Resident Evil 7: Biohazard review
Jun 25, 2024 23:12:30 GMT -5
Post by Bob Page on Jun 25, 2024 23:12:30 GMT -5
***Yes, I know this game came out in 2017, but I literally just got around to playing it, so there ya go. Also, this is just my opinion, so don't take it personally and feel free to disagree. I'd love to hear others' opinions, and this is just one man's experience.***
Resident Evil 7 is, in my opinion, a very bad game. It features terrible and unoriginal writing, unrealistic and sometimes nonsensical dialogue, frustrating controls, boring and repetitive gameplay, weak characters that aren’t properly fleshed out or meaningfully differentiated from one another, a paucity of unique enemies, and a clear intention to cater to trends such as VR rather than to craft a unique and interesting experience. Perhaps one of it’s worst sins is not being scary at all, relying on kitschy jump-scares and mountains of gore rather than utilizing atmosphere and tension to build a truly frightening experience. It’s a game that brings nothing new to the table and provided no fun for me whatsoever.
The game plagiarizes the plot and gameplay of Outlast, a game that came out 4 years earlier and featured better graphics, a more original story, and way better writing, dialogue, and gameplay. In both Outlast and RE7, you play as a normal guy (not a cop/ex-military tough guy, etc.) who goes into a large creepy structure and is chased around by scary entities. The main difference is that in Outlast the player cannot attack at all, whereas in RE7 the player can attack and can occasionally kill some things, but often has to resort to the very same "run away, hide/wait, then creep by and complete objective" tactics that the player would be doing in Outlast. Also, one of the writers for this game, Richard Pearsey, also worked on two F.E.A.R. expansion packs, which is likely why the lazily written plot contains a character (Eveline) who is almost identical to Alma from F.E.A.R. The members of the Baker family don’t really have unique personalities and could have been made much more interesting if more effort was put into fleshing them out and giving them unique characteristics.
RE7 is woefully linear, which is a far cry from previous Resident Evil games, which were very non-linear and scarier as a direct result of this attribute. The gameplay largely consists of navigating through a mazey Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired house looking for items and keys while bizarre murderous rednecks and gooey, vaguely humanoid blob monsters chase you. The game discourages exploration in many sections, because often the player is relentlessly pursued by enemies that can’t be killed and thus must be avoided. This type of approach to gameplay begs for responsive controls and good maneuverability, but instead we get clunky controls and a player character that moves like he is wading through Jello. In addition to being incredibly frustrating, the controls are often unintuitive, such as the poorly designed real time menu. The player’s run speed is painfully slow, and often one cannot differentiate between non-interactive sequences and moments where the player is expected to try to regain control of the action. The non-boss encounters in this game are pretty boring. There are very few unique enemy types, which is a confusing decision for a franchise which always had fairly good enemy variety. The boss fights are terribly designed and janky as heck. On normal skill level I was unable to beat an early boss even after almost two hours of attempting to defeat him. This was 100% due to unresponsive controls, trash gameplay mechanics, and just an overall poorly designed boss fight that wasn't fun to play at all. It was very obvious what I was supposed to do, yet effectively executing it was so difficult because of the poor design and absolutely waterlogged controls. My deaths were not the result of a lack of skill, because I was doing exactly what the game wanted me to do. Rather, the boss' movement speed, hit detection, and even hit points seemed to fluctuate in a way that always worked in his favor. So the fight was just frustrating and tedious and sucked any fun I may have been having right out of the game. And I didn't care enough to want to keep wasting my time trying to beat an early boss in a game that I don't even like.
The dialogue in Resident Evil 7 is absolutely abysmal. By comparison, Outlast had truly haunting dialogue and used set pieces and key visuals to tell the story artfully. This game is ham-fisted and goofy at best. As an example, after the player character learns that his wife (who has been missing for 3 years) might actually be alive, we see him calling his friend as he’s driving to where his wife presumably is. However, his demeanor during this phone call does not match the gravity of the situation at hand. His attitude conveys things like "Hey buddy, just FYI my wife is actually alive...I might try to find her, but I'm good so don't bother helping me or calling the cops or anything. I'm going alone without any weapons to some place in rural Louisiana. And I'm not gonna bother telling you the address because I'll be just fine despite having no military or law enforcement training and being unarmed." Then he gets to the place and beholds mutilated cattle/farm animals and rotting meat everywhere, watches a snuff video on VHS (yes VHS, because people still use that format?) where at least two people are clearly murdered, and then wades through water inches from a dead human body and traverses rooms full of gore. But when he finally finds his wife, he reacts like someone lacking a functioning limbic cortex or hypothalamus which could allow for proper emotional responses. This Asperger syndrome sufferer keeps stopping his wife and bugging her with questions like "What happened? Are you gonna tell me what's going on? Hey wait, what did they do to you?" This is in no way realistic. Any remotely well-adjusted human being would be looking for the exit immediately, and wouldn't be interrogating their own WIFE who suffered unspeakable torment. But our protagonist literally says to his WIFE who has suffered horrible abuses for 3 years, "Just stay here, I'm gonna have a look around." Yes, that is actual dialogue, verbatim, from the game. The man found his wife who's clearly been kidnapped and brutalized for 3 years, and he decides to leave her in another room of a charnel house so he can look around. It is absolute garbage writing, and it doesn’t get any better from there. I was unable to immerse myself in the game or suspend disbelief when I was hearing such ridiculous dialogue and witnessing the player character react in ways that made no sense and didn’t fit the scenario at all. We of course know that Silent Hill was always the thinking man's survival horror game with superior psychological horror and replete with deeper meaning and symbolism, but I still expected at least passable writing from a game which is attempting to be serious and scary. Boy was I wrong.
The game also has little to do with Resident Evil, despite being touted as a return to form after RE6. Chris Redfield is shoehorned in at the very end of the game, and the Baker house has puzzles, so I guess those were the nebulous connections to the Resident Evil franchise. But to me, this felt like a wholly different game with Resident Evil written on the package.
This game is the antithesis of a fun time. It's a poorly written, hard to control, heavy-handed, hackneyed, boring experience that insults my intelligence, and the dialogue sounds like it was written by a 10-year-old autistic child. I'm glad that I only paid $8 for this pile of detritus, and despite not being eligible for a refund, I have permanently removed it from my Steam library, because I don't want to give this game the honor of existing alongside the truly great games which adorn my collection.
Resident Evil 7 is, in my opinion, a very bad game. It features terrible and unoriginal writing, unrealistic and sometimes nonsensical dialogue, frustrating controls, boring and repetitive gameplay, weak characters that aren’t properly fleshed out or meaningfully differentiated from one another, a paucity of unique enemies, and a clear intention to cater to trends such as VR rather than to craft a unique and interesting experience. Perhaps one of it’s worst sins is not being scary at all, relying on kitschy jump-scares and mountains of gore rather than utilizing atmosphere and tension to build a truly frightening experience. It’s a game that brings nothing new to the table and provided no fun for me whatsoever.
The game plagiarizes the plot and gameplay of Outlast, a game that came out 4 years earlier and featured better graphics, a more original story, and way better writing, dialogue, and gameplay. In both Outlast and RE7, you play as a normal guy (not a cop/ex-military tough guy, etc.) who goes into a large creepy structure and is chased around by scary entities. The main difference is that in Outlast the player cannot attack at all, whereas in RE7 the player can attack and can occasionally kill some things, but often has to resort to the very same "run away, hide/wait, then creep by and complete objective" tactics that the player would be doing in Outlast. Also, one of the writers for this game, Richard Pearsey, also worked on two F.E.A.R. expansion packs, which is likely why the lazily written plot contains a character (Eveline) who is almost identical to Alma from F.E.A.R. The members of the Baker family don’t really have unique personalities and could have been made much more interesting if more effort was put into fleshing them out and giving them unique characteristics.
RE7 is woefully linear, which is a far cry from previous Resident Evil games, which were very non-linear and scarier as a direct result of this attribute. The gameplay largely consists of navigating through a mazey Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired house looking for items and keys while bizarre murderous rednecks and gooey, vaguely humanoid blob monsters chase you. The game discourages exploration in many sections, because often the player is relentlessly pursued by enemies that can’t be killed and thus must be avoided. This type of approach to gameplay begs for responsive controls and good maneuverability, but instead we get clunky controls and a player character that moves like he is wading through Jello. In addition to being incredibly frustrating, the controls are often unintuitive, such as the poorly designed real time menu. The player’s run speed is painfully slow, and often one cannot differentiate between non-interactive sequences and moments where the player is expected to try to regain control of the action. The non-boss encounters in this game are pretty boring. There are very few unique enemy types, which is a confusing decision for a franchise which always had fairly good enemy variety. The boss fights are terribly designed and janky as heck. On normal skill level I was unable to beat an early boss even after almost two hours of attempting to defeat him. This was 100% due to unresponsive controls, trash gameplay mechanics, and just an overall poorly designed boss fight that wasn't fun to play at all. It was very obvious what I was supposed to do, yet effectively executing it was so difficult because of the poor design and absolutely waterlogged controls. My deaths were not the result of a lack of skill, because I was doing exactly what the game wanted me to do. Rather, the boss' movement speed, hit detection, and even hit points seemed to fluctuate in a way that always worked in his favor. So the fight was just frustrating and tedious and sucked any fun I may have been having right out of the game. And I didn't care enough to want to keep wasting my time trying to beat an early boss in a game that I don't even like.
The dialogue in Resident Evil 7 is absolutely abysmal. By comparison, Outlast had truly haunting dialogue and used set pieces and key visuals to tell the story artfully. This game is ham-fisted and goofy at best. As an example, after the player character learns that his wife (who has been missing for 3 years) might actually be alive, we see him calling his friend as he’s driving to where his wife presumably is. However, his demeanor during this phone call does not match the gravity of the situation at hand. His attitude conveys things like "Hey buddy, just FYI my wife is actually alive...I might try to find her, but I'm good so don't bother helping me or calling the cops or anything. I'm going alone without any weapons to some place in rural Louisiana. And I'm not gonna bother telling you the address because I'll be just fine despite having no military or law enforcement training and being unarmed." Then he gets to the place and beholds mutilated cattle/farm animals and rotting meat everywhere, watches a snuff video on VHS (yes VHS, because people still use that format?) where at least two people are clearly murdered, and then wades through water inches from a dead human body and traverses rooms full of gore. But when he finally finds his wife, he reacts like someone lacking a functioning limbic cortex or hypothalamus which could allow for proper emotional responses. This Asperger syndrome sufferer keeps stopping his wife and bugging her with questions like "What happened? Are you gonna tell me what's going on? Hey wait, what did they do to you?" This is in no way realistic. Any remotely well-adjusted human being would be looking for the exit immediately, and wouldn't be interrogating their own WIFE who suffered unspeakable torment. But our protagonist literally says to his WIFE who has suffered horrible abuses for 3 years, "Just stay here, I'm gonna have a look around." Yes, that is actual dialogue, verbatim, from the game. The man found his wife who's clearly been kidnapped and brutalized for 3 years, and he decides to leave her in another room of a charnel house so he can look around. It is absolute garbage writing, and it doesn’t get any better from there. I was unable to immerse myself in the game or suspend disbelief when I was hearing such ridiculous dialogue and witnessing the player character react in ways that made no sense and didn’t fit the scenario at all. We of course know that Silent Hill was always the thinking man's survival horror game with superior psychological horror and replete with deeper meaning and symbolism, but I still expected at least passable writing from a game which is attempting to be serious and scary. Boy was I wrong.
The game also has little to do with Resident Evil, despite being touted as a return to form after RE6. Chris Redfield is shoehorned in at the very end of the game, and the Baker house has puzzles, so I guess those were the nebulous connections to the Resident Evil franchise. But to me, this felt like a wholly different game with Resident Evil written on the package.
This game is the antithesis of a fun time. It's a poorly written, hard to control, heavy-handed, hackneyed, boring experience that insults my intelligence, and the dialogue sounds like it was written by a 10-year-old autistic child. I'm glad that I only paid $8 for this pile of detritus, and despite not being eligible for a refund, I have permanently removed it from my Steam library, because I don't want to give this game the honor of existing alongside the truly great games which adorn my collection.
