Anthony O'Connor
A man who can’t die is trying to kill me. I can hear him crowing madly outside the thin plaster walls of the wretched house I’m hiding in. I’ve hacked at him with a knife, I’ve put bullets in his face, but nothing seems to stop him. I’ve only got half a clip left and he’s getting closer. What hell is this? What dark nightmare have I fallen into?
Resident Evil VII: Biohazard is Capcom’s latest attempt to inject new life into their flagging franchise. It’s doing so by shaking things up quite a lot. For a start Resident Evil’s iconic over-the-shoulder third-person point of view has been changed to a first-person perspective. It’s an initially jarring shift but it allows a more immersive, immediate experience similar to Alien: Isolation and Outlast. This is a game that prides itself on creating a mood; a rich atmosphere. It very much wants to scare the living shit out of you, and often succeeds.
That said, Resident Evil VII is very much a RE title. You may have seen trailers or played the demo where the focus was on slow-burn tension and exploration. While that’s certainly something that comprises a big part of your REVII experience there’s a major addition we haven’t seen a lot of yet: combat. You’ll wield a knife, various guns and other weapons I can’t discuss for NDA purposes (but they are awesome, rest assured) and the sense of barely having enough ammo to make it through the next room ala the original Resident Evil is in full effect.
During my 3-4 hours with the game I had tense battles with members of the Baker family (think Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets Motel Hell as directed by Rob Zombie), oversized insects and hideous, mutated things that lurch from the gunk-smeared walls and ceilings of the floors in the sub basements of the hellish house. There are also boss battles and they are spectacular. In the time I played I faced two tough opponents in long, travelling battles that utilised environments and weaponry to great effect. I can’t go into specifics – and even if it were allowed I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise – but REVII brings the grisly goods and offers a pure horror experience the likes of which we haven’t seen for a long time.
On the downside, some of the hiding sections where you need to wait until an overpowered enemy buggers off feel a little rote and the main character’s walking speed seems to be set at a constant ‘dosed on methadone’ level, but these are minor quibbles in a game that finally looks to be embracing the series’ horror roots.
Expect extreme terror, puzzle-solving-under-duress and horrifying inventory management when Resident Evil VII: Biohazard releases on January 24, 2017; and you’d be dead right to expect that we’ll have a full review up around then.
Here’s a bit of play-throught too: