Resident Evil 7: Biohazard Plus Banned Footage Game Review

Where do you think you're going...

Resident Evil 7 takes you to a completely different world sat in Dulvey, Louisiana. The story revolves around finding the whereabouts of Ethan Winters missing wife, Mia who is kidnapped by the Baker family. With a lot of hype for use of the new Playstation VR technology and an attempt at new gaming experience to redeem the franchise, a lot was placed on RE7.  Can new developers deliver when the pressure is on harder than a horror movie?

In this latest installment of the Resident Evil series,  RE7 prioritizes tone over action, in true horror survival horror fashion, everything is in short supply and you must manage you limited inventory while exploring a linear game that is rare for the new open world games that are dominating the industry.

Most of the game revolved around being in tough situations and struggling to adapt.  It's all about changing up your survival tactics to meet each challenge, scavenging for items, and conserving what little ammo you have.  I was happy to see some core elements that hadn't been in Resident evil since the 1990's games return as a factor.

In RE7, there is a strong sense of returning to the tradition of placement that makes frequent exploration and back track work without wearing out its welcome.  As an attempt to move away from the antics of Wesker and the umbrella corporation, RE7 introduces new antagonist known as the Baker family.

The Baker family descent into savagery and the way it has manifested into their domestic life.  The Baker family really uphold southern stereotypes that come off as dated yet funny.  Each family member has a quirk that gives you a challenge: whether it's your face terror by Jack the father. whether a stealth approach by Marguerite the wife, whether it's by Lucas the son setting traps like the movie Saw to keep you off balance and make you afraid of things you once took for balance.



Negatives

• The only low point was the simple puzzle solving that has been a trend of the series since it went main stream. 
• There were moments were you are putting into a linear progression and wasting bullets on enemies that can't be killed until certain moments feel like poor execution of the capabilities. 
• The big draw to RE7 was the introduction of Playstation VR for a major title game.  My resident evil experience was good with and without VR.  There were only a handful of sequences that were designed to take advantage of the new technology.  Tbh the only time you really get the best use out of the technology is when fighting in enemy in close corners.

Positives

• The atmosphere is similar to Silent Hill PT.  manages to handle horror/survival and first person shooter well.
• There is a compelling pace that made pulling levers, finding keys to lock doors and dodging enemies feel natural.  Even the out of place puzzle solving felt a like shallow nods  to a by gone era rather than a constant continuation the elements that defined and invented.

Overall, I think they were ambitious, but developers didn't do much with the 10 hour campaign to keep you compel to want more.  It's opportunity there, but the game fell short on capitalizing that opportunity.  Resident Evil 7: Bio hazard is a good game not a great game.  It was a nice break from fighting zombies and umbrella corporation mercenaries, but I didn't feel the character development was there nor engagement to see the story conclude a certain way.  Overall, I give RE7 an 8 out 10.

Resident Evil 7: The Beginning Hour E3

In honor of Resident Evil 20th year anniversary, Capcom treated us to a like teaser gameplay for Resident Evil 7: The Beginning Hour. 

Seems like this installment will center around some cult called the "The Family". In the trailer, you will have to escape imprisonment in their abandoned home.  In the beginning, you are watching a video of the previous victims/prisoners, and now you are the new prisoner.  

A first for Resident Evil, you play in first-person and as a character who is absolutely weaponless. Comparisons will definitely be made to survival horror franchises likeAmnesia or Outlast, although the overall feel of the demo was definitely more akin to Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro’s P.T. demo. In fact, that demo is The Beginning Hour’s most obvious influence, which would normally put it in sort of an awkward position if it weren’t for the fact that both Silent Hills and Allison Road have been canceled. Resident Evil 7, on the other hand, has the best chance of finally delivering the experience teased in P.T.

There seems like there will be a lot of puzzle solving and jump scares to keep you on your toes. I fell like the days of the hack and slash or Hollywood run and gun resident evils are done. Seem like developers took note of the fans saying the game got too cheesy and copied too much of MW 3rd person zombie stuff.  Resident Evil 7 will be out for XBO, PS4, and PC, and will be fully playable in VR on Jan. 24, 2017.

Resident Evil 7 Confirmed

Capcom and gamers were disappointed with the product known as Resident Evil 6.  A lot of hype but little improvement lead to low sales and poor consumer ratings. This time around Capcom promises to do more with Resident Evil 7: The War Ends Now.

In an interview for  The Market for Computer & Video Games (MVC) a Capcom representative stated: "We have obviously seen the consumer response and the PR response, "former Capcom marketing boss Michael Pattison told MCV. There was some great positives out of that, but it was a mixed bag, as we saw from the review scores.  We have got to take that on-board, we can't ignore that, and we have to take that onto the next game when we make the next Resident Evil".

He added: "With Resident Evil 6 specifically, we probably put too much content in there, there were comments from consumers that said it felt bloated.  The Leon missions went down very well, and because we did Resident Evil Revelations on 3DS, there was a cry out for us to focus our attention on survival horror, rather than be too many things to all people.  You'll find where we go next will likely be more targeted at our core fan base".

The Capcom representative continued to say, " A lot is said about the saturation of this zombie, post-apocalyptic survival horror.  But it is still alive and well.  The Last of Us shows a good direction of what the consumers want.  Tomb Raider as well, we spoke to R&D and they looked at the and they enjoyed that experience.  I think that proves there is still a strong market for that sort of content".

Capcom, you finally get the message that focusing on survival horror, targeting the core fan base, and taking the Micheal Bay movies out of the games will finally produce better sells.  Well, lets hope that Capcom didn't learn their lesson too late.

I believe Capcom has finally taken their collective heads out their butts and started to listen to the demands of the market instead of what they think should be the next direction for gaming.  I believe a lot of gaming companies are caught up by what Shigeru Miyamoto said 20+ years ago about Donkey Kong 2 and 3 when asked why does the banana tallies serve no purpose in the games other than just counting the bananas you collect.

Miyamoto jokingly laughed off the repeated gaming glitch and claimed foreign markets do not care about content of games.  All the Western [hemisphere] markets care about is that the game has a lot of pretty graphics.  

The Last of Us proved to video game marketing "experts" that the most important thing to consumers isn't the game being trendy or flashy.  The most important thing to consumers is that the game is actually good!

The Last of Us didn't sell just because it was a next generation survival horror game.  The Last of Us sold because word spread among consumers how amazing and fun the game was.  Unlike in Resident Evil 6 where the word spread how big a disappointment the game was and how the game tried to do much with a focus on quantity over quality.

High quality of the game is what ensures you'll have a loyal fan base not just a bunch of repetitive content with a reunion of popular characters from the franchise.  In terms of Resident Evil 6, you can have 7 characters and 30+ hours of game-play, but if the levels and characters actions are the same what's the point of playing a game that long?  In terms of The Last of Us, you can have 2 characters and 12-15 hours of solid game-play and that's good enough.

For Resident Evil 7 let's hope the marketing department takes notes from the success of The Last of Us and gets to work on researching consumer interest and developers focus and take the quality of the content into consideration.