Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Welcome back fellow Steemians, it's that time of the week again, weekend but also time for your weekly game review fix.

Well today‘s game is another one of those franchises that goes way, way back, all the way back to when console gaming actually started taking off, the good old PlayStation One. I know some of you older gamers are thinking, wait hold on, console gaming didn't start with the PS1, and you are completely correct. Console gaming started in the mid 1970's with basic line and dot games like pong, then came the Atari 2600, the game market skyrocketed and then crashed. It was more around the time of the 5th generation consoles where everything started going more from 2D to 3D, that's pretty much when the console market only kept going up.

One of the very first games I fell in love with was Resident Evil, and I presume most of you know what I'm talking about. This was long before the likes of the Walking Dead and all the other zombie games, movies and TV shows. This was also probably one of the first horror games on the market, and became a pretty huge franchise with twenty three games under the belt as well as six feature films all staring Milla Jovovich. The films unfortunately were not the best, with the first one being the best and the rest kind of gradually getting worse as they kept going, in my humble opinion. When it comes to the games, they just got better and better from the first game, up until Resident Evil 5, after that things mostly went downhill. The one thing that gets to me is the continuity of the story, with each new title it just gets more and more confusing, which is something common when you have so many different folks working on the story.

Our story takes place in the present, the year is 2017 and our protagonist is Ethan Winters.

He is mysteriously drawn to a derelict plantation in Dulvey, Louisiana, by a message from his wife Mia, the only problem is that she has been presumed dead for three years. Ethan has no choice but to go and find his wife, he eventually ends up at a very creepy looking derelict house. He finds his wife Mia imprisoned in the basement of a seemingly abandoned house, but she becomes very aggressive and violent, and ends up attacking him, so much so that he is finally forced to kill her or face death himself. After this horrible ordeal he receives call from a woman named Zoe offering assistance, this is when Mia is somehow revived and proceeds to attack him once more, and in the struggle cuts off his hand. The mysterious women who called him, Zoe, shows up and helps to reattach his hand. Ethan is then captured by Jack, the head of the Baker family, the owner of the house he is in, along with his wife Marguerite, their son Lucas, and an elderly woman in a wheelchair who is in a kind of catatonic state. Ethan is able to escape but is pursued all around the house by Jack, who has powerful and seemingly unnatural regenerative abilities. As he tries to steer clear of Jack, Ethan eventually ends up in the basement, only to come face to face with an eerie reanimated monster known only as Molded.

Zoe then reveals that she is actually Jack's daughter, and that the rest of her family and his wife Mia have been infected with some strange virus, which could possibly be a strain of the original T-Virus. She also tells him that there is a cure for this virus, but he needs to create a special serum in hopes of saving his wife and Zoe's family.

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Resident Evil 7 has completely revamped the gameplay style and moved away from the more action based play like we saw from Resident Evil 4 onward.

The developers have decided to revert back to the original horror adventure and exploration style like we had in the first three games. I had a bit of a love hate feeling towards the action based play style, it worked in the beginning but became more of a nuisance in the later games, to the degree that I wasn't really all that interested in playing them. The developers have definitely taken some rather big risks with this game, one of them being the new first-person view, which is a first for the series, as all the games have always gone with the third-person configuration. Another big risk was the almost completely new story line, and not featuring any of the famous characters that have grown to be fan favorites over the many years, this is always a very risky decision to make. Sometimes however you do need a complete overhaul, make a bet and let the cards fall where they may.

They really did go back to the original and this is one of the creepiest single settings since the Spencer Mansion from the first game, and an epic bizarre mystery to unravel, which is something I haven't experienced in a Resident Evil game for years now. All the previous games in the series had a very much Walking Dead kind of visual feel and zombie element to them, whereas this very much resembles that of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The best way to describe it would to call it a hillbilly horror, set in rural America about a rather disgusting and dysfunctional family known as the Bakers.

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"At the beginning of the 21st century, the Umbrella Corporation had become the largest commercial entity in the United States. Nine out of every ten homes contain its products. Its political and financial influence is felt everywhere. In public, it is the world's leading supplier of computer technology, medical products, and healthcare. Unknown, even to its own employees, its massive profits are generated by military technology, genetic experimentation, and viral weaponry." - Red Queen

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Resident Evil 7 is a really enjoyable experience that has you on the edge of you seat for most of the game.

There were some memorable moments where you would walk past a room and in the corner of your eye you would get a glimpse of a figure, only to back track to find nothing there. There were a few things lacking, and most disappointingly were the great puzzles the original games had. There definitely are some in this game but they are rare and solving them took almost no effort what so ever, as most of the time the answers was usually right in front of you. When is came to fighting, as with all the previous games, you need to survive by either fleeing or taking the enemies out permanently, because if you don't they will be there when you back track. Unlike the previous games, going through a door will not save you from potential death, because whatever is chasing you will be coming through that door behind you.

This new installment feels more like an adventure game than a first-person shooter, which is a good return to what the originals were, despite the shift to first-person. The game also seems to have a much more logical approach when it comes to what you need to do next or where you have to go, so you don't end up running around like a headless chicken trying to find your way. I would also have loved to try this out on VR, yet I don't think I would be able to play the entire game like that, my nerves wouldn't handle that kind of stress. Resident Evil 7 was fun with great scare elements and a welcome return I really hope to see more of in the future.

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Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is a survival horror game developed and published by the good folks at Capcom.

Who are famously know for titles like Street Fighter, Monster Hunter as well as the the entire Resident Evil series. This game was released in January 2017 for Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, and in May 2018 for the Nintendo Switch in Japan. Diverging from the more action-oriented Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6, Resident Evil 7 returns to the franchise's survival horror roots of the first three games, emphasizing exploration and yes, survival. Resident Evil 7 is also the first full-length game to use Capcom's in-house RE Engine. This game also supports the PlayStation VR headset for those who want to really have the life scared out of you in virtual reality, not something I would recommend, it's just a little too much on the senses. The game is just over the one year mark, so you should be seeing some nice deals for it and especially with the Christmas season around the corner. Just a warning this is definitely not suitable for children, and also not for for the squeamish.