Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017)

After playing Resident Evil 2 and 3 Remake, I thought this first person chapter would have been a very different game, with a very different feeling.

It indeed feels different, yet, for me, it still felt Resident Evil.

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I loved how, compared to the Remakes, this game uses the first person to create a better and way more immersive atmosphere.
It's creepy, a lot, and the lighting is so good even if you play it now, after 5 years from the release. At every turn, you stop for a second, wondering if that thing on the other side of the corridor is just a shadow or something else.

But mostly, the sound design is so unsettling: when the music starts to build up u just feel that itch behind your back, all those little sounds that play and let you guess if someone else is there with you, and you start looking around, even thought you won't see anyone, leaving you even more scared.
I really think this is what makes the game so scary, what elevates it.

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Yet the game still feels like Resident Evil, that gamey feeling of having puzzles in a house, the arcade feeling of the encounter, the arcade feeling of the level design.
They really managed to merge these two very different souls together creating their style for a first-person horror.

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And this time around, the story was really good!
It's intriguing from the start, and not just a bare premise you won't really get interested into. Who are they, why is this family so broken, what has happened to Mia?
At first, you don't have many answers but neither much time to guess, since you are more worried about getting out of the house, and then you start to slowly unveil the mystery.

Apart for the very last section (the mine ones), I think the game kept being good and interesting.
Yes, the puzzles are less interesting than a RE2, or there is less enemy variety, but I think the atmosphere and the story totally compensate for that.

And when the game may start to get stale, you get a total change of perspective, settings, and you finally get those story-related answers you were asking for.
This may be biased though, since I love when a game like this finds a way to remove all the precious weapons and items that makes you feel safe and sound, and throws you the mess.

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Even though the game is less interconnected level design side, I like how every area has a theme and always manage to feel fresh.
At first, you have those Mr X vibes from the dad, then you play in a sort of RE2 mansion and you start to find the first "zombies", you move to the old house where bugs will bug you (so fun, I just understood why they are called that way) and where you will have to fight a super creepy Coraline style boss.
After this, you have to overcome Lucas' challenges, and by the way, I loved how they contextualized the puzzles in this game by having him be the crazy guy who loves building them to fulfill his sadistic needs.
Then you switch to the ship for a complete change of perspective! And then yeah the dumb mine and ending but let's forget about this.

It was so thrilling and I wanted to play it to go on.

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I have to say that I am not a particular fun of shooting as a mechanic, so maybe there was not a lot of enemy variety or stuff, but I just didn't really care a lot about it, it was fun enough for me.
Maybe I would have preferred having less ammo/resources overall because it felt like the game always gives you what you need, detracting from the tension.

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Since the game manages to keep being so good for so long, I really can't wrap my head around the ending part.
It's just bad and rushed, and the final boss is so lame.
I played the free Chris DLC and luckily this gives me a better closure, both story-wise and gameplay-wise.
It's a bit too action for my tastes, but at least was a fun area.
Loved the labyrinth section, how much I felt lost there surrounded by those invincible enemies, hated the fight inside the drill though.

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This was such a fun and immersive experience, and, even though it's different from the classic third-person RE, I think it's for the better, as long as they keep doing both, so we will be able to choose between a more gamey/arcade RE or a more atmospheric/immersive one.

YESSSSSS! Finally after the last like 4 games being just action slugfests we finally return to what Resident Evil initially was - survival horror. Even though I was scared shitless I couldn’t help smiling as I encountered elements that I had sorely missed from the games such as puzzles and resourcefulness. I didn’t realise how much I missed the item boxes until they returned and was so happy to see them again inside their safe rooms. Initially I was nervous starting this one as I learned that this game introduced a new character as well as a new perspective (first person) and I was unsure whether I would grow towards it or not. After playing it I definitely think the newness drew me in as I felt like I was playing the first one again in the sense that everything felt foreign to me. This unknown terrain became very appealing, especially with the plot where even though I knew a fair amount but Resident Evil Lore at this point, I still felt as confused as Ethan trying to make sense of all of it.

Although I gave it 5 stars there are some things I wished they could’ve done better. Namely, the ship part and the enemies. The ship part felt a little abrupt and took me out of the experience a bit, cause I started to think I was in RE:Revelations lol. The enemies DEFINITELY needed to be more varied and interesting. There were really only like 4 types of enemies which weren’t exactly creative or fascinating. We’ve seen similar types of the Molded before which made them feel less threatening. The Baker family on the other were very interesting and dynamic so I wish they had incorporated that creativity into their base enemy design.

All in all, this was a delightful experience and caused me to remember what made me fall in love with Resident Evil and why I continue to love it.

Easily, without a doubt, one of the best Resident Evil games of the series. In my opinion, it takes the #2 spot just behind 4 and barely ahead of 1 and 2. Resident Evil 7 emphasizes the horror and puts the conspiratorial insanity on the back-burner just until it's needed to tie it all together. The weapon and item system are the best renditions yet (along with RE4) and the combat and movement feel better than before. I was also skeptical about the first-person perspective, but they ended up nailing that as well. It is also, by far, the scariest Resident Evil of the series, which makes for exhilarating gameplay. The two story based DLCs are highly worth getting as well if you want a few more hours of fun.

4.50/5.00

Full Review: https://watchreadgame.com/resident-evil-7-review/

I'm unsure whether or not I actually enjoyed the game, but decided to lean in a more positive direction with my final overall rating.

I loved the atmosphere and look of the game, and the story was okay. The family were menacing and fun to fight in their various boss fights, while their home is creepy as hell. It starts to fall off towards the end for me, with the change in location, but overall I liked most aspects of it's presentation.

The gameplay was where I felt let down. The puzzles and exploration are great, and the boss fights are genuinely fun with enough of a challenge. Regular enemies are seriously lacking in variation, though, and are more of a nuisance than they are scary (the insects in particular). The first person perspective wasn't really something that bothered me, but I hated how stiff and clunky it felt. It seemed as though it was intentional as to add to the horror element, but for me, led to frustration and anger, whereas I'm sure it was meant to instil terror. Was a big miss for me on that front.

In the end, I would have liked a smoother gameplay experience and AT LEAST a few extra skins on the fodder enemies, so they were at least a little more interesting to come across.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is a slightly different take on beloved action horror game series Resident Evil. The developers made some brave decisions on a well known formula and it absolutely worked.

Let's start with the fact that i'm a huge fan of RE games and i absolutely love them all. I was a little skeptical about Biohazard, as it had some major changes from the original formula that has really deep roots in the series. Thankfully, it all worked really well.

You start the game as Ethan Winters, a normal guy who's looking for his lost wife. The truth he discovers is truly horrid... And also absolutely awesome. The protagonist is really likable, i started to like him pretty early in the game, he's a fresh take after playing so many resident evils with military trained badasses. The story is really engaging and interesting, yet pretty original in it's own way.

Through the game you explore a mansion in Louisiana, inhabited by a weird and deadly family affected by a strange virus. The antagonists are really well-made and facing all of them is an experience to remember. Areas are pretty diverse and really cool to explore, they are all affected by a spooky mood. The game itself isn't really scary, RE games aren't usually terrifying, but they have their moments. The game is now in first person mode which is a brave change for the better, immersion is highly improved.

You will experience all your typical Resident Evil stuff in the game, exploration, crafting, chase segments, great boss battles, survival aspects and cool puzzles, it's all here and better than ever.

In conclusion, this is your good old Resident Evil in a slightly fresh take that i really like. I highly recommend trying the game out, it's a bit short, but quality over quantity all the way.

9.5/10

"Welcome to the family!"

~Wo

Despite how bland Ethan Winters is as a character I really enjoyed the story, I maintains an uncomfortable feeling along with some highly tense moments before sadly falling away towards the end. I love the first person perspective in horror games and hope they continue down this path in future games, Gun handling feels great, I just wish the enemy variety was better handled. Still those opening few hours especially were some of the craziest stuff I've seen in a video game.

Biohazard was my first Resident Evil experience and I was actually really fascinated by it. Starting from the obvious I was scared shitless. It has jump-scares here and there, but the scary part was the chilling atmosphere and that the bosses were so damn frightening and they were constantly coming back. The low amount of ammo -low to the point, that it is just so you might not be able to finish the gave if you don't use it carefully- was what made the experience even more scary, because I knew that if someone attacked me at points, I wouldn't be able to kill them.

Now the atmosphere is incredible and has you constantly frightened and uncertain and it is also kinda disgusting. The bosses were fucking difficult, with the "Red-Eye" thing being one of the hardest bosses I have encountered. I also enjoyed the puzzles a lot here and I loved the way they used VHS tapes here and I found it extremely clever. Now I was actually surprised that I was really intrigued by the story and the characters. I loved the way that through files you would find out about the backstory and what happened to the Bakers. Now the Bakers as villain are fucking scary. Like damn I was so scared every time I encountered each one, with the Dad being the one that I would see and just run.

I liked the road they went and what they did with Mia and Ethan, but I found both of them to be really under-developed. Especially since Ethan is the main character. But I could overseen it, because in reality I played this yesterday and today and according to the end screen I played about 14.5 hours so that should tell you how much I enjoyed this and how hooked I was. I can't wait to play some of the rest Resident Evil games.

Brilliant execution of the series’s original survival horror adventure game formula with generally good kinds of fresh twists, making for one of the best games in the series.

After a jarringly non-RE-like prologue that I initially found really off-putting, this game is very hard to put down, perfectly paced with all filler trimmed out. It strikes an ideal balance of combat, stealth, environmental puzzles, and storytelling. Each segment of the game is concise and packed with good content without overdoing it on forced backtracking and replaying to see all that’s on offer. I felt the game usually get better and better as it progressed.

The cast of main villains feels genuinely threatening and colorful. One recurring character is very close to being the series’s most memorable antagonist and best boss battle. Bosses don’t just appear for a cutscene and a battle, but get in your way for entire segments of the game and become part of the level design and story in a huge way. Like Nemesis in RE3 (remake), they’re always changing and upping the stakes, often present but never overstaying their welcome.

This game has an occasionally eye-rolling tendency toward sequences that seem to be nudging me and saying, “Isn’t this messed up and disgusting? Isn’t this craaaazy?” Sticking an arm into a dead body, bugs coming out of the walls, I get what they’re going for, but I was not drawn to the series for things like that and it usually didn’t make me feel anything but “ok whatever.” Luckily, it’s also often able to break up its own oppressive, grim, edgy atmosphere with insane, fun moments that make it feel like good old RE to me again.

Story-wise the game can be a mixed bag, but I generally felt positive about it. The big reveals in the final hours answer most of my questions of a mystery that had me genuinely surprised and hooked. The flashback VHS segments are so good that it’s a shame that a lot of that critical backstory and RE universe story threads come out in what is basically a text info dump right before the final boss. The game’s big decision moment also feels unnatural. Regardless of those complaints, good job on the intrigue and telling a very different kind of story.

As a fan of RE’s sillier side, and not a big horror fan in general, I almost wrote this game off as too different for my tastes, but I’m very glad I kept going. I found a game that recalled the fun, memorable exploration of the original (remake), where enemies are scarce but really count, tension is everywhere, and everything has its place and purpose toward giving me a great time. Can’t wait for RE Village now.

As the first game in my Spoooooky Gaming Marathon leading up to Halloween, I chose RE7. It was a good choice.

The overall graphics are great, though all of the people (especially the girlfriend, Mia) sit fairly deep in the uncanny valley. Enemies are a bit samey, though, with eventually about 4-5 different identical enemy-types that you'll encounter.

Voice acting is excellent, and the overall sound does a terrific job of creating tension. The main antagonists come off as truly sinister, though one of them is a bit hammy. The story pulls you in, and is really satisfying when everything starts to fall into place in the final hour or two. And despite some fairly direct clues near the end, I was still surprised by the final Scooby Doo reveal of the game's Big Bad.

I'd say this game is about 50% puzzley walking simulator and 50% survival horror game. Not having played any RE games for a good decade, I forgot about the survival part of survival horror, and nearly had to scrap several hours of gameplay due to not having multiple saves & nearly running out of ammo.

Oh, and fun fact--- the "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" song that plays every time you start the game is apparently a 200 year old kids' song. Except instead of "the old grey goose is dead", they changed the lyric to "everybody's dead".

Resident Evil 7 had a lot on its plate from the beginning. For Capcom, this had to be the game to reboot the popular survival-horror franchise (arguably the third franchise reinvigoration with the RE remake and RE4) after the atrocious Resident Evil 6 left the franchise on a low point. But arguably what loomed larger for Capcom was the shadow of Konami's P.T. With just a trailer, P.T. had become one of the most talked about horror games of all time and Silent Hill seemed ready to overshadow Resident Evil. P.T. presented a type of horror that scared the player deep to the bone, and by putting you in the perspective of an unknown character, the reaction for the player was a visceral, horrific experience - something that Resident Evil had never been able to achieve, despite dabbling in first-person perspectives in the past.

Resident Evil 7 both reboots the RE franchise and attempts to follow through on the popularity of P.T., but doesn't quite nail either one. That's not to say Resident Evil 7 isn't an excellent gaming experience that learns from RE past and makes me excited about the franchise's future, but it never quite reaches the greatness of the Resident Evil reboot or the franchise's height, Resident Evil 4.

Resident Evil 7 succeeds as part of this franchise mostly in the mechanics department. RE7 makes smart choices that allow the player to experience this game the way that they play Resident Evil games. New mechanical choices allow a person to prefer receiving more health, more ammo, or a combination of both. If you want to shoot your way out, RE7 is here for it, and allows for that. Have a hard time finding items? RE has a drug for that! Item boxes and save spots are never too far away and the exploration of the various houses you visit feel more like Gone Home than any previous RE.

But what makes RE7 truly stand out for me is the way the game splits up the story into bite-size segments. This is especially a great development when it comes to puzzles. Long gone are the days when you'd find a crank or a key, then have to slog it to the other side of a mansion. Each house is like a puzzle within itself, and the tools for one puzzle never reach beyond that house. This simple choice makes each area of RE7 feel like its own little escape room that doesn't feel exhausting to experiment with. I had more fun exploring and trying to figure out what I was supposed to do in RE7 than I ever have in any other Resident Evil game. While I've never particularly cared for the puzzles in other RE games, here, they were easily my favorite part.

But despite the prevalence of herbs and weird, intricate puzzles, this doesn't really feel like a Resident Evil game. This is a great direction for this game to go in - certainly - but I always felt like I was almost playing a DLC experiment instead of a primary RE game.

The main reason for this, I think, is that there's never really any idea where this game places in the world of RE that we've seen before. If this is supposed to be a reboot, that's fine, but that still confuses what is actually going on here. By the end of the game when SPOILER Chris Redfield picks up your character in an Umbrella helicopter, there's more questions than answers. But I never fully had a grasp of what was happening in terms of the game's virus, or why any of this was happening, and how this tied into the world of RE. It might be a minor point, but if you're still going to consider this a RE game, tie it in just slightly better than this.

As for realizing the horror of P.T. through a lens of RE, again, RE 7 mostly works. RE 7 is much better at smaller surprises that outright terrifying moments. Seeing a little girl standing in the distance watching you, or having a character slowly making their way towards you (another thing that RE has always done great) are much more terrifying that giant disease-ridden monsters. That being said, I think RE 7 does a very good job at bringing different types of horror into this world through its various characters. Jack works much in a similar way to the Nemesis or Tyrant, Marguerite is more of a character that requires the player to stealthily hide from, and Lucas sets up very fun traps for the player to escape from. RE 7 allows for different types of scares than just the standard ones that RE is known for.

As for being actually scary, I think RE 7 lacks some of that fear. Maybe it's just for me, but once I realized that all these characters were likely under some sort of zombified state, I didn't have quite the same level of fear that I would otherwise. However when the game cranks up the adrenaline, as in when you have to take on Jack in the small space of a garage, RE 7 is an exciting game that relies on fighting through the fear.

Maybe it's not fair to compare RE7's fear to P.T. Silent Hill has always been more about unnerving ambiance, and RE has focused on more action. But there are several moments throughout RE7 that clearly are based on trying to evoke the feelings of P.T., and even Capcom's plan of releasing the RE 7 demo the same day it debuted at E3 makes it quite clear that P.T. had some influence on the creation of RE 7. But when it comes to the two franchises, Silent Hill has always had the advantage in terms of scaring the audience, and that doesn't change with RE 7.

The steps that Resident Evil 7 takes are brilliant choices that hone what worked for this franchise in the past, while moving this series into an exciting future. If Resident Evil 8 can continue to evolve this series in this way, place it more distinctly in the RE universe, while also amping up the fear, I think Resident Evil could once again be as consistently great as it was in the original Playstation days.

I was really excited to play this game after hearing about how great it was. And it definitely is.

Previously, I've only ever played through Resident Evil 4 before and while it was fun to play and made you on edge sometimes, I've never played anything that scared me as much as this game did.

Now its not non-stop terror, but the first maybe 3 hours are downright perfection in terms of horror and the rest leaves you paranoid at all times because you never know when something insane is going to jump out of the darkness and get you. It's also not never ending jump scares, while there is quite a few, even just walking around the farm house and exploring every crevice you come upon you can't help but feel that something is watching you at all times waiting for you to come just close enough to strike. RE 7 has a superb sense of atmosphere with great lighting, and sound design.

Another thing that surprised me was the controls. They feel really good. It feels so great to line up a headshot just right and kill a monster. And after playing the Evil Within 2, with its shoddy downgraded controls, RE 7's perfectly polished feel is just what I needed.

The graphics are also amazing. This looks so much like a real house and location that I could just about step into the screen.

The one bad thing I have to point out is that its a bit short. I beat it in about 11 hours and I know that others have finished in 9. Now while that may be kind of short for a video game (in comparison I think RE 4 took me about like 25 to 30 hours to get through) there is no filler in RE 7 whatsoever. Every moment you are fully engaged in what is going on either the story and characters, or dark atmosphere.

-Pros: -surreal atmosphere with great lighting and sound design -polished intense gameplay and controls -almost photorealistic graphics -memorable story and characters -on point voice acting

-Cons: -a bit short in length

In conclusion, this is a horror classic in the making, give it a few years and I bet people will still look back on it very fondly. Well done Capcom. 👏👏