Resident Evil 7: Biohazard Full Game Review for PC

creativity101 (57)in #gaming • 7 years ago

Resident evil is often regarded as one of the main franchises that created and popularized the survival horror genre and truly the first few games in the series are classic examples of this. Around Resident Evil 5 was when the series really started to lose its way and by the time of Resident Evil 6, the series had departed into the realm of pure schlock. With the release of Resident Evil 7 however, Capcom has done a pretty good job at combining everything that made those old games so good.

Hopefully, appeasing the old-school fans whilst also trying to keep it feeling modern and not too archaic and I'd say they've accomplished this for the most part.
Resident Evil 7 is at times an absolutely horrifying and frightening game, though it does have a few weak points here and there it's a really good entry in this series and somewhat of a return to form.

THE STORY

The premise is hardly groundbreaking, you're a guy named Ethan who receives a distressing message from his believed to be dead wife Mia telling him to stay away and forget about her. Pretty standard message most guys get on tinder these days but anyway it wouldn't have been a very interesting game if Ethan hadn't done this. So we instead head to Louisiana to a creepy abandoned plantation to find her, upon arrival it becomes pretty obvious you're not alone and after barely exploring the place for 15 minutes and try to rescue Mia, you're introduced to the Baker family, Lucas, margarita and Jack the Bakers are all insane and infected by some kind of virus that makes them basically invulnerable.

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The voice acting is good if a little bit cringy at times I mean Lucas for instance has a fair chunk of dialogue that's more missed than hit. Ethan's decent enough even if he is Forgettable, he’s one of those kind of generic video game protagonists so we didn't go to the Troy Baker school of video game voice acting which means he at least doesn't give a running commentary of every single action he's carrying out. Surprisingly I found one of the better performances of the game to be Mia Ethan's wife who you genuinely kind of become attached to. She shows off a pretty good range of emotions throughout the game and I'd argue she's a more character than Ethan is.

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Along the way you learn more and more about the reasons behind the infection that seems to be plaguing the Baker family. Flashbacks which you play through VHS tapes scattered around the plantation also give a bit of backstory in context to everything unfolding as well. As it turns out each member of the family has their own kind of affliction and I guess powers as a result and you see all of these during the multiple boss fights the game throws at you or during any of the scripted sequences. Now the save some of these are intense is an understatement imagine the most violent gory horror movie you've ever seen, now imagine yourself being in control of that.

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That's how I best sum it up. It's just a shame a lot of these just boil down to shooting what is a blatant weak spot over and over and burning through your much coveted camera supply. I'd really love to show footage of these because some of them are really creative but it's best to experience them yourself.

GAME PLAY

In terms of the gameplay, initially you're just trying to avoid the Baker's whilst rescuing Mia but then the game was kind of opens up and you're able to explore the entire Baker plantation split up across three different houses which is where the Resident Evil 1 vibe kind of kicks in. At this point, you're moving around sections of the house finding new Keys, collecting items, dropping set items off in item boxes, mixing herbs into healing items all that kind of stuff. Instead of the armor key or the helmet key you get the scorpion key and the crow key and there's even a shotgun puzzle that's pretty much exactly the same as it was in the original game.

The puzzles aren't exactly brain busting it just involves remembering which item has to go where with a bit of backtracking to explore new areas here and there. Inquisitive players get rewarded with better items, ammo and weapons and yes a version the Magnum is in this game and it's absolutely glorious.
Slaughter enemies are these things called the molded which remind me a fair bit of the enemies from revelations. You often fight maybe two or three of these things at a time and they're pretty easy to take down with a few well-placed headshots or a point-blank range shotgun blast.

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Meanwhile you've also got to avoid the marauding Baker's mostly just jack and Marguerite who patrol areas of the house constantly trying to find Ethan. Imagine if nemesis had a wife and they were both redneck shit-talk and assholes and you can kind of get the picture. I'd also compare these sections to a game like alien isolation where it's much smarter to try and take a stealthy approach and remain undetected than it is to just run around like a jackass . You can kill them in a sense but it only gives you a couple of minutes of peace before they revive and start chasing around again that's not really worth to drain on your resources.

Also, because Ethan is surprisingly slow at well everything from running away, from whoever happens to be chasing him through to the simplest tasks like opening doors or reloading weapons. Now I get this was kind of the point to make those moments more tense and suspenseful but there's not really any good reason for him to casually open a door with no haste especially when he's being chased by Jack Baker brandishing a goddamn Sledgehammer.

On that note the area for the Baker's isn't really amazing to be honest I mean there's times when you'd sworn they've seen you I mean they're even glancing in your direction but they don't seem to react at all. When you are spotted sometimes they'll pursue you relentlessly and yet other times they'll simply give up when you get a room away from them. Those moments when you're being pursued by either of them in the highlights of the game, and as a result the pacing of everything does kind of trip and stumble towards the end of the campaign.

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There are a lot of linear sections here where you move down what are basically one long corridor just killing enemies over and over and it's a little bit boring. As I said, it kind of starts off feeling like Resident Evil 1 mixed with resume 3 then there's those linear sections that feel more reminiscent of Resident Evil 6 mixed in with a well-designed section towards the end of the game that feels like Resident Evil Revelations.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

Resident Evil 7 runs off the Resident Evil engine and it does look pretty damn spectacular. The environments are photorealistic at times, the textures look pretty good and the general level of detail is just stunning. The visuals quite cleverly play on a lot of phobias and fears like the fear of tight spaces, your bugs, fear of the dark it's just this great culmination of the sound and visuals to create a frightening and believable game world.

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Another thing I like is that the game doesn't solely rely on jump scares to scare the player, it does have its fair share of them most of which you can see coming a mile away but it's more about getting under your skin and staying there and as a result it's much more effective. I guess the real game-changer is the first-person perspective which is consistent throughout the entire game.

Not only does this make the game feel a bit more of a unique entry in the series but it also heightens that horror atmosphere and you're also able to adjust the FOV to your liking as well which is kind of a big deal. I also have to say I haven't had any issues with the performance in fact I don't think the games shattered the entire time I was playing it and the load times for pretty brisk as well.

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

OS: WINDOWS® 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (64-BIT Required)
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4460, 2.70GHz or AMD FX™-6300 or better
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 760 or AMD Radeon™ R7 260x with 2GB Video RAM
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 24 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectSound compatible (must support DirectX® 9.0c or higher)

RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

OS: WINDOWS® 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (64-BIT Required)
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 3770 3.4GHz or AMD equivalent or better
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 with 3GB VRAM
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 24 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectSound compatible (must support DirectX® 9.0c or higher)

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REVIEW/RATING

Graphics 8/10
Sound 8/10
Gameplay 7/10
Controls 7/10
Effect 8/10

OVERALL REVIEW/RATING

7.4\10

DEVELOPER

CAPCOM Co, Ltd.

PUBLISHER

CAPCOM Co, Ltd.

GENRE

First-person shooter, Survival horror.

RELEASE DATE

24 Jan, 2017

CONCLUSION

Overall, the campaign is about as long as it needs to be without feeling too drawn out. All up it took me around 10 hours to finish the whole thing on normal which is pre standard for Resident Evil game. I mean I've never really had 30 hour-long campaigns or anything like that in the past and people who complain about the lens that forgetting the replayability aspect. Even after you finish the game or Normal difficulty, you've still got to finish it on madhouse difficulty which changes the placement of items and the behavior of enemies and limits the amount of manual saves you can make as well.

So if you're after a genuinely scary game that kind of feels like Resident Evil and think it's worth paying full price then check it out. It's a shame it couldn't hold the pacing throughout the entire game but when it works, it works well. I think it’s going to be one of the better horror games we're going to see in 2017 and sure it’s better than operation Raccoon City.