You CAN play Resident Evil Village on it... but do you want to?
With a USB-C Backbone in hand, the time was finally right to put Resident Evil Village through its paces, natively, on the iPhone 15 Pro. While I walked away impressed with what the powerhouse little phone could produce, I was also left wondering who would want to regularly experience blockbusters like Village on their phone.
For the purposes of this preview, I opted for the trial version of Village, which requires a 7GB download onto the iPhone. That’s a fraction of the size on PS5 or Xbox Series (and, admittedly, a fraction of the full game because of the nature of the trial), but impressive nonetheless.
While Village certainly takes advantage of the iPhone’s SSD, mirroring experiences found on current-gen consoles, its visuals are somewhere at the PS4 Pro level — far better than what you’d experience on PS4, but not quite as good as you’d see on Sony’s flagship console. Where this is most evident if you opt to use the iPhone’s USB-C connection to output to a TV or monitor instead of playing on-screen.
While Capcom’s tweaked numerous output settings already, you’ve got freedom to change those settings yourself. I think those that know how to do the same, should; even as early on as in the Winter’s household, I was occasionally getting some framerate drops and locking the game into 30FPS fixed that in a flash.
I played Village in three ways, first using touch controls on-screen without a controller proper, then using the iPhone plugged into a Backbone (case off, sadly), and finally, playing on a monitor with a Bluetooth-connected Xbox controller.
In all truthfullness, the Backbone solution was probably the best experience, though the monitor/controller combo worked quite well. The monitor output looked a little muddier than playing on the iPhone’s slick screen, but the tradeoff there is that you don’t have the weird iPhone cutout on the left-hand side of your display if you opt for a secondary screen.
With that out of the way, let’s address the werewolf in the room: there is absolutely no way you can play Village using on-screen controls. Shown in the image above, they’re absolutely fine when walking throughout environments, but are useless in combat.
There, you’ll need to crane your fingers to be able to control both movement thumbsticks alongside the LT and RT buttons to aim and fire your weapon. It’s unfeasible, plain and simple. At the very least, my big ol’ thumb was enough to cover the on-screen notch, so I quickly forgot about that quirk.
All up (and depending on output settings), I’d estimate you’d be able to get around three to four hours of Village gameplay out of a single iPhone charge — easily besting the likes of the ROG Ally — but is that how you want to operate? My phone is my lifeline to the larger world; having it become an exclusive gaming device — or needing to be attached to a powerpoint or external charger — isn’t ideal.
In the end, there’s no denying Village works on the new, superpowered iPhone — visuals are crisp, HDR makes for some absolutely null blacks, and combined with some quality audio, I was truly terrified of things that went bump in the night.
Despite this, there are a lot of reasons why you shouldn’t make the iPhone your new gaming hub; like the Mac, most titles aren’t offered natively on the platform, so you’ll likely be forced to use your Backbone and game streaming to play other bangers. You can do that with whatever ol’ iPhone or Android device you’ve got kicking around right now.
If you want to see Village in action on an iPhone, check out Game Informer’s capture below. If you’re more interested in Resident Evil Village itself, you can read our full review right here or even access several guides here. The title is is available now on supported Windows PC, Mac, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5 and iOS devices.
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Resident Evil Village7 May 2021PC PS4 PS5 Xbox One Xbox Series S & X
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