In context: It's no secret that Google's Stadia cloud gaming service has found limited success with consumers. Instead of killing off Stadia altogether (as the company did with many of its other apps and services), it added a white-label version, allowing game developers to make their titles or demos more accessible.
Last week, Sony announced that it's officially bringing Resident Evil Village to VR on its upcoming Playstation VR2 platform. Now, you can try out a demo of the non-VR game in your internet browser. It's completely free, and it doesn't even require you to log in. All you have to do is enter your age (the game is rated M), click the play button, and wait a while for the demo to load.
It uses Immersive Stream for Games, a licensable version of Google's Stadia game streaming service. It works on Windows, macOS, and Android on the latest version of Chrome and iOS on Safari. Even other Chromium-based web browsers might be unofficially supported, as the demo ran flawlessly for me on Microsoft Edge.
You'll also have to have a decent internet connection, with Capcom recommending at least a 10 Mbps download speed. Streaming the game will consume about 12.6 GB of data an hour, so that's something to keep in mind if you have data limits.
You can play it with a mouse and keyboard, different controllers, or even a touch screen button overlay on mobile. Fortunately, Capcom removed the 1-hour time limit of previous demos, although you are limited to the game's Village and Castle regions. Saving your progress is also not supported, so you'll have to start over if you get disconnected.
Image quality leaves much to be desired, with the demo limited to 1080p SDR (the low bitrate makes it look worse than it sounds). However, it did feel responsive enough, although that might be different for you if you don't have a Stadia server nearby.