Resident Evil 7: Biohazard
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Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (also known as Biohazard 7: Resident Evil (バイオハザード7 レジデント イービル, Baiohazādo 7 Rejidento Ībiru) in Japan) is a survival horror game developed and published by Capcom. It was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in January 2017, while a few years later, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions were released in June 2022, along with the upgrades for Resident Evil 2 (2019) and Resident Evil 3 (2020). An iOS port was released on July 2, 2024. A Sequel, Resident Evil Village was released in 2021.
Plot
The story follows Ethan Winters in the search for his wife, Mia, which leads to him being a derelict trapped inside the Baker family home. Ethan uses various weapons and tools to fight against the Baker family and the creatures known as the "Molded".
Why It Rocks
- The game introduces the blocking mechanic (which was also carried into Resident Evil Village and made even better). It is a good way to defend yourself from attacks, especially the ones from the molded.
- In contrast to the previous two major titles (Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6), this game maintains the series' classic survival horror foundations, originally revived in Resident Evil: Revelations.
- The game is played in the first-person view, which heightens the stress because adversaries are not as visible as they would be in the third-person view. The first-person view was also carried into Resident Evil Village.
- Amazing and well-done graphics and effects, courtesy of Capcom's incredibly built RE Engine - which would later fuel the Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil 4 Remakes, Resident Evil Village, along with Devil May Cry 5.
- Once again, it's impressive to port to iOS, despite a problem with the Apple devices (See at BQ#)
- The Baker family are great villains, with each harkening back to many horror film villains and, unlike other villains in the franchise, having a tragic backstory. They took in Eveline after they found the tanker containing her out of the kindness of their hearts three years before the game's events. Doing so led to them being driven insane by her powers, which turned them into the monstrous cannibalistic family that Ethan faced off against.
- Jack behaves like a Slasher villain; he can take multiple hits, patrols the halls of the main house, and is a reoccurring boss.
- Marguerite is a monstrous villain. She has the power to unleash insects at you and has many nests, mostly comprised of giant wasps. While she patrols the halls, she's much slower. This changes when you get to her boss form when she mutates off-screen into a human spider who attacks you in the attic. Her boss fight is also in the Ethan Must Die minigame.
- That's not even the worst part. She's growing a hive in her body, and her dress and the angles can show it's increasing across her stomach and groin.
- And if she catches you from the ceiling and you don't break free in time, she kills Ethan by ripping him in half vertically and pulling his legs apart like a wishbone.
- Lucas behaves like that of Jigsaw from Saw. Instead of directly facing you like the previous two, Lucas has built traps you must maneuver past and some that you must avoid while solving puzzles.
- Great voice acting, especially Jack Brand as Jack Baker. Ethan and Mia's actors/actresses would later reprise their roles in the successor.
- It has an exciting plot involving a murderous family. It also goes in-depth about a husband (Ethan) who goes to Louisiana to save his wife (Mia), and the latter is later possessed onward.
- A wide variety of weapons, including pistols, shotguns, axes, flamethrowers (primarily helpful against bugs), explosives, and chainsaws.
- Interesting boss battles, like the aforementioned fights of Jack and Marguerite; with the latter, it gets even more terrifying due to the bugs already mentioned.
- The franchise's golden boy, Chris Redfield (even though he looks like a different person here), appears at the end of the main story and becomes the protagonist of the DLC Not a Hero.
- Speaking of which, the DLC Not A Hero (as mentioned) has the player playing as Chris Redfield, who is trying to save his teammates and hunt down Lucas.
- The game comes with a V.R. mode which brings a much scarier experience. The sound design is also perfect for this experience. You can tilt your head and track ambient sound effects inside a 3D virtual audio realm pretty much exactly the way your ears do in real life. And this plays into surviving, stealth and action gameplay mechanics both realistically and compellingly.
- The Madhouse difficulty goes back to the difficulty of old-school Resident Evil. Ethan takes more damage from enemies; health regeneration is either slowed down considerably or outright disabled; enemies are stronger, faster, much more durable, notice you almost instantly, appear in greater numbers, and their spawn points have changed; autosaves are almost completely turned off and manual saving requires finding cassette tapes to use, just like the ink ribbons and typewriters from the earlier games; item locations have changed, there are even less items to find in the field, and more coin cages to unlock, meaning that Madhouse increases the number of antique coins you can find. If you haven't already mastered the arts of nailing perfect headshots and utilizing the defense mechanic going in, you're certainly going to have both down pat by the time you successfully beat it. The reward for beating Madhouse difficulty, however, is infinite ammo.
- The DLC End of Zoe allows the player to play as Joe Baker (Jack's brother), who punches Molded to death using his fists. He even gets a gauntlet at the end that can be charged to deal more damage.
- The Banned Footage DLCs add lots of mini-games. There are 5 different modes:
- Nightmare: It is a round-based survival horde game where waves of Molded attack the player. The main objective is to "Survive Until Dawn" battling against the said enemies and ultimately Jack Baker. The player has Scrap which they earn and use to craft items and skills to survive.
- Bedroom: The player has to figure out how to escape a bedroom from Marguerite without getting caught. If you get caught you take damage; three hits and you die.
- Ethan Must Die: The player must get from the Yard by the entrance of the Old House to the Green House while getting through the Main House, which is modified with traps and different enemy placement. Dying respawns the player back to the beginning, the layout and spawn points of enemies and traps, as well as the type of enemies per spawn point is fixed, and enemies deal much more damage to the point where they can kill the player in a single hit, making it extremely hard. There are also randomized crate spawns with ranks assigned to them ranging from 1 to 3 and a much rarer chest for a rank 4 item. Items that drop from crates and chests are randomized within a possible list based on the rank of the crate. The crate layout on the map re-randomizes after each death and some crates are rigged to explode which can cause immediate death.
- 21: A turn-based card game where the player selects cards similar to Blackjack. The player and opponent named Hoffman take turns choosing to "hit" or "stay". The winner is whoever has the cards with a total value closest to 21 without going over.
- Daughters: This shows how the Baker Family came under Evie's control.
- This game is a great starting point for newcomers to get into the RE franchise since it keeps to itself until the very end.
- Great soundtrack especially the game's theme song: "Go Tell Aunt Rhody".
Bad Qualities
- The game provides you the option of curing either Mia or Zoe, although this is meaningless because the End of Zoe DLC and Resident Evil Village confirmed that the Mia choice is canon and that the only difference if players pick the latter is Ethan's monologue at the end and that both Mia and Zoe die.
- As mentioned above in WIR#4, the iOS port is still considered inferior, as it still has a problem with 2 games, the same frame-rate issues, the same low-quality texture, and the same performance issues, particularly the overheating on your phone.
- And thankfully, unlike 2 Resident Evil iOS games, the touch control is a little bit better. Still, you can change your controller to a Bluetooth controller to improve controls, just like 2 Resident Evil games.
- Also, the game was only playable on A17 Bionic Chip hardware: iPhone 15 Pro.
- Compared to other likable Resident Evil protagonists, such as Claire Redfield and Leon S. Kennedy, Ethan Winters is a rather boring protagonist with almost no personality whatsoever; thankfully, he was improved to be a better one in Resident Evil Village.
- Chris Redfield looks like a completely different person, especially when compared to his look in Resident Evil 6 (although to some fans, Chris here is more in line with how he looked in both the first Resident Evil game and Resident Evil - Code: Veronica). Thankfully, Capcom noticed this and fixed it in Resident Evil Village.
- While the Switch version includes all of the DLC for the original game, it can only be played via streaming it. It was likewise exclusively available in Japan until 2022, for some strange reason.
- The adversary diversity is limited. This was most likely owing to the game's VR compatibility; it would have been tough for Capcom to develop a variety of opponents to function with VR.
- The fight with Eveline at the end is a letdown given how simple it is; all you do is shoot her multiple times with guns different each phase.
- You can't skip much of the main game's cutscenes, which reduces replay value, especially if players are completing playthroughs to get all of the trophies/achievements or speedrunning.
- Unlike the majority of the main Resident Evil games, this one does not include unlockable outfits. However, this does make sense since you wouldn't see them anyways given the first-person view.
- While it is an excellent introduction for new players and a significant improvement over its predecessors, it is a little deceiving because there are no allusions to the series until towards the conclusion and it seems like a totally new game with the Resident Evil label slapped on the front cover. Not to add that it has little to do with mainstream RE mythology.
- False advertising: The physical copies of the Gold Edition of the game (which is basically a Complete/Game of the Year/Definitive Edition usually with all DLC included) say that a DLC story mode called Not A Hero is included in this version, but that's not the case, as it is still a separate download (while still free) from the Gold Edition.
End of Zoe
- Plot hole: It's revealed that the swamp monster is Jack, which doesn't make sense since Ethan cured him in the main game.
- Joe is an idiot as he "saves" his niece from two Blue Umbrella soldiers who were trying to cure her, then goes on a lengthy fetch quest to make another cure for her that ends in nothing, but the deaths of two innocents and his own brother. The game then ends with the exact same situation the protagonist tried to prevent in the intro.
Reception
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard received mostly positive reviews, including appreciation for the gameplay, ambiance, visuals, design, and plot.
The game was also praised for returning to a survival horror experience rather than the action-oriented one seen in prior versions. The game is also frequently linked to Konami's previously aborted Silent Hills game.
Angry Joe gave the game an 8/10.
Trivia
- This is the first time, the Japanese name of the game was in the title, and vice versa.
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