izigame.me

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard was born through a half-decade hiatus following Resident Evil 6. RE6 infamously went so off-the-rails that it fully dried the franchise out and necessitated a soft reboot with the creation of a new storyline with a new tone, protagonist, setting, and even game engine. It's safe to say Resident Evil 7, while being a very flawed game in many ways, unquestionably saved Resident Evil, and is easily the most important title in the franchise (Unless you want to argue the meta "RE wouldn't exist at all without the original 1996 game" nonsense. Either way, RE7 is the primary reason Resident Evil is what it is today). This review will be cut into four sections: Graphics & Audio, Gameplay, Story, and Final thoughts. Okay, time to complain.
NOTE: Resident Evil 7 is a game very heavy on story, and I will include quite a bit of information pertaining to it. I won't be censoring anything this time, but I'll try to keep most spoilers contained in the Story section. You're still free to ignore this review for that reason, but know that I think that this is a absolute must-play for horror fans.

Graphics & Audio

Environments in Resident Evil 7 appear desaturated, grimy, and a bit blurry at all times, which has caused a bit of contention among players as to whether it's intentional or not. The game is set in a dingy, mold-infested house in a Louisiana bayou in the middle of nowhere, and I think they intentionally went for a VCR-y, Texas Chainsaw Massacre-adjacent look to the game, which is fitting and very beneficial to the atmosphere they tried to go for. This is the first Resident Evil game to use photogrammetry, and also has the highest number of unique assets of any Resident Evil game ever, a feat made even more impressive when realizing this is the smallest Resident Evil team for a mainline game ever. For a team of only around 120, there has to be a few thousand fully unique objects in this game, which is insanely impressive. The models for the human characters, and the various Molded and bosses are well-made, deliberate, and greatly add to the fear and dread you'll feel playing this title. As for audio, I think it was handled very well. Voice acting is, for the most part, top-form, with the Bakers in particular very quickly becoming some of my favorite antagonists in this entire series primarily because of their voicework. You can tell immediately that the virus they're carrying drastically changes their behavior, NOT their mannerisms; they feel like the Bakers even when they're murderous sadists. Mia and Eveline are alright, but my only big issue is you: Ethan Winters. I don't inherently have an issue with Ethan, but his voice actor at the absolute least should have redone some lines. Ethan gets beaten and maimed by horrific monsters constantly in this game, something he has NEVER experienced, and yet seems oddly indifferent or silent at some points. The atmosphere and tone is hurt greatly when the protagonist's characterization is so weak compared to the brilliant villains in this game. I understand that Ethan is intentionally basic to act as a surrogate for the player to insert themselves into the world, but if he's going to be so integral to the story and lore, he needs SOME better characterization. I don't have any outstanding issues with this game's sound design, as I think most every little sound is at least beneficial to the game's atmosphere or fear factor. Overall, very solid graphics and audio.

Gameplay

Gameplay, and more specifically movement and combat, was greatly simplified from the previous RE, with only basic first-person shooting/aiming, walking, jogging, crouching, and the new block. I think the block is a cool, unique edge to the combat loop that reflects that Ethan is a completely normal person that can't dodge or parry, and I think the simple movement and combat helps to let you focus more on your surroundings and the level design of the Baker house. Speaking of, the Baker house is an incredible location for a RE game to take place, in a franchise KNOWN for its amazing locations. The Baker house has fantastic design, detail, and verticality, with intricate hiding spots and secret areas, but still to an extent feels like a realistic, huge house an extremely rural family like the Bakers would work hard to build. The ship seems to try to capture the same lightning in a bottle the Baker house did, but didn't do it as well. The pacing of the ship segment is already a mess, and the level design being frustrating and more linear in the ship didn't do it any favors. Enemy design is good, but limiting from there being so few regular enemy types in the base game. There are literally four fully unique basic enemies. Bosses start phenomenal, and only slightly drop off in quality near the end. The only "bad" boss is Eveline, which is more of an epic, scripted finale than anything. Human Jack has created some of the best boss fights in the franchise, Marguerite is a harrowing endurance battle that'll keep you attentive and on your toes for a long time, and mutated Jack is the obligatory big hunk of meat boss that you'd expect in any RE game. Every difficulty is fair, especially Madhouse Mode, which is my favorite hard difficulty in any game I've played (For the record, I haven't played One Dangerous Zombie from RER, which I sometimes hear is better). The amount of changes to gameplay, level design, and strategy makes Madhouse a huge challenge, but an experience I think is FAR better than the default difficulty. I won't go into too much detail so you can discover the game yourself, but I think this game is extraordinarily fun and replayable (get the cutscene skipper on Nexus for repeat playthroughs, though).

Story

RE7 is a much needed self-contained story that still ties itself into the Resident Evil canon in its final moments and DLC. To summarize, Ethan Winters is our protagonist who, after his wife, Mia, went missing several years prior, gets a sudden message from her to come and find her. He's led to a very rural area of Louisiana, to the property of the Baker family, who, unbeknownst to Ethan, has been afflicted with a mold virus that we later learn originated from a bioweapon named Eveline, developed by The Connections, a BOW company that we learn Mia worked for. Ethan, by luck and adrenaline, survives tons of encounters with the Bakers' victims, who have been contaminated with the same virus and turned into mold monsters, and, with help from Zoe Baker, the only still sane member of the family, ends up killing Jack and Marguerite and creating a vaccine for Mia, who has the same virus, as the story progresses. Ethan and Mia meet up again, canonically Ethan chooses to use the only remaining vaccine on Mia (Though there's a random choice system there for some reason where you can opt to give the vaccine to Zoe), and they are attacked by Eveline on a boat that they try to ride to safety, being left on shore at the base of the ship Mia and other employees of The Connections used to transport Eveline. This later third is a mess, with a huge flashback section that is out-of-place and not really necessary. Eveline isn't a very deep character, we don't need a (very boring) third of the game dedicated to her escape on the ship. The ending is epic, satisfying if you choose the canon route of curing Mia, and is left slightly open ended to hint at a sequel to Ethan's story and allows there to be story continuation DLCs in this game. I think this story is overall pretty solid, though not really close to the best story in the franchise, and is built on and improved in the sequel.

Final Thoughts

RE7 is a paramount title in the RE franchise, and, though far from perfect, is still carried by incredible villains and atmosphere and a game absolutely worth your time if you like Resident Evil, horror, or even games in general. Overall, I give Resident Evil 7:

8.5/10