. It's probably not noticeable for most people "in the moment", but I noticed it right away.
To be honest, I think this game just got overhyped by teens salivating on Dimitrescu and her daughters. Granted, they could have been an interesting quartet, but in the end they were completely flat as characters and utterly forgettable. And somewhat annoying, since they were similar to lots of other "unkillable" enemies, that the franchise has used so far. It all would have been much better, if they created a game that would be a pure-blood shooter as what we had during Chris's section. Then I might have recommended it. If it was not desyncing during cutscenes if your FPS is low.
