Resident Evil 7 Demo: A Quick Look

Resident Evil 7: Demo
Rating: Holy shit that's cool

Resident Evil, it's been a long time since you've been considered a true horror.  Much like the Dead Space series, you jumped the horror ship straight into the waters of action-based gameplay and, admittedly, probably lost quite a few fans in the process.  The horror fans, at least.  While I admit I'm still fairly new to a lot of games and hadn't played anything worth mentioning until relatively recently, I've made up for a lot of lost time pretty quickly.  But if there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that fans of the original horror-centric games are getting a breath of fresh air with a lot of upcoming releases.

Among those are Capcom's Resident Evil 7 and Kojima's Death Stranding.  And while we're still wracked with pain and anger (mostly anger) over the loss of Silent Hills, (fuck you, Konami) it looks like Capcom's giving us this badass looking Resident Evil game. It probably won't beat out my hype for Death Stranding because RE doesn't have Norman Reedus or Sink Baby, but that's a focus for another review.  For now, let's see what's going on in the RE world.

The demo starts out in the best possible way, throwing you right into it with no explanations and no time to understand before throwing you into the actual gameplay section, where it only gives you one mission and then leaves you to wander.  How better to set an atmosphere for spine-tingling than with next to no instruction and a sudden need to escape your immediate surroundings?  With slow movements and questionable noises, of course!  And we have plenty of that to go around!  The way the game starts out with a preset low controller sensitivity instantly throws you into a slow, cautious, 'there is obviously something right around this corner' air, which puts most people off right off the bat.  While it could just be seen as a weirdly inconvenient presetting, it honestly adds more to the atmosphere than you'd normally expect, especially since most people change it up as soon as they realize they can.

On top of the slow movements, the demo is filled with both subtle and sudden noises all around the player, an extremely vital factor in any game.  Without the right sounds, or lack thereof in some cases, it's almost impossible to correctly set a tone.  These noises keep you on your tones and checking your back at all times, keeping you consistently tensed without there even being anything there.  You're not going to find much throughout that house for most of the game, except for key moments, but you're always going to waiting for it, and that's the important part.

Not much of the bigger story can be really been seen through this quick, terrifying demo, but it certainly does a great job of setting it up to keep you guessing and wanting to know more.  Best of all, you can keep looking for more hints and tips towards the story of the unfortunate victims and the family that used to inhabit the house by replaying the demo and searching new areas, trying new things, and unveiling pieces you may not have seen before.  While on your first playthrough of it you may just want to hurry and get on out of there as quickly and painlessly as possible and miss several details, but you may also be inclined to play through a second, third, even fourth time, each time with new information you've gathered from the last to try new situations.  Pull the lever right from the get-go, open the drawer first-hand so you can get what's in there later on, figure out where that mannequin finger goes... each time finding something new and unravelling more mysteries about your situation.

It's not a huge demo, but it gives a lot to discover, explore, test, and theorize about... all while being scared out of your wits the entire time.  It's certainly the first time in a long time I've been on-edge just watching someone play, let alone playing it myself, so I'm excited for the full release.  I just hope they're able to deliver on this hefty promise of tantalizing horror.  I'd hate to see a repeat of the disappointment from Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (a decent game that just couldn't live up to Amnesia: The Dark Descent)..... or worse, Silent Hills. (fuck you again, Konami)

We're excited, Capcom, don't betray us.

This demo is amazing and I can't recommend it enough, I just hope the full game lives up to its blazing potential.  I'm skeptical, it's hard to go from action to horror, but it looks like they've got a good handle back on it.