Resident Evil 7: biohazard

A frightening return to gameplay elements that made the series great, terrifying antagonists and monsters, perfect setting for a horror game.

By wiping the slate clean and beginning again, Capcom have gained perspective. With Resident Evil 7, they’ve identified the core tenets of the franchise – the building blocks of terror that captivated and inspired a generation of fans and creators alike. The first-person perspective isn’t Resident Evil, but the feelings it elicits certainly are.

RE7 is as near to perfection within its genre, and its legacy, as any game I have ever had the pleasure of reviewing; it is a must-buy, especially for RE1 loyalists.

A terrifying survival horror experience. It offers the best spooky atmosphere in the franchise with many of the classic mechanics that built the original formula. Yet it has enough new elements to stand its ground amidst similar games. Without doubt, a must play horror experience.

Capcom came amazingly close to upstaging Shinji Mikami’s original horror classic, but a few oversights keep this one from really standing out as the cream of the crop for the series. A marvel when it comes to its ability to shake you to your core, its clearly a love letter to both those who adored the claustrophobic nightmares of the original games and those introduced to horror with more recent Hollywood attempts like The Conjuring and Insidious. It’s hard to imagine the formula working in their favor in the long run, but if it’s a reason to trust that the series could still be in the right hands with Capcom after all, we’re interested to see how they’ll carry on torch into the future.

Resident Evil 7 returns to its survival horror essence with great new additions like first person perspective. A reinvention that offers fresh ideas, old challenging puzzles and a great balance between exploration and action.

Resident Evil 7 returns to horror with a change of perspective that suits PC controls well. Technically is far from perfect, but the good stuff shines with more definition and more frames.

After the fifth and sixth games, the Resident Evil series was in dire need of a re-think. That’s exactly what Capcom have done, and they’ve done so in a way that’s braver, bolder, and more assured than I could ever have dreamed. They’ve refreshed the series for modern times, incorporating new techniques to ensure the horror is both sickening and chilling, while re-focusing the core structure around the things that made these games so great to begin with. The result is something that will almost certainly go down as a Resident Evil classic; a title that will be spoken about with reverence in the future, and an excellent turning point for the series as a whole. In those respects, Resident Evil 7 is the new Resident Evil 4.

Not the dramatic reinvention I expected, but this is tense and refined survival horror with a brilliantly bleak, grimy atmosphere.

Resivent Evil 7 revitalizes the series. Thanks to the first person view and the outstanding atmosphere it's a real highlight of the horror genre.

There is a lot to love about Resident Evil 7, from the spooky atmosphere to the many nods to the classic formula. Yet it stops just shy of being a masterpiece, mostly due to the disappointing second half, where the enemies lack variation and the story doesn’t fulfill its early promises. Even so, Resident Evil 7 is a must-buy for fans of the horror genre. While the missing virtual reality support on PC is a big letdown, Capcom did their homework in terms of performance and mouse controls.

The best Resident Evil game in years is only bogged down by the blatantly RE bits. [Issue#259, p.58]

While Resident Evil 7 has its issues, it’s actually better than I’d hoped. It’s tense and thrilling, varied, well-paced, and seems to be the revitalising shot in the arm the series needed. It’s far from the scariest of games I’ve played (it creeped me out, but I played it at night, for crying out loud) but it’s still a bloody good time.

As you might expect, PC offers the highest quality visual experience, with exceptionally believable lighting effects and extra detailed textures. The game runs smoothly even at 1440p with all the most demanding visual options selected.

Resident Evil 7 is chock full of spectacular cinematic scenes, but what's the point of all that if they're hardly scary at all? Worse, some of them make you laugh.