Last night, Capcom officially unveiled Resident Evil Village for iPhone and iPad.
This game is due to its expectations, which is not One-stop shopping. That is, you cannot run it on a Mac if you bought it for an iPhone. The campaign title is purchased separately for each platform.
So, what are your impressions? Spoiler: not everything is as good as Apple promised us.
All screenshots in this article were taken on an iPhone 15 Pro
The game has a lot of graphics settings
This is not a console format. Capcom has given mobile gamers the ability to completely customize the game’s graphics, including resolution.
There are five resolutions available in total:
• 1560×720
• 1952×900
• 2342×1080
• 2556×1179
• 2796×1290 (not available for iPhone 15 Pro)
Not only the quality of the picture, but also the frame rate primarily depends on the resolution. You can play at 60 frames per second with only two settings, but performance is slightly lower.
Here you can also adjust upscaling, texture quality, lighting, effects and much more. These are full PC gaming level settings. Honestly, I don’t understand why it was impossible to make ready-made graphics presets for 30 and 60 FPS for specific hardware. Why are these hemorrhoids here?
System requirements
To run Resident Evil Village you will need an iPhone with an A17 Pro chip or higher and an iPad with an M1 processor or higher.
Minimum operating system: iOS 17/iPadOS 17.
In more detail, we are talking about:
• iPhone 15 Pro
• iPhone 15 Pro Max
• iPad Pro 11 inches (3rd generation)
• iPad Pro 12.9 inches (5th generation)
• iPad Air (5th generation)
• iPad Pro 11 inches (4th generation)
• iPad Pro 12.9 inches (6th generation)
The game will not run on older devices. And this is not marketing on Apple’s part, but real technical requirements for the game. Below I will explain why RE Village cannot be launched on the same iPhone 14 Pro.
The game looks good, but it’s not next-gen for smartphones
The graphical port is inferior to its original version. The textures are worse, the lighting is worse, but I personally didn’t notice a critical difference.
In general, this is the same “Village” as before. Only with slightly more simplified graphics. There is nothing revolutionary here, the game is far from new, it is already 2.5 years old, so there is nothing fortunate about the fact that it ran on a chip close in performance to the M1.
Moreover, the Cupertino team restricts Metal, allowing you to painlessly transfer games from Windows to Mac and iOS.
Gameplay is already leading the fight. You can play using either the touch screen or a gamepad. And I’ll say right away that developers prefer the second method for a reason.
Playing with touch controls is hell, pain and suffering.
It is unrealistically difficult to aim during the game, plus walking at this moment. While you are effectively immobilized, the game will turn into a virtual world.
Only the enemies do not stand still, and they constantly attack you. It’s still possible to hold out against 1-2 opponents, but when there are 3-4 or more of them, then gradually we tend to turn to survival.
The controls themselves are periodically slow, and the virtual sticks may not work. And even rearranging their places to suit the layout of the position that is convenient for you will not improve much.
Every now and then you press the wrong button, or the controls are banal. freezes. Because of this, you lose precious health points, which are already difficult to restore.
My enemies, purely from my feelings, have become worse. This is done intentionally so that the mobile gamer with touch controls can give at least some fighter. In general, the enemies are not stupid, but they don’t attack you as eagerly as in the original.
Well, plus this, the touch control interface itself takes up a good two-thirds of the screen, which further reduces the gaming appeal.
Regarding the connection of the gamepad, the situation is getting better. However, the enemies will not be smarter; they remain slow. A plus for those who want to continue the game as soon as possible.
One of the advantages of the project is the presence of a complete Russian translation. There is an English interface, subtitles and voice acting.
What about optimization?
The situation is extremely controversial. The iPhone 15 Pro is more of an in-between than a true powerful gaming console.
Recommended settings refer to minimum quality graphics. And it is in this case that you will show a more or less stable 60 frames per second. But subsidence will still occur after some time.
I do not recommend running fully enabled charts with maximum settings. The game will crash without errors in 20-40 seconds, and the iPhone will heat up unpleasantly.
These settings can only be used on iPads with M processors. It’s not just hard for iPhone, it’s hurt.
And even when playing a normal game with standard settings, any element of the iOS interface that you show reduces the frame rate by half. It was 60, it will become 30 by the time you visit!
While the game is running, it literally “devours” the iPhone’s resource. Smartphone works awkwardly even in an upside down application. If you are planning to play, then save all your work in other programs, because they will 100% fly out of the RAM that goes into Resident Evil Village.
At the same time, if you return the game for a couple of minutes and run another program, the game will start again because it will already fly out of RAM.
When taking screenshots, the iPhone’s performance generally dropped to zero. The screen itself could not have been Google, the animation produced about 10 frames per second.
The sound may also be delayed or even fail for several seconds. So what’s up?
In normal mode, with the selected graphics, you can safely play RE Village, but the picture quality is reduced by about 2 times what it was initially available. Forget about normal textures and quality effects. But the game started and even works. Hurray, revolution!
In general, standard chart settings can be called “soap” levels. PlayStation 4 station.
In general, you shouldn’t expect any incredible performance from the A17 Pro chip. For simple games without much strain, an iPhone is suitable, but you will sacrifice a lot on the picture.
What about charging?
In this regard, Apple did not deceive us.
Surprisingly, after 20 minutes of playing, my iPhone 15 Pro only drained 5-6%. And even with strong heating (but not unpleasant, this is not achieved by the iPhone), the indicator requires up to 10%.
That is, one iPhone charge is enough for 3 hours of play. Autonomy level of Steam Deck or Nintendo Switch.
The revolution did not happen, but no one expected it
It’s impossible to just take an iPhone and turn it into a powerful gaming console. Apple still has a lot of work to do, but a start has indeed been made.
We still have at least Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Death Stranding ahead of us. Perhaps they show better results, but for now there are recommendations for the regime. Rezik has never been particularly demanding, but with other games the situation is a little worse.
Overall, the result was quite good. But to optimize the game, something else obviously needs to be done. In this form, you can only play “soap” with maximum comfort. Even at 30 frames per second, the image quality will not be very high.
Resident Evil Village is available for free (only the first hour of the game). The full version is sold for 1140 rubles (+715 rubles for DLC). Already available on the App Store.
📸 All photos in the article:
Source: Iphones RU
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
