The “Resident Evil” franchise is something I have a good, yet rough history with. I’m a very passive “Resident Evil” fan who has definitely played a good amount of the games, but when I saw “Resident Evil 7’s” trailer, I was highly skeptical.
From what I saw, it had nothing to do with the franchise and looked like every horror game on the market. I thought it was going to be one of those games that popular YouTubers would play, get a scare out of for views and then move on to the next game.
To some degree, I was both right and wrong; “Resident Evil 7” is a well-done attempt to return the series to survival horror, but there are still some problems with that.
If you know nothing about “Resident Evil 7,” buckle up.
“Resident Evil 7” starts with an all new character, Ethan, who gets a distress call from Mia, his missing wife. A seemingly abandoned house in Louisiana is involved, where Ethan’s wife tries to cut him in half with a chainsaw.
The enemies of the game turn out to be the crazy Baker family, and your objective as Ethan is to escape and find a cure for Mia, your chainsaw-wielding wife.
I had flashbacks to my experience with the Beginning Hour demo; it was slow, boring and I felt the same about the game back when the release was announced.
After you meet the Bakers, though, my opinion changed.
The game shines the most during the time at the Baker’s property, where you’re introduced to the game’s mechanics and the new enemies. It started to feel like an old school “Resident Evil” game.
Certain areas go with certain Bakers, which reminded me of Nemesis from “Resident Evil 3,” without encouraging the player to restrain said enemy with a reward of some sort. Your typical reaction would be to run away and hide or try to figure out a puzzle quickly.
The new game has jump scares, but it relies on them much less than expected. It does a great job in nailing its atmosphere, especially with graphics.
The graphics of “Resident Evil 7” can be adjusted to fit differing systems. It runs on a brand new engine based off Capcom’s MT Framework, which helped adjust my settings on a PC. On consoles, the game looks great, too.
Areas can get dark, but I never completely lost where I was going. The weird goo-looking walls are gross in a good way for a horror game. It helped that the team focused on much smaller areas to put detail into the locations where they come out as their own.