Yes, more Resident Evil. I’ve played all the mainline games in some way now, so we might be done… finally.

RESIDENT EVIL 7: BIOHAZARD

Much like the horrific viruses that make up a big part of the Resident Evil DNA, the Resident Evil series has a tendency to keep refining itself, becoming stronger and better until eventually it goes too far and ends up bloated and barely resembling whatever it was in the first place. At this point, reinvention is needed in order to survive. It cuts off all of the unnecessary parts and strips things back to the essentials and finds new ways to thrive and become strong once again. The cycle continues anew. We have currently seen two full cycles.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard represents the beginning of the third Resident Evil cycle, the second one, kickstarted by the genre-defining masterpiece that is Resident Evil 4 and subsequently run into the ground by the terrible Resident Evil 5 and the directionless Resident Evil 6. Something needed to change. After the sheer unchecked excess that was that sixth instalment, the only way forward was to take things back to the very beginning. Instead of loads of modes, storylines, characters and locations, Resident Evil 7 just needs the one. A single player story that takes place in a singular location. This is what was the genesis of Resident Evil way back in 1996. It was time to take Resident Evil back home.

There’s always a little twist that comes with each reinvention. Resident Evil 4’s shift to a more action-based experience and the over-the-shoulder camera is of course, a masterstroke. Resident Evil 7 is significantly less influential but no less shocking - it is now played entirely from a first-person perspective. Taking huge inspiration from the glut of indie first-person horror hide-em-ups like Amnesia and Outlast, bigger budget titles like Alien: Isolation and, of course, the legendary ‘playable teaser’ of a never-to-be-released Silent Hill reboot by Hideo Kojima, P.T., Capcom managed to ride a bit of a wave of what was currently on-trend in the horror videogame marketplace.

It works so, so well. Resident Evil 7 is the scariest overall game in the series, a vibe that manages to invoke obvious influences like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Saw movies but also an aesthetic that borrows from films from the new wave of French extremity - grim, dirty and horrifically violent. There was a certain camp to even the most violent elements in the previous games. Here, they’re designed to shock. Loss of limbs/digits, bisected heads, rotten corpses and disfigurements are all present - you’re supposed to feel squeamish and uncomfortable, made even more intense by the fact that you’re right there, looking at it from first-person.

The structure is, initially, far closer to the original game in the series. You’re tasked with escaping the Baker family house and, to do this, you’re going to need to explore, solve puzzles and find items to unlock the various doors around the gaff. There’s even throwbacks to puzzles from that game, like the shotgun requiring another weapon to be put in its place in order to unlock the door so you can take it. Once out the house, you move to another area with a similar structure. After that, things take a bit of a turn, with the third area being heavily influenced by the Saw movies - a series of puzzles and traps to make your way through, before heading into the end game, a final classic Resident Evil style puzzle section on a boat before a much more action-packed finale in a mine. It blends the old style Resident Evil with the post-Resident Evil 4 action stuff seamlessly.

The stars of the show are the Baker family, each member essentially acting as a master of each domain. The patriarch, Jack Baker, roams the main house before you battle him in a ludicrous chainsaw duel before you leave. His wife, Marguerite, hunts you down in the second area, a much more traditionally scary section that ends with a boss fight with her extremely creepy insect-like form. Their son Lucas is in charge of all of the traps in the third section and getting through those ‘defeats’ him, while daughter Zoe isn’t an antagonist and more part of the overall plot. They’re still the best examples of the ‘stalker’ style enemy that is a major part of the recent Resident Evil games, with scripted sequences and parts where they’re just randomly wandering around looking for you mixed together to ensure they maintain their threat and never get tedious, unlike Mr X or Nemesis in the remakes of Resi 2 and 3 respectively.

One area I see take some flack is the ‘Molded’ enemies - essentially the zombie replacement - as the standard enemy type you’ll encounter throughout the game. Lumbering, humanoid masses of the mold that causes the infection that has turned the Baker family into evil psychopaths. I like them! I like that they’re largely slow and fairly easy targets, so if you choose to pump bullets into them they’re easily dispatched and if you choose to run from them, with some skill you can get through untouched. It’s still a real decision that needs to be made and a lapse in concentration whilst dodging them or a moment of panic when shooting will still get you killed but it seems much more balanced and manageable with the slow, somewhat sluggish movement of the player. In Resident Evil Village, everything was much faster and with more movement options, which led to a lot of frustration before they put in the third-person option. Resident Evil 7 ISN’T a first-person shooter, its a first-person Resident Evil game. It works and the Molded work with it.

In what I feel eventually became a bit of an albatross around the neck of the next game, Resident Evil 7 is clearly designed with VR in mind. Although from a purely technical point of view, its hardly the most impressive VR experience but it absolutely enhances the playthrough. First-person brings you closer to the horror, of course, but being right IN IT? It’s the perfect cherry on the Resi 7 cake. I played my first playthrough using PSVR and it was absolutely horrifying. I’m pretty sure the Marguerite section has given me PTSD. Personally, I found it to be the slower pace to things that really elevated this VR experience over say, the recently release Resident Evil Village VR mode, which although technically superior, occasionally got very messy during combat sequences.

A special mention has to go to the DLC, which includes two amazing minigames that, again, are truly elevated as VR experiences. One is basically an escape room where you have to find your way out of a bedroom while Marguerite patrols around. It’s almost exactly like Misery, in that you periodically have to jump back into bed but to avoid suspicion, have to reset everything you did in the room before you do. It’s amazingly tense! The other is a Saw-esque test where you are playing Blackjack against another unwilling participant, only you’re betting your fingers instead of chips. The stakes quickly escalate. Again, a real VR showcase and delightfully grim, as well as being a really smart deviation of the rules of Blackjack.

Resident Evil 7 is yet another REbirth of Resident Evil, albeit one that has already begun the slow turn towards something a bit rotten and shambling already. I’m not sure I want to see another first-person Resident Evil game moving forwards. If we don’t and the first-person experiment was simply two games and done, Resident Evil 7 makes it absolutely worth it.

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