Resident Evil 7 is fine. It’s not good, it’s not terrible, it’s just very okay.
Why did I play this: Resident Evil 8 came out last year and got good reviews. So when I saw it discounted on Amazon, I decided to pick it up. The story is apparently a direct sequel to Resident Evil 7, which I access to for free on PlayStation, so I figured I’d give it a try before RE8.
Story: you play as Ethan Winters, who receives a mysterious email from his wife Mia three years after she’s disappeared. He follows that email to a Louisiana farm house, where you meet a crazy family that does Resident Evil things. You find out that the family, including Mia, have been physically and mentally corrupted by a child/bio weapon named Eveline. After wandering through the guest house, the main house, the old house, and the greenhouse, you eventually make a serum to cure your wife (though you have the option of curing some other woman instead??) and kill Eveline using some other serum. Chris Redfield comes in for clean up and credits roll.
Thoughts: this game is ugly. The many houses you explore are designed to look messy, cluttered, disgusting, etc, but even beyond that the game just doesn’t look good. The textures look like a game that came out in 2010, not 2017.
The primary enemies are called “molded” and were initially frightening, until I realized you can just run around them. The bosses were genuinely stressful, and it did feel satisfying to defeat the twisted family members.
It did kickoff my now-favorite trope, which is Ethan’s hands getting fucked up. It starts off pretty tame in this entry (the highest point is Mia cutting off Ethan’s hand, which then gets stapled back on to him), but the little RE8 I’ve played has already delivered already delivered so many moments that it feels like a meme.
Final thought: 9 hours poorly spent, wish I had just watched a story recap on YouTube.
thoughtsfromzac 