And as an added bonus, playing as a normal person makes it scarier too. It gets more complicated later, but having that simple, human motivation at its core makes for a more focused, engaging, and emotional story. You aren’t a super-agent trying to save the world from the threat of bio-terrorism: you’re a man looking for his wife in a swamp. Which is something Resident Evil 7 swiftly corrects by making it simple again. I was invested in it once, long ago, but over the years it became so swollen and complex that I tuned out.

And while there are traces of that in there, it really has more in common with the early Resident Evil games: from the arcane puzzles that steadily unlock more of the house, to the soothing music that plays in the safety of a save room.įor me, the mythology has always been the least interesting thing about Resident Evil. Before I played it, the switch to a first-person perspective led me to believe it would be a total reinvention of the series, mimicking fashionable modern horror games like Amnesia and Outlast. I went into it blind, having religiously avoided previews and trailers, and emerged from the darkness delighted that Resident Evil was good again. And salvation arrived in the form of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, the best game since Shinji Mikami and his team boldly reinvented the series in 2005 with Resident Evil 4.

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