![]() I'm a Silent Hill girl, I prefer it to the Resident Evil series, always have. As a fan of horror gaming I feel that there is a certain aspect to a survival horror game that is necessary for it to actually scare you and be effective. For me, zombies aren't scary. Resident Evil has always felt like more like Left 4 Dead or Dead Island to me, they're fun hack 'n slash games with a tenseness to them, but there's no solid terror. If the game doesn't make you afraid to turn off your hall light, or feel uncomfortable in your own bedroom after playing it's not effective horror. That being said, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is downright unsettling, that is an indisputable fact. In the past week since the game has been released it feels like I can't escape the creepy feelings of the Baker mansion. It's like a lingering nightmare in the back of your mind long after you turn the system off. 9/10 of the videos in my YouTube feed have been RE7 related and a decent chunk of my weekend was spent playing the game in between jobs and it's left me feeling gross and on-egde. But is gross and on-edge enough for me to say this is a worth-while game for horror fans? ![]() (This review is spoiler free, enjoy your play-throughs!): There are two requirements for a horror game to be effective - atmosphere and realism. When a game can tap into your primal, most basic human fears and make locations like your home or the office tense, the game has done it's job. This is why P.T. will forever be the reigning champ in scary gaming. Ambiance, sound design, and the stark realism is what kept gamers up at night and afraid of bathrooms for weeks after the demo concluded. It's why Outlast was such a success as well. A first person perspective really flipped the genre on its head in recent years and it's the most effective thing about the new Resident Evil. As I said, I don't generally like RE and I've only played one of the installments to completion, but from what I've heard the last two games were a disaster. Seeing the effort, details, and in-depthy storyline shows a great maturity and respect for the fans on the part of the developers to study what's trending, use it to your advantage, and design a game that can resonate with what is successful in such an iconic genre. Here's the thing, the game is definitely going to redefine a dying franchise which is a wonderful thing. Something as iconic as Resident Evil deserves a great reboot in a modern century like this. It's taken the series in a new direction and opened tons of new doors for the franchise to walk through. But as a game overall, it's not very satisfying. The game is downright unsettling, the levels and characters make you feel gross. After a short time in the Baker Mansion you feel really uncomfortable and very tense, which is what makes the game very enticing going into it for the first time. I really enjoyed the first segment with the stealth and puzzle solving attributes, it gives a sharp sense of tension, anxiety, and fear like good horror should. The demo sold us all on the fear factor, we knew the game was going to be creepy and no corner was safe to turn. But fear isn't the only part of what makes a game enjoyable, the game has to have an gripping story and decent playability. If I'm honest, I'm glad I paid $7 to rent it for the week instead of dropping $60 on it, I don't think it's worth that much. You can win it in a weekend, or if you fancy you can speed run it in less than four hours, and the game is incredibly linear (one of the more linear I've seen in a long while). If you're an achievement/trophy junkie it's a great game cause they give you stupid achievements for things like closing a door which is nice. But challenge and mechanics wise, it's frustrating because you go down in two hits but even the most basic enemy can take an entire round of ammo and still not drop. Even a solid headshot does next to nothing, and with the severe lack of items you spend more time running to safe houses to survive than enjoying the game. There's a lot of useless backtracking, which wouldn't be a problem if the map wasn't so incredibly small. The whole Baker Manor takes about thirty seconds to get from one end to the other. Having to run all the way back into the basement, four hours into the game, just to unlock a door so you can get a key....just to go back into a room you've walked past a dozen times...for ANOTHER key just seems ridiculously repetitive. The enemies are very cut and paste, the boss fights are irritatingly drawn out to add length, and I felt like the story was lacking in surprise and originality (it's like FEAR all over again) and very easy to figure out within the first two hours of the game. The characters were well developed, though, which is what saves the monotonous gameplay. Ethan is the every man's hero, which brings that sense of realism I love so much to a series starring nothing but supermen like Leon and Redfield. He has no special skills, no training, he's just a man looking for his wife with a helluva lot of determination and courage. Most of the story is told through documents strewn about the manor, little easter eggs and references keep it tied to the series as a whole, but unless you want to scrounge around for every document there's a lot that can be missed. The last few levels are incredibly linear, like almost annoyingly so. Everything is strictly one direction and almost non-stop run-n-gun, which kind of falls into a The Evil Within vibe where the game loses the strong creepiness and hurries you to a resolution because they're running out of ideas. I would spend about two hours playing the game, get bored, and then I would turn around and play Murdered: Soul Suspect for six to eight hours a night over the weekend. It just didn't keep my interest. Horror wise, it's great to get your heart-racing and put you on edge. Game wise, it's very basic. Sure, it's a fun ride that is very aesthetically appealing, but it gets very tedious after a few hours. I kept growing bored, preferring to watch other people play on YouTube (it's one of PewDiePie's best video series in a LONG time, felt very old school which I loved) while I played something more intriguing than finish it myself. It may be the fact that I haven't played the other RE games, but I found it to just be very typical at its most basic point. If I were you, I would head to a Red Box and nab it over the weekend for a few bucks instead of paying full-price (or wait a few months for it to drop in price), it's a scary ride with easy achievements but as a game overall I think you'd have a more enjoyable time playing through P.T. again. ![]() Written by Alycia D. (MaybeMockingbird ) All pictures are copyright Capcom. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is out now in the US and Europe on console and PC
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AuthorJust your average geek chic gamer chick into all things ghostly and geeky (and vice versa) Archives
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