Resident Evil VII: Biohazard Review

Reboot Evil:

Never has there been a series more deserving – and more desperate – for a reboot, than Resident Evil. Once one of the biggest names in gaming, Resident Evil had, unfortuneatly, devolved into a shlockfest which saw Capcom trying to cram as many fan favourite characters – and explosions – into each title. I was ridiculously eager, then, to play Resident Evil VII, a reimaging of sorts of the original title that started it all.

Story:

RE7 is refreshingly peopled entirely with newcomers, with no convuluted backstories or lore to bog the experience down in. There’s no zombies to be seen – the series did away with those three numbered iterations ago and seem reluctant to return – but it’s the first time in years I didn’t miss them. The antagonists of Resident Evil VII – the Baker family – are so compelling, intersting and downright terrifying that I really couldn’t ask for more.

You play as Ethan, a man who mysteriously hears from his wife who supposedly died three years ago, warning him not to try and find her. It’s all a little Silent Hill 2, and its just the first of many, many horror homages, but they’re handled so tastefully in RE7 it’s impossible to hold them against it. As a horror buff I was thrilled with this focus; the list of obvious influences include Evil Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Saw (and so many more), and as the stories bounces around it touches on every subgenre of horror imaginable: slashers, torture porn, body horror, and Raimi-inspired gross out flicks, every one is visited, celebrated, iterated upon and expertly moved away from before the title can stick in any one place for too long or grow tedious. The experience culminates in a tour-de-force of tropes and touchstones that had me grinning from ear-to-ear each time I noticed another reference.

Aside from all this self-aware, crowd pleasing fare the game is surprisingly original in its own right. Sleuthing through the Baker family mansion, unravelling its twisted secrets and dark history, is great fun – when you’re not hounded by the horrific residents – and it measures up to the original Resident Evil in terms of scope whilst never sacrificing the small, interesting details that craft a believable residence to the craziest of crazies. The title heartbreakingly sags towards the end, threatening to revert to the silliness of more modern Resident Evil’s and lose all the excellent groundwork the game has made in the eight hours leading up to these last few chapters, but luckily the team manage to pull it back for a satisfying finish, with plenty of last minute twists to sate the appetite of any genre fan.

Gameplay:

Trailer footage and demos sold Resident Evil VII as yet another hidey-horror in the vein of Outlast and its cowering ilk, promising in tone to replace the sadly defunct PT/Silent Hills. Whilst I was happy someone was picking up that particular torch, I was worried that Resident Evil VII would be… well, not Resident Evil at all. I’m thrilled to say I was wrong to worry: RE7 completely captures the tone of the original games in a way we haven’t enjoyed in over a decade, and it’s bloody fantastic.

Item boxes, limited inventory space, shotgun-based puzzles, windows busting open with beasties, they’re all here. Every gameplay mechanic and foundation seems to return in full here, or at least make a cameo, from their 1996 roots. The Baker family mansion is a sprawling, key-filled mess of corridors and shadowy corners, sending you through underground facilties and derelict farmhouses with a surprisingly cohesive design. You uncover a healthy arsenal of varied weapons to take down the many foes that stalk you during the ten hour campaign, and I never once felt vulnerable in the same way that modern horror games have prioritized. It is instead this dreadful foreboding that conjures RE7’s best/worst moments of fear, with every corner or unopened door promising some new horror just out of sight. I literally avoided a lot of extra-spooky looking rooms for as long as I could, glimpsing inside them and uttering a single “nope” before looking for any other path I could possibly forge.

The first person perspective is the title’s biggest shift, and helps put you right in the shoes of avatars we’ve only witnessed from afar before. It helps ramp up Resi’s inherent intensity even further, but also lends a much more playable viewpoint that the series hasn’t enjoyed before. Aiming in old school RE titles was always an automatic procedure, with your character doing most of the work for you as long as you were pointed in the right direction. Aiming down your pistol at an incoming enemy here, (who all move horribly fast and lurch out of your sights with annoying frequency) brings a lot more agency to the player, and a lot more room to make life-threatening mistakes. I often emptied entire clips at a bad guy who was rushing me, hitting nothing but the wall behind it, as the panic caused me to waver and waste bullets. Alternatively, I felt like an absolute badass when I downed something in a couple of perfectly executed headshots.

There’s a lot of extra goodies the eagle eyed player can collect, and plenty of optional objectives to chase once the credits roll for the first time. Aside from a bevvy of excellent achievements that tempt you to play without saving, healing or in the shortest amount of time possible, RE7 opens up new modes too, like the incredibly tough Madhouse difficulty, which shifts items and enemies around the house for a remixed experience. With RE7 Capcom nailed not only the runtime, with the game ending just as I was ready for it to, but have added a bunch of genuinely interesting reasons to return time and time again. There’s also a bunch of DLC – some paid, some free – coming our way very soon too, and from what I’ve read I’ll be very excited to play through it all.