The thing about horror is that not one thing will effect everyone the same way. Some people are afraid of clowns, some of spiders, some of death itself. There are a lot of things that spark fear in the hearts of people. For me, it’s parasites. Tapeworms and ringworms make me absolutely frantic with disgust and abject horror. Not everyone feels the same way, but I suppose their feeling is similar when someone describes their fear of snakes and I internalize that I think snakes are actually kinda cute.
Video games seem to have a default idea of what people are scared of. I won’t be the first one to admit that my complaint is not original - the industry uses jumpscares way too often. You’ll know what I’m talking about if you’ve played a horror game recently. Have you? Well, there’s plenty of them if you haven’t. But I’m here to talk about the one that doesn’t fall into that trap.
I’m here to talk about an outlier in the horror video game genre. If you’ve ever played a Resident Evil game, you’ll know what I’m talking about. The newest installment in the RE franchise puts the “resident” in Resident Evil. It was released in January of 2017 and left a huge mark. After Resident Evil 5 and 6, I was beginning to lose hope - there was a distinct shift from horror to action shooter which left a disdainful taste in my mouth. Needless to say, I was suspicious of the seventh installment, because sequels are usually a money grab relying on fandom hype to reel in the most eager saps the industry advertises for. Boy, was I wrong.
Resident Evil VII (or Biohazard) was a return to form for the franchise. Like I said before, the “resident” part is very literal, as the game takes place in only four separate buildings (one of which is a beached ship but that’s a different point). Confining the gameplay experience to finite locations makes for a tighter plot and more room for beautiful attention detail, which a widespread game would never feasibly accomplish. RE6 was WAY too big, having multiple campaigns and a huge overarching storyline which took up over 60 hours of gamelplay to fully understand. Sometimes players don’t have that kind of attention span. I, myself, prefer a concise experience with a lot more polish - quality over quantity.
RE7 is a masterpiece. Understand that I’m not a critic and I have no professional experience reviewing games, but that doesn’t mean my opinions don’t matter. I believe that this game does what its past two predecessors failed to do: scare its players. Believe me, that’s a lot harder to do then you might think.
The thing is, RE7 delivers a kind of horror that mainstream media doesn’t quite understand. Jumpscares? Not really. Gore? Not excessive. Sex? Not especially, in fact you’d probably be turned off. This game succeeds in disgusting and horrifying you - I purposefully refrained from showing some of the more graphic images from the game, because jeez, they’re rough. The sound design, as well, is enough to send you running.
But what, in my opinion, makes this game stand on the top of recent horror? You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out.