242 on 7/2/2017 at 13:11
Quote Posted by Sulphur
The only way to play Resi 6 is in co-op with someone else.
Well, I squeezed 200+ hours out of it. Single mode, multiple replays on max difficulty. I'm kidding you not.
As for the RE7, I'm waiting for some serious discount, as I got it this game is way too short (compared with RE456) and has low replayability.
froghawk on 26/6/2017 at 17:10
Grabbed this on the steam sale and wrote up a full review... been writing in depth reviews of the entire series so I can post the others if anyone is interested:
RESIDENT EVIL 7: BIOHAZARD (2017)
Inline Image:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fd/Resident_Evil_7_cover_art.jpgI guess Capcom got tired of the series having two different titles in Japan and America so they combined the two names into one. Unimaginative name aside, this game is a return to form - Capcom recognized their mistake in turning the series into co-cop action games and returned to a single player horror experience, this time with a fresh first person camera perspective. While this is easily the third best game in the series after REmake and RE4, it's also one of the most frustrating entries thanks to some unfulfilled potential.
In a break from RE tradition, this game introduces a new main character, Ethan Winters. The basic setup is very similar to Silent Hill 2 - he receives a message from his wife who has been missing for 3 years, summoning him to meet up with her - but it quickly diverges from that template. This message brings him yet another mansion, only this time the mansion is a run down estate in Louisiana owned by the Bakers, a truly deranged southern family. They spend the first 2/3 of the game stalking you through the estate's many houses and outbuildings, the scope of which silently conjures a familial history of slave ownership.
The opening sequence in the guest house immediately shows you how serious they were about returning to horror here - this is BY FAR the scariest game in the series. I didn't this the RE series would ever go this far - this may be the first time a horror game has ever had me freaked out in the daytime. The claustrophobia induced by the odd camera angles from the early games has been wonderfully updated in first person with tight spaces and a flashlight which gives you a tiny field of view. The house is downright disgusting, and a lot of what you have to do to traverse it is quite nauseating (naturally including draining a mold-filled bathtub in a tribute to the original). The visuals are wonderful, and the music is used sparingly but effectively. The monster designs are great, and while there are a few reprised ideas
(like Jack Baker's final form having eyes all over its body, which are the boss's weak spots, or a sequence where you're chased by someone with a chainsaw), they feel more like a cute nod to previous entries than lazy recycling.
Mechanically, this game is a return to the core principles of old RE. Magically interconnected item boxes are back. Typewriter save spots are back in the form of cassette recorders (though you only get a limited number of saves in the form of cassettes in the 'Madhouse' hard mode that's unlocked after beating the game - otherwise it works like the RE4 typewriters). The core of the game is once again a key hunt in a big house. It's difficult even on normal, and you will run out of ammo frequently, putting you in hairy situations. Health and ammo crafting systems have been combined and streamlined - you can combine a green herb, gunpowder or solid fuel with a chem pack or strong chem pack to craft 6 different items. This isn't quite as much of a return to old-school design as the teaser implied - it holds your hand a bit more in the form of frequent autosaves and an objective list - but it feels like a nice compromise between the cruelty of those old games and the excessive handholding of modern ones. It hits a nice sweet spot.
Most of the game feels like it could have been a new IP or offshoot, thanks to a much more intimate story with a new main character, a new camera perspective, and a very different kind of horror. Unfortunately, it becomes much more uninspired once it starts trying to be a Resident Evil game again in the final act.
Once you leave the mansion, Ethan's wife Mia takes over as the player character and it becomes another tired creepy little girl story, ditching all the interesting southern elements. Several plot twists feel like forced attempts to tie this unrelated story into the main series
(including the girl's superpowers resulting from an Umbrella super soldier experiment, and Chris Redfield rescuing you in the final cinematic), transforming the story into an addled and incoherent mess of smashed-together tropes.
My least favorite part of this was that the Bakers were being mind-controlled all along instead of being legitimately insane, which really makes no sense given that all the madness was stemming from a little girl who just wanted a family. This is primarily frustrating because for the first time ever, the plot of a Resident Evil game was almost good. It was probably silly of me to expect it to remain that way.
To make matters worse. the gameplay also declines in the final act. The Bakers aren't the only enemies in the game - there are also new zombielike creatures called the Molded.
The Molded are the corpses of the Bakers' abductees, transformed into reanimated monsters by some sort of bioengineered mold (the girl's attempt to create a family for herself). These creatures are quite scary and hard to defeat early on in the game, but once the game forgets about the Bakers and gives you stronger firepower, it devolves into another dull zombie shooter. Granted, it doesn't swarm you with enemies in a fast-paced manner filled with quicktime events (of which there are close to none), so it's still a step above the previous entries, but it's a big step down for this game. It doesn't help that the environments become rather mundane once you leave the estate - the salt mines in the final stage are particularly dull.
After the lengthy action trilogy, this game returned to being brief and tight - my clear time was around 7.5hrs. I feel like this is an optimal length for a horror game (though it seems a bit scant if you're paying full price, as there are no extra modes), but seeing as even this brief game had filler towards the end once they ran out of ideas, I would have preferred that it was even shorter and they'd just made the Bakers the entire focus. I can only imagine what the game would have been like if they'd brought in the history of the deep south a bit more. I haven't bought any of the DLC, so I can't comment on that, but not all of it has been released yet anyway.
The PC port is great - I can't remember the last time I could get away with running a new game on native resolution, let alone without turning everything down! It took quite a bit of tweaking to get to that point, but my GPU isn't supposed to be powerful enough to run this game at all and I managed to run it on high settings - while the initial release evidently had some optimization issues, they seem to have cleared them up incredibly well with patches.
RATING: 7.9/10 mutated mold spores (but the first 2/3 gets a solid 10/10)
Inline Image:
https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/residentevil/images/a/a9/Moulded_Render_RE7.pngSulphur on 26/6/2017 at 18:03
Yanno, Resident Hazard or Bioevil, either would have been fine, but noooo, they had to have their cake and eat it too.
I'll be frank -- some of those early beats you mention are a bit too much spoiler territory; it would be good to discover the stuff about the wife by playing the game. Also I skipped that bit about the final act when I realised you stepped into more spoiler territory there. Don't do it. :erg:
Good sum-up though. I'm looking forward to continuing my experience with the game, it's certainly got the horror part down (along with some pretty black humour when your first meet old man Baker), and the house feels real while being probably the filthiest environment ever to grace a video game. There's Condemned vibes all through this along with a more intimate Resi feel, plus the story's by the fella who helped write Spec Ops: The Line and F.E.A.R.'s Expansion packs, which is a decent batting average considering two of those had pretty great storytelling.
froghawk on 26/6/2017 at 18:20
Sorry about that, added a couple more spoiler tags for you and tightened it up a bit - I think it's much stronger for it.
But yeah, don't get your hopes up about the writing. Ultimately, it sucks.
Sulphur on 26/6/2017 at 18:30
Well, I think it's implying enough that the missing person search ends almost immediately, for starters. That should clue people in that this isn't your grand-daddy's Resi, and instead of spelling out plot beats further on, IMO it'd be better if you draw the parallels to its influences instead, like how parts of the game borrow effectively from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, for instance.
Having said that, the new spoiler tags do the business. Thanks!
Quote Posted by froghawk
But yeah, don't get your hopes up about the writing. Ultimately, it sucks.
Heh, I guess that'll be in line with old Resi tradition, at least. I'm okay with that as long as the game doesn't fall on its ass in the process.
froghawk on 26/6/2017 at 18:39
Imo it does fall on its ass, but the first 4 chunks of it are so well done that it's well worth playing despite the last two. I just find it a lot more frustrating when the story is ALMOST good than when it never shows any potential to begin with. Reminds me a lot of the Montreal Deus Ex games or Bioshock in that regard.
Sulphur on 26/6/2017 at 18:51
Yeah, that's all right then. I meant fall on its ass gameplay-wise, so if the most egregious problem is that the game devolves into zombie shootouts in the third act, I should be able to live with that. In any case, it can't be as bad as Fahrenheit, right? (Right?)
froghawk on 26/6/2017 at 18:56
Haha I've never managed to finish that one (or Omikron for that matter). Both have been installed for a while now... maybe I'll finish it then let you know.
Sulphur on 26/6/2017 at 19:02
You're in for a treat. If you wanted a decent end to the story, I'd classify playing that game's final third as self-inflicted psychological maiming... but yanno, scars build character (I've got enough from this enterprise to prove it), so you should totally go for it. :D
Sulphur on 4/7/2017 at 12:44
I'm still fairly early in, but I just experienced the scene in the garage. You know, I most enjoy horror when it plays with expectations and throws unexpected shit at you (see: Silent Hill 2), so having old man Baker take your wheels and then try to run you over in that space was brilliant. It's also inspired use of the perspective, as the entire sequence would have been ludicrous in third person, but the first person camera makes everything more intimate and claustrophic; having this insane near-immortal thing nonchalantly attempt to send your body through a girder by hopping in and leering in your face as it wrests control away from you -- that's inspired shit.
