Resident Evil VII: biohazard Review

Resident Evil returns in 2017 with the much anticipated 7th entry in the main series. This entry in the series serves to return the franchise back to its survival horror roots. As a longtime fan of this franchise I've got to say that Capcom and the Resident Evil team did a fantastic job in accomplishing just that. Also be warned that this review will contain spoilers so consider this your Spoiler Warning!

Resident Evil 7 opens up to a video message from the main character's (Ethan Winters) wife, who has been missing and presumed dead, for the past 3 years. Ethan makes a phone call to an unknown friend stated that his wife (Mia Winters) has contacted him. So Ethan sets off to find his wife making his way to the home of the Baker family. Little does Ethan know just how twisted and deranged this place will be.

The game is set in a first person point of view making the dark hallways and the quiet environment that much more intense. It’s a welcome change that the team managed to pull off quite well. The creepy atmosphere is only enhanced with the limited view in first person and not being able to see what's around the next corner sure made for some really scary moments. This entry in the series does a fantastic job in making you feel helpless while exploring the Baker home by offering little ammo and minimal health unless you search every nook and cranny. 

Resident Evil 7 controls very well and is easy to understand. The only drawback is that it is a bit easy to forget the buttons at times and you might accidentally heal and waste a first aid. I cannot remember how many times I did that over and over. I ended up forgetting which button blocked and healed instead. The D-Pad offers a quick select of your weapons and is extremely useful. The ability to customize your weapon select makes for some good breathing room in tight situations.

Puzzles are slim and once you figure out what to do they are almost laughably easy. Most of the puzzles involve shadow figures and there is almost always a fetching portion where you have to go find the item. I think that this game would have done a lot better in the puzzle department if they would have added multiple types of puzzles.

The boss battles are extremely memorable with each member of the baker family offering their own unique but somewhat easy challenges. Jack Backer, the father, stalks you constantly around their estate making every turn of hallways more nerve racking. Marguerite Baker transforms into a spider like creature releasing bugs all around you. Lucas Baker is more cunning creating death traps just waiting to be triggered. There are also creatures called the Molded, created by the main antagonist Eveline. There are several different molded, each with their own deadly attacks, that spawn and create their own scares if you aren't paying attention.

In my opinion the game does suffer a bit towards three fourths of the way through. The game starts to fall back to the action elements of previous games. There are moments where the game loads you up with more and more ammo so you blow through areas feeling almost invincible. Moments like that make the game feel a little cheap and makes you wonder why they decided to lean towards a more action ending. Early in the game it feels balanced between the feeling of dread of survival horror and action but suffers towards the end dampening the experience a little.

The whole sequence where you play as Mia feels a little forced. Starting out with nothing and then suddenly having a powerful weapon takes away from the feeling of helplessness. It does try to do a good job in giving you a lot of information in this little section and I have to give them a thumbs up for trying. The section where Ethan sees Jack and talks to him is a little tear jerking giving you the sudden realization that they aren't the true bad guys and they are just victims of Eveline the true villain.

The final section of the game are the mines where you see that there was a lab set up, where experiments took place. You find out that Eveline is a bioweapon engineered by an unknown company. Eveline was locked in a lab where she developed a strong desire for a family and a home. The downfall of this section is that a majority of the information is accessible through log entries and files left throughout the mines. If you decide to skip reading or miss some files you miss out on key information.

Overall the game does an amazing job in returning the Resident Evil franchise to its survival horror roots. Moments in the game are truly frightening the first couple times around and I found out that even in multiple playthroughs I still jumped in certain moments. The game does shine in its madhouse difficulty, where items are randomized, encounters come quicker, and monsters that show up later in the game pop up earlier and deadlier. The game does fail a bit in falling back to its action elements but I think they were done fine enough that it doesn’t really lessen the overall experience.

I don’t do this often but I congratulate Capcom in giving fans mostly what they wanted. They created something that people can actually look forward to and the future of the series looks bright. I can't wait to see what else they continue to make. I'm looking forward to playing and completing the DLC.

-Nestor

NOTE: I played this game on a standard PlayStation 4 console.

---

Graphics: Great
Sound: Great
Gameplay: Amazing
Value: Amazing
 
Overall: Amazing

---

---