Resident Evil 7: Biohazard Review
Fear comes home, hopefully for good…
It is a great time to be a fan of some long-running franchises. Last year, we were treated with the return of Final Fantasy with Final Fantasy XV, and now horror fans get to play the next mainstream instalment to the rather outrageous Resident Evil franchise. With the release of Resident Evil 7, Capcom has brought back a key feature that some of the more modern Resident Evil games have seemed to lack over the past few years: the ability to truly terrify players. Thankfully, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard changes up the series’ formula while not sacrificing moments that are memorably brutal.
Resident Evil 7’s story doesn’t sound like anything too revolutionary, but it is effective enough to instil an idea of helplessness and intrigue that used to keep horror fans coming back to their favourite games of the genre. Players are put into the shoes of Ethan Winters, an everyman who discovers that his wife, Mia, is still alive three years after her disappearance. After heading to Dulvey, Louisiana, Ethan comes across a haunting plantation owned by the weird and downright disturbing Baker family. After being trapped within the plantation, Ethan continues to search for his missing wife while being pursued by the Bakers.
Despite the story’s relative simplicity, the game does a fantastic job of creating a terrifying amount of tension and suspense almost the whole way through its 9–10 hour long campaign. The Baker plantation is a fantastic set-piece that just oozes (in more ways than one) tension and breeds horrifying, Texas Chainsaw Massacre-esque encounters on a consistent basis. Even when you’re not running from Jack or Marguerite Baker, you’re hearing creaking floorboards, random knocks and splintering wood that all pile onto the fearful atmosphere that Capcom has successfully created.
One of the best things about Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is that it brings back the survival horror aspect that has been missing from the series since (arguably) Resident Evil 4 Item management returns and scarcity of ammunition available within the game is a welcome departure from the Call of Duty feel of Resident Evil 6. During most of the playthrough, I would cringe if I came across any of the Molded — this game’s form of zombies — knowing that I didn’t have enough ammunition to take them out. I haven’t felt this way in a survival horror game since playing The Evil Within a few years back; even then, that game was still pretty generous with guns and ammunition. The return to a formula that made the survival horror genre interesting and the Resident Evil series impactful was a breath of fresh air to me.
In the nine or ten hours it took me to complete Resident Evil 7’s story, I never really felt that something was out of place. The first-person perspective limited my vision just like fixed camera angles used to do in the older titles, and although it was rather annoying when trying to explore, Ethan’s slow, deliberate movement, added to the game’s tension and suspense in the same way as the older titles’ horrendous “tank” controls. These features aren’t new to the horror genre, with plenty of other games — especially indie horror titles — using these mechanics, but with Resident Evil 7, Capcom utilises them to really bring out the fear that more recent Resident Evil titles have sorely missed.
My biggest issue with the game is that there doesn’t seem to be much of a payoff by the story’s end. Towards the final act, it seems as though Capcom decided to pad out the story a little bit more to give an insight into the main antagonist, which unfortunately meant an extra hour of me trudging around the area, fighting off more Molded than I felt was necessary. Sure, it looked cool and I did hold my breath just a bit when it started, but I still couldn’t help but think that the action sequences felt out of place in a slower-paced horror title such as this . Ethan’s slow walking speed made this all the more annoying when I was forced to backtrack through the plantation; although sprinting allowed me to escape some enemies and obstacles I didn’t want to tackle, I still wish I could have moved a little quicker through areas I’d already explored.
Another, less significant issue that I had with the game was that most of the puzzles were actually pretty simple. Unlike previous Resident Evil games — where there would be one or two puzzles that’d stump me, prompting me to run around the map searching high and low for that one object I needed, or moving a certain object someplace else to unlock a previously unexplored room — I found that Biohazard’s puzzles were pretty self-explanatory. With that being said, it is a survival horror game, so the main focus of the game was to instil a sense of helplessness and with that, Resident Evil 7 succeeds tremendously.
I was mostly surprised by the myriad weapons you would come across on your journey through the Baker plantation. Every weapon I picked up was effective, but the tight inventory space meant that I never felt too overpowered when I’d find something new to kill stuff with. As in older Resident Evil titles, smaller weapons like the knife or the trusty handgun would take up a single space, while stronger weapons like the shotgun would take up two spaces. This system adds a layer of strategy to the game, forcing players to think a few steps ahead and decide which weapons they believe will be the most helpful later on.
Fortunately, players are able to use item caches to offset the aforementioned lack of inventory space. Usually found in rooms that also contain a save point, these bottomless crates allow Ethan to store unwanted ammo, items and weapons and pick them up again at another cache later on. Managing your inventory is an important factor in surviving the Baker plantation, and I couldn’t be happier to see it.
Players in search of a more challenging experience will be happy to note that the game features a Hardcore difficulty mode. Available as a pre-order bonus or after completing the campaign on Easy or Normal mode, Hardcore mode changes up item locations, increases the damage you’ll take from enemies, makes ammunition even more scarce than before, and limits saves to the amount of cassette tapes you find lying around (much like the ink ribbons in earlier Resident Evil titles. I have yet to sit down and properly play the Hardcore difficulty, but it’s safe to say that so far, it has me interested and definitely adds some replayability to the game.
The best way to describe Resident Evil 7 is as an absolute masterclass in survival horror; one that I encourage horror fans and scaredy-cats alike to experience, and one that any and all horror developers will be able to learn from.
Our Verdict:
With a setting as disturbing and horrific as its residents, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard delivers on what the series has sorely missed for some time, creating a terrifying experience that must be overcome by a somewhat defenseless player character, leading to some of the best scares the series has had in quite some time.
