Does Resident Evil 7 Stack Up?

Capcom has had its shares of bumps and bruises with Resident Evil, most noticeably in its most recent mainline entry Resident Evil 6. However, Capcom looked to reclaim the franchise’s spot among gamings’ heavy weights, and It’s hard to deny it that spot with their latest entry.

Stealth announcement and all the hype and speculation it provided aside, RE7 Biohazard took a new risk heading into first person, a risk I welcomed with open arms. The game is a soft reboot, keeping lore and many tropes of RE’s past alive and well, while the introduction of protagonist Ethan Winters, provides a new lens from which to view the RE world.

From the get go, the game excelled in making me feel uneasy with its grimy visuals, and the act of picking up and inspecting items in the Baker’s house felt wrong and intrusive. It’s quite clear from the beginning...you do not belong here. The sound design makes matters worse in the best way possible by keeping you constantly on edge. The house feels alive and as much a character as anyone else in the game. The noises of the storm hitting against walls and windows, along with the ambiance that fills the seemingly lonely halls had me constantly checking my surroundings as I crouched through the house. The patriarch of the Baker family, Jack, is the first foe you will run, shout, and hide from in fear, and sets the tone for most of the game. Jack is a bastard.

Against Jack, you are legitimately helpless, and the feeling is genuine. I’d be hard pressed to remember another time in gaming where I felt the same level of helplessness and it not be due to some forced narrative reason or wonky controls. Ducking and hiding behind crates, doors, and around hallway corners to stay away from Jack was a thrill. The pacing was great, capitalized by the first time you get to a “save room”. The save room music beautifully contrasts the intense cat and mouse game you had been playing for the past 15min, but in the most uneasy of ways. This tone would remain as you made your way through Marguerite’s side of the Baker residence as well.

What started as the scariest game of hide and seek, soon incorporated odd and arbitrary puzzles (keys in shapes of animals mostly) to access new areas of the game, a staple in the series, and one that the game didn’t mince in acknowledging among others. The puzzles weren’t particularly challenging, somewhat of a missed opportunity, but not an aspect I expect big things coming from Resident Evil anyway. That being said, this game of hide and seek and puzzle solving provided the early fun, but the stand offs against Jack, and the game’s boss battles in general, were perhaps the first chinks in the armor for RE7.

As previously mentioned, a genuine feeling of despair and helplessness doesn’t come from a game fighting back against you through controls or a cut-scene that spoon feeds a player how they should feel. RE7 though, diverges from this with its boss battles. The feeling of joy and relief when killing the bosses evoked guttural reactions, having had to run and hide from Jack and Marguerite for most of the game. However, I often found myself frustrated not with the difficulty or my lack of skill in fighting the boss, but in the responsiveness of the controls when dealing with them.

The intensity of the confrontations, and the pace they set, created a major contrast with how the game handles in general. Perhaps this may have been intentional, to create tension between the player’s slower, more deliberate movements, in contrast to a boss’s more frantic, fast, and murderous ones. The intent however, didn’t translate so smoothly, and just made the encounters feel more like a nuisance than a challenge. RE7’s boss battles often just culminated in a game of running away to get shots off or waiting for moments to hack and slash. In a narrative sense, the boss fights were expected, but I can’t help but feel their execution left for something to be desired.

The Baker family however, aren’t the only enemies you’ll deal with, with mold creatures pulled straight out of pages from a book on RE bio-weapons. These enemies give a taste of the action side RE has been accustomed to lately, with the added stress of scarce resources. Compared to the boss battles, these encounters weren’t half bad in terms of controls, offering enough of a challenge without ever feeling overbearing. In a way, these encounters reminded me of moments in “The Evil Within”, where skill and well placed head-shots mattered, or else you’d suffer for spraying and praying.

Conversely, even in a game that itself is a risk by doing first person, the game didn’t shy away from taking more risks in the form of playable video tapes. Though few and far between, they offered a unique way of foreshadowing things to come. The tapes gave added context to the Baker house, and almost served as tutorials for an area before you entered them in real time. One in particular puts you in a sort of escape room that Lucas set up and preps you for the real thing. Without spoiling too much, one of the tapes also falls into one of the couple glaring problems I had with the game, which deals with its narrative.

Resident Evil isn’t exactly a shining example of video game storytelling, though lore heavy, its general plot is campy in nature, typified by Leon’s one liners, Wesker’s shades, Chris’s roid raged feud with a boulder, and “Jill Sandwich” among other RE quirks, but, I digress; the game’s scope narrowed, much to the joy of RE fans across the board, but narrative flow seemed to stumble. The story was progressively dealt through classic RE journals and letters scattered through the Baker residence, but towards the final third of the game, chose to dump loads of info in very direct, rushed, and unimaginative ways.

As a whole, it’s also worth noting that story borrows tropes heavily from horror flicks in the vein of “The Ring”, so if that sort of horror isn’t your cup of tea, the game won’t offer anything groundbreaking or too thought provoking. Without giving too much away, the game leaves off in an interesting cliffhanger that will hopefully be addressed in the free DLC coming sometime in Spring. Perhaps more interesting than tying up narrative loose ends, the DLC could potentially serve as preview of how RE8 will be like, considering the element of surprise and change are gone now by the end of the game.

RE7 Biohazard is a fun ride, one that left me eager to explore the Baker estate a few times over, and offers enough for newcomers and veteran RE players alike. Though it doesn’t come without its faults, they aren’t enough that they marred my time with the game. The game also offers a season pass as is industry standard, but seem a lot like filler. RE7 has lifted the Resident Evil franchise back atop gaming’s best through its creepy mansion, sound design, abrasive villains, solid pacing, and new protagonists, and leaves me hopeful and ready for more.

9 Mutated Eye-Balls out of 10

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