During the iPhone 15 launch event, Apple announced that several games with console-like performance would be coming to iOS devices. One of the games showcased was Resident Evil Village, and I had the opportunity to try out this “mobile” game.
Resident Evil Village on iOS is truly impressive. It’s difficult to distinguish any difference between playing the game on a console. The game’s visuals, including the accurate textures on the characters and the lighting and shadow effects, looked just as good as they did when I played it on the PlayStation 5 in 2021. Typically, high-budget games of this caliber on iOS devices don’t reach the same level of quality as they do on consoles.
I played Resident Evil Village on a sixth-generation iPad Pro equipped with Apple’s M2 chip. According to Capcom, Village and Resident Evil 4 Remake can also be played on the iPhone 15 Pro and Max, as well as iPads with M1 or later generation chips. The game features touchscreen controls that are very responsive, but I was provided with an Xbox Bluetooth controller, which worked well, although there was a slight hint of lag.
As for the game itself, it’s a faithful mobile version of Resident Evil Village. The portion I played was at the beginning of the game and lasted about 20 minutes, which allowed me to appreciate the details of the characters in the cutscenes and experience some action moments. While playing, I had to remind myself that I was on an iPad and not simply streaming the game through services like Xbox Game Pass or GeForce Now.
Everything I saw in this iPad version of Village matched what I remembered from the console version. Whether it was the close-up shots of the lycans or the footprints in the snow as I moved around, there was nothing that gave away the fact that I was playing a mobile game.
Considering that the game’s graphics were on par with the console version, I explored the display settings in the options menu and was surprised by the extensive list available. There were options to adjust text quality, frames per second, shadows, lighting, bloom, and other graphics settings to optimize the visuals for different devices. It will be interesting to see if the iPhone 15 Pro can handle these settings at maximum capacity or if that level of performance is only achievable on an iPad powered by an M2 chip.
Resident Evil Village will be released on October 30th for $30 on the App Store, and it is already available for pre-order. Capcom has also included cross-save functionality for players who already own the Mac version of the game. Additionally, there will be a free portion of the game, similar to a demo, allowing interested individuals to try it out before making a purchase.
