Review: Resident Evil VII

by Andy Clarke

My nerves are in tatters, I'm jumping at every sound, feeling uneasy whenever I have to venture downstairs in the night because I can't remember if I've locked the front door or not.

Thank you Resident Evil, you have well and truly broken me!

I find myself thinking "why the f**k would anyone even consider playing this game in VR!?"

I can happily say that the Resident Evil franchise is most definitely one of my favourite gaming franchises of all time, since I fist played the original on a borrowed PS1 back in the 90s. In the time since, I have played through the franchise's highs and lows, Resident Evil 2, Nemesis & Code Veronica being amongst the highs. 5 & 6 most definitely being the lows. For me 4 was the start of the franchise losing it's way. The change of view point and focus more on combat and action were, to me, contradictory to what Resident Evil was all about. I disliked 6 so much I didn't even finish it.

So came the 7th installation, my first experience of which was the first trailer that was released last year. The music alone immediately grabbed me and upon seeing the that it was less about action and more about atmosphere and the cerebral style I loved about the originals, I was officially excited. I was unsure about the first person perspective, the Resident Evil puritan in me longing for them to return to the fixed camera of old, but when the release finally came I snapped up the game straight away.

Upon starting I was struck by how good the game looks, it is truly impressive visually.

I would say you play for around 20 minutes to half an hour without anything really happening other than exploring a creepy old house in the pitch dark. Nevertheless, I was feeling severely uneasy the whole time. Okay, uneasy is maybe an understatement, s**t scared is probably more accurate.
When you finally stumble across a video tape and play it on the currently static filled television that was casting unsettling shadows over the house's living room, that's when things really start to kick in. The video tape was the first point at which I thought I may have to turn the game off and find some kittens to stroke in well illuminated areas. Playing out a part as one of the characters on the tape, in scenes lifted straight from the original Blair Witch Project, you glance down a hole in the floor to see a figure stood motionless staring at the wall. Your self serving companion tells you to go down first which you immediately realise means climbing down a ladder requiring you to have your back to the motionless figure the whole time you descend. With each rung all I could think was "why do I play these games" as I could feel my heart racing, braced for the seemingly inevitable "jump" scare as I turned at the bottom of the ladder...

This tense unsettling horror at no time lets up, the only other game I have played that has affected me so is Alien: Isolation but even still, RE7 gets to you on a more primal level. Alien didn't quite hit on the same level, it's sci-fi monster angle allowing for an easier mental separation from the norm. RE7 affects you more as you have real life experience of houses, you've walked through dark living rooms and up poorly lit stair cases. The world of RE7 is familiar, just twisted in ways to unsettle and disturb. It's imagery stays with you long after you've walked away from it, to the extent I had dreams about it after only my first hour of playing.

So let's get it out of the way, here's the things I don't like about the game.

I could go on about the first person perspective, but I don't think I really need to go there other than saying; "Resident Evil is a fixed camera game!!" (and breathe)

When I first started to pen this review I was only part way through the game and was going to criticise it for not being a true Resident Evil game. That it didn't really fit in with the franchise overall, stylistically. Now that I have competed it I found that was only true of say the first half of the game.
It definitely takes a lot of it's ideas from popular horror, starting off very "Blair Witch" then moving into a bit of "House of 1000 Corpses" kind of feel with a bit of classic Japanese horror, such as "The Ring" and "The Grudge," thrown in. I found it did lack the camp hamminess that gave the original Resident Evil games their charm. Although creepy and at times had the occasional scare, they were never so full on you felt it necessary to turn off and step away from it for a while. I found that RE7 compromised a lot of the fun factor in favour of fear factor which made for an excellent horror game, but not necessarily a great Resident Evil.

The game was short. For the price tag I had expected a lot more game for my buck but with completion done in just over 8 hours with a lacklustre and rather anticlimactic ending I was a tad disappointed. Also the big plot twist (no spoilers) was predictable from very early on.

So that's that out of the way, what do I love about it?

Never has a game scared me so much but at the same time had me longing to go back for more.

This is a true return to the survival horror genre, it's not about how many monsters you can kill, but how many you can survive with nothing more than a pot plant and a can do attitude. Yes you may only have 4 bullets and have to traverse a dark basement full of nasties but that doesn't mean it's game over. You just have to plan your route and remember you can run faster than them. Well, some of them.

The Resident Evil franchise went off the tracks for a while when they started to focus on action and gimmicky dual character mechanics with flips and door kicking. With RE7 they seem to have realised the errors of their ways and remembered what people loved about the originals. Overly convoluted locking systems on doors, requiring finding a series of statues and assembling them together into the "key." Shadow puzzles to reveal secret doorways, minimal weaponry and much coveted & hard to attain Magnum handguns. This is what Resident Evil is about; problem solving, managing resources and simply staying alive with the few tools you have to hand.

It's also about secret underground labs and morally questionable experiments and RE7 doesn't disappoint. It's at this point around just over half way through that it finally starts to feel like a true part of the franchise. Finding notes left by now absent scientists and logging onto shockingly unsecure laptops, clueing you in to the true nature of what you're facing. Story telling is something Resident Evil has always done well and 7 has you constantly thinking up theories based on the evidence you uncover throughout.

So, in summary.

As much as I didn't like a first person perspective in a Resident Evil game, I understand that it was done to make the game work in VR, something I will never try as on a regular monitor my constitution was tested to its limits. It didn't detract from the game, other than make it feel less Resident Evil and more very good, very scary horror game.

I would have liked more game for the price tag, but what it lacked in hours it made up for in fully immersive and compelling story based gameplay.

When the game started to feel like Resident Evil proper, I started to enjoy it even more than I already was, mainly because it started to be the game I expected/wanted it to be.

I think I may be looking it this from a biased point of view as Resident Evil is one of my all time favourite gaming franchises, one that I have been waiting to redeem itself after the last few installations.

If I had bought this game as a standalone horror or the first of a new franchise I would probably give it a rating of 90%, but as a Resident Evil game it falls short of living up to the namesake, although it gets close. Therefor I give it a rating of 80%.