Resident Evil 7

 

          The Resident Evil franchise is one that I cannot help but have mixed feelings on.  The first three games are straight up classics of the 5^th generation era of gaming and really brought the horror genera to the medium in a way that few video games had managed to do.  But one cannot deny that they do not hold up particularly well.  Between the tank controls, god awful voice acting, constant use of tired genera clichés and a plot that got more and more ridiculous as time went on, the original games are a very hard sell for anyone who didn’t grow up with them.  Resident Evil 4, on the other hand, is not only a classic that holds up very well but a game that helped redefine the entire medium.  While there were undoubtedly other games that had tried, Resident Evil 4 was the first game to really prefect things that are now clichés of the medium such as epic scripted events, pop and cover shooting as well as the now hated quick time event.  The game also wisely abandoned the ridiculous story elements of the previous games in order to tell its own story that was equally ridiculous but was clearly more aware of just how silly its was and is one of my all-time favorite games as a result.

            Then Resident Evil 5 happened and the franchise went into a downward spiral that it never quite recovered from.  The game took itself far too seriously and tried to hammer in a political message regarding colonialism in Africa that went about as well as a man sporting a swastika showing up at a Holocaust memorial service.  And then we have Resident Evil 6.  Oh.  My.  God.  Resident Evil 6.  This game may have been the worst game that I ever had the displeasure of spending 60 dollars on.  It would take an entire article to go into why it is that I despise this game so much but should suffice to say that it was the game that effectively killed the entire franchise for me and up until recently I’ve wanted nothing to do with it.  But then 2016’s E3 happened and Nerd Hub editor Jack Flowers recommended that I take a look at Resident Evil 7’s first hour demo.  And, as anyone who read my E3 articles knows, it really put the hook in me and all but guaranteed that I would be taking a look at the game.  Now that the game has finally been released I can honestly say that it is easily the best installment since Resident Evil 4, even if it is far from perfect.

            In the game, you play as Ethan Winters, a relatively ordinary man who is called to an apparently abandoned estate in Louisiana by his wife who went missing three years ago.  At the estate, he finds a number of derelict buildings inhabited by the deranged Baker family affected by some mysterious affliction.  With little hope of rescue, it’s up to Ethan to fight and sneak his way through the estate, rescue his wife, find a cure for what is afflicting her and stop the force that caused all of this in the first place.

            The first thing most fans of the franchise will notice is how radical of a departure it is from previous installments.  Everything from the gameplay design to the narrative to the characters have next to nothing in common with previous entries.  In fact, had it not been for a few Easter Eggs connecting it to the larger RE Universe, one could have easily mistaken this game for an entirely new IP.  And if we’re being honest, this is a big part of what makes the game work so well.

            A lot of this has to do with the scale of the story being told.  Previous games had a tendency to focus on UN Bio CTU forces and Secret Service agents involved in world ending conspiracies fighting baddies who were equal parts Cronenbergian body horror mutations and hammy, sliver age comic book villains.  Resident Evil 7, however, abandons all of this to tell a smaller, more intimate story and this slips into nearly every aspect of the game.  The closest thing that one can compare it to is the 2014 game, Alien: Isolation.  Like Isolation, you play as protagonist who is by no means a soldier and is stuck in an isolated location with little hope of rescue and is one of the few sane people left to do anything about the current situation.  You're faced with seeming invincible enemies and are forced to sneak around them, finding ways to unlock new locations, dealing with a few generic enemies here and there, scavenging for supplies to make much needed weapons, ammo and med kits while doing a significant amount of back tracking to previously inaccessible points.  But in spite of all of these similarities the gameplay still manages to be incredibly satisfying.

            The first thing that it does right is create an incredibly creepy atmosphere as you are never sure what will be waiting for you around the next corner.  The lighting, sound design, voice acting and unsettling set design all help to create an unnerving environment that makes you take each step with caution.  This is especially true in the first half of the game where you are forced to sneak around invincible antagonists that each have their own unique abilities that you have to overcome.  The level design is a big part of this.  In total, the game only has 6 areas to explore and all of them are relatively small and do require a lot of backtracking.  However, like the antagonists, each environment has its own unique theme, be it bugs, bombs, or the natural uneasy feeling one gets from seeing a house in disuse and ultimately gives us an atmosphere that continues to be creepy but also manages to remain fresh with its variety.  Granted, these environments and antagonists borrow very heavily from franchises like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Evil Dead and Saw but they come off more nostalgic tributes as opposed to blatant rip-offs

            Like Isolation, a good portion of the game involves running around these areas while looking for keys, wrenches and other tools in order to progress further in the game while sneaking around nigh invincible enemies.  However, the game manages to be a radical improvement over Isolation in two big ways.  The first is that antagonists don’t kill you in one hit, nor do they automatically sprint towards you the moment they spot you.  They will come at you and turn you into mints meat if they can but in taking away the one hit kill rule, they manage to keep the tension but lacks the same level of frustration as a result.  The second is that you never stay in any of these areas for too long.  Where as in Isolation you spend an infuriatingly amount of time backtracking to the same places over and over again, Resident Evil 7 knows just how long to keep you in certain locations.  You ultimately spend just enough time in each of these areas to become intimately familiar with them but not long enough to become sick of them and is where this game went right where Isolation went wrong.

           Unfortunately, like Isolation, the game features a pretty weak crafting system that felt very tacked on.  The entire system is more or less done by combining chemical fluids with other raw materials such as gunpowder and herbs to create ammo, med kits and such and lacks any real depth or variety.  However, the game does succeed in giving you just enough to get by for the most part.  Throughout the majority of the game you only ever have just enough ammo to get through enemies and only just enough healing materials to keep you alive.  This forces players to manage their resources carefully and actually think about when and how to use them as using too much at the wrong time can result in a position where the game in unwinnable.

            Unfortunately, this level of tension does not last the entirety of the game.  As the game goes on, Ethan obtains increasingly powerful weapons and by the time the game’s final act rolls around he’s armed like a space marine with assault rifles, flame throwers, and even a grenade launcher and is able to turn the enemies into goo without much problem.  By the time this happens most of the invincible enemies have been dispatched and your only left with the game’s generic enemies and the thing turns into a pretty bland corridor shooter and throws small waves of said enemies at you seemingly just to pass the time.  It tries to compensate for this by adding in phycological horror elements to the mix but they don’t work particularly well and ultimately feel like cheap attempts to make the player jump.

            Everything else about the game follows a similar pattern.  It’s all really good and entertaining but it usually comes with a pretty heavy stipulation.  The game’s main character Ethan is, in some ways, the perfect example of this.  Unlike all the other RE protagonists, Ethan, as far as we know, is just a regular guy who got caught up in this mess.  He is certainly capable but is very clearly out of his element and works perfectly as a player insert character.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t really amount to anything more than this.  He has no real defining characteristics and we know next to nothing about him by the time the credits roll.  We never see his face and what little dialog he has is very lazily voice acted and never amounts to much more than asking questions that the player is also more than likely asking.  One of the best examples of this is at the start of the game when you find Mia, Ethan’s wife.  Before long she goes berserk due to whatever affecting her and you are forced to put an axe in her neck.  It’s a pretty grisly scene but we get nothing in terms of emotion from Ethan.  He finds his wife who has been missing for three years only for her to try and kill him and is forced to apparently kill her in self-defense and his attitude on the situation amount to, “Huh.  That was freaky.”  It’s a very odd emotional disconnect that he has throughout the game and cannot help but take one out of it.

            Thankfully the game does make up for it with its antagonists.  Resident Evil villains have always been one of the more memorable parts of the franchise and this game is no exception.  In fact it could be argued that the game has the best antagonists that the franchise has ever produced.  At first the Bakers come off as a family of stereotypical redneck psychos and throughout most of the game they don’t really shake this appearance.  But they do manage to be the best version of the stereotypical psycho redneck family that you can possibly ask for.  Family patriarch Jack Baker is just a charisma machine and manages to find the perfect balance of humor and terror and you get the impression the voice actor was having a ton of fun doing the role.  The same can be said for his son, Lucas Baker.  The character is indeed horrifying as he takes sadistic pleasure in putting people through Saw-like death mazes but the voice acting behind it manages to find the right balance of horror and humor that you can’t help but have fun with it.

            In the end, what really elevates these characters past most Resident Evil antagonists is that there is a certain air of tragedy to them.  We don’t get a whole lot of information as to who these people were before the events of the game but what information we do get seems to indicate that they were otherwise pretty decent people.  Perhaps a little on the reclusive side but decent folks all the same.  In fact, it’s highly implied that it was that decentness that got them into this situation to begin with.  The same can be said of the game’s final antagonist.  I won’t spoil anything but it’s pretty clear that the character is one whose motivations are actually kind of pure in its intent, making the character’s situation feel all the sadder.

            The only character that they really dropped the ball with was Mia as she is one who has very little functionality or personality beyond being a damsel in distress.  Even when she finally breaks that mold she ultimately ends up inadvertently undercutting the quality of the story writing.  Later in the game she is eventually revealed to actually be one of the uber competent badasses that usually make up the protagonists of the this franchise.  At the same time, it reveals her to be the cause of all of the game’s problems as well as quite possibly the worst human being in the entire game.  The problem is that the developers don’t seem to be aware of this.  Revealing just what it is would constitute as a major spoiler but their does seem to be a major disconnect between the text and the subtext regarding this character.  As a result it’s kind of hard to figure out if this was meant to be a darkly ironic twist or if the writers didn’t actually know what they were implying with this.  Either way it just doesn’t work as well in its execution as it should have.

            In the end, Resident Evil 7 is a flawed game but still a fun one.  It features great antagonists, a fantastic horror atmosphere and tense gameplay that is sure to keep you on the edge of your seat.  Is it a masterpiece?  No.  Is it the best game in the franchise?  No.  But it is a decent little horror game that’s sure to scare and excite you for a good 15 hours or so.  Sometimes that’s enough.

                So until next time, please follow the site, like the Facebook Page, follow me on Twitter and let's hope that 2017 can keep producing good games.  It's shaping up to be an interesting year and it's still early enough to hope for the best.