agent, and his weapon proficiency is meant to reflect that. Your control over protagonist Ethan is fluid, but there's what feels to be a deliberate looseness to his use of firearms. Crafting health kits, ammo and other items is back from later entries in the series, though scarcity of resources makes each choice all the more important. Then you're scrabbling for ammo and supplies in every hidden corner and dealing with a worrying flow of shambling, gross and threatening enemies.
You begin relatively powerless and there is that sort of first person hide-and-seek terror that was popularized by a bunch of PC horror darlings, but soon enough the game shoves a gun into your hands. I'm going to remain spoiler-free here, but to speak broadly around the game's flow it's fair to say that it changes a lot as you progress. "Don't write this off as some Amnesia or Outlast clone. The closest thing to Resident Evil 7 is, well, Resident Evil, the 1996 original. There's the first-person horror aspect, true, but that's about where the comparison really ends. There's no doubt that Capcom were inspired by the rise of games like Outlast and Amnesia, but this also isn't that type of game.
In a sense this is the game's greatest triumph - it manages to straddle the line between respecting the past and trying something new startlingly well, coming up with a compelling formula in the process.Ĭapcom's marketing has worked both for and against it in this sense, and I want to take some time out at the top of this review to dispel some common misconceptions about Resident Evil 7 as a result.
Resident Evil 7 both is and isn't your father's Resident Evil all at once.