When Capcom revealed RE7 at last year’s E3 2016, the reactions were mixed. I was one of the fans who supported the idea of the gameplay style being shifted from third-person to first-person. Today I beat the game for the first time and in VR mode, too. The game took me 9 hours and 5 minutes to beat in Normal mode, a pretty good length for a main Resident Evil game. But of course I’m here to tell you whether the game is worth the wait or not.
If you love RE Remake, then you will absolutely love and enjoy RE7 even more. Now don’t compare this game to RE4 or even RE2 when it comes to number of contents in the campaign but RE7 does contain some interesting enemies and boss fights. One of the boss fights felt like fighting against Salazar from RE4. The game featured some interesting puzzles but they felt simpler than RE Remake’s. RE7 is the goriest RE game and the second goriest RE game I can think of is RE4. Now keep in mind that I beat this game fully in VR, never even tried the normal mode to see how different the gunplay is from VR mode. In VR mode, aiming at enemies was super easy.
Speaking of VR, the visuals in VR mode were beautiful, clean and smooth. Kitchen demo in VR looked terrible, well, not really but if you recently played the Beginning Hour demo in VR and compare it to the Kitchen demo, then you’ll know exactly what I mean. The sound design for the game was amazing but when it comes to soundtrack, most of them were unmemorable and forgettable. Most of the soundtracks are ambient, yes, but remember how memorable the ones in both RE Original and Remake are? In RE7, I don’t remember any tracks but “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” and its save theme song.
Now, is the game scary? If you find RE Remake scary, then I can safely say that it’s on the same level, maybe a little less but still scary. There were moments where I panicked a lot and it was a lot of fun…in VR.
What about the story? Well, since this is a quick spoiler-free review, all I can say is that the story is very brand new, didn’t felt like a Resident Evil story, but I really, really enjoyed the story, though the ending did left me confused.
Overall, RE7 is a fantastic Resident Evil game. The story was brand new, the visuals were beautiful (especially in VR), the sound design was great but most of the musical tracks are forgettable. I really advice you all to NOT spoil yourselves, please do wait for the game to arrive on 24th January, avoid livestreams at Twitch or YouTube. Capcom really put a lot of effort into this game and I say well done! Like Undertale, it is a game you need to experience for yourselves.
Resident Evil 7 (VR) gets an 8.9/10.