Resident Evil Village Players Find Way To Extend Demo Time
If you thought 60 minutes wasn't long enough to blast werewolves and run away from swarming vampire/fly hybrids, then boy, do we have a treat for you. Lycans and gentlemen, you're in luck because crafty Resident Evil Village players have figured out how to circumnavigate the time limits on the recent demo. Following the release of the stealth-orientated Maiden demo as a PlayStation exclusive in January, the multi-platform second demo finally gave us a glimpse of gameplay.
Taking the action to either a werewolf-packed village section, or into the bowels of Castle Dimitrescu to face off against Lady D and her vampiric daughters, players only had an hour to explore. It was barely enough time to apply a herb, meaning despite its rave reviews, fans were rightly disappointed that they barely got to scratch the surface of the demos. Thankfully, there's a sneaky workaround to make sure you get the most out of the demo.
- Related: What Is Resident Evil Village About?
How did Resident Evil players extend the demo?
On May 2, Capcom released the demo for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and S, Xbox One, Steam and Stadia. Deciding whether you want to play either the Castle or Village sections can be a tough decision, but don't hang around too long, because even being in the pause menu counts toward your hour. With the Village demo available on PC via Steam, it didn't take the modding community long to remove the time limit. Over on the Steam community, modders shared their method to reset the timer and give you unlimited playtime.
A typically vexed Capcom didn't take this lightly, and promptly took down the server. This had its own adverse effects and led to a broken demo - which was quickly followed by a slew of negative reviews. On the whole, most are loving the demo and finally have a taste for the game's combat mixing the best bits of RE4 and RE7. Given that both the Castle and Village sections only take you so far anyway, it doesn't make sense that Capcom would apply a time limit. If you're quick though, you can rattle through the sections in your allotted hour.
What else have Resident Evil Village players done to the demo?
With the demo being available on the PC - and the hungry modding community ravenous for more - it didn't take long for those crafty coders to make the most of Village's modding capabilities. Other mods are simply here for fun. Only recently, we covered how someone modded The Simpsons into Resident Evil 7, however, that's nothing compared to adding Barney the Dinosaur to the Village demo.
Because the demo uses the RE Engine, it was only a matter of time before someone made the most of the same exploits we've seen in recent releases like the Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 remakes from 2019 and 2020. A modder called Marcos added a horde of purple dinosaurs to the demo. There was something terrifying/satisfying about blasting Barney in the head and seeing his corpse tumble to the floor, only to be replaced by another murderous dino. Seriously, Jurassic Park has nothing on this.
Elsewhere, modders are apparently tinkering away on adding a third-person camera to the game, which would make Village into a true RE4 successor. With Village's release just days away, the demo is just the tip of the occult iceberg.
Images via Capcom