There’s a point early in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard where the game’s initial antagonist, Jack’ Daddy’ Baker, rips through a chicken wire fence to grab one of the most unusual weapons I’ve seen embedded in a blood-splattered hospital bed – chainsaw scissors.
This moment, and the ensuing boss fight, perfectly encapsulates everything good and bad about the game.
Jack terrified me, and the way he wielded the chainsaw scissors like Cal Kestis wields a double-bladed lightsaber as I ducked and dodged and used body bag wrapped corpses hooked on the ceiling of his basement morgue for defence, only amplified this.
To get through the first half of the game, I had to follow Kirk Hamilton’s tips in ‘How To Enjoy Resident Evil 7 If You’re A Big Scaredy Cat’. Yes, I played at midday, with the sound low and my ‘happy’ playlist on in the background.
However, this feeling of terror diminished as I had to restart the boss fight ten times. It’s not that the controls are bad, the first-person aiming is tight, and a tap of the back and circle buttons will spin you 180 degrees allowing you to make a quick escape from enemies, but the movement speed is painfully slow.
This may have been a deliberate choice by Capcom to heighten tension in enemy encounters and an ode to the glacial tank controls of Resident Evils gone by. But in the enclosed spaces of the Bakers’ Louisiana ‘Processing Centre’, it serves to frustrate rather than engender fear.
Further, the farther the plot gets from Jack’s basement and his ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ family of cannibals and into the broader conspiracy of why you can thrust your chainsaw through his skull, the more it falls apart.
Nevertheless, driving your chainsaw through Jack’s head and seeing blood and sinew explode out in all directions before he gets up a resumes his Darth Maul impression is satisfying, and this holds true for the rest of the game’s combat.
Taking out the Molded (Resident Evil 7’s version of brain-hungry zombies) is consistently engaging, and I always enjoyed using the new weapons that the game dolls out throughout its ten-hour runtime.
My particular favourite is the Remote Bomb, obtained in a wrecked tanker ship towards the end of the game that you can plant ahead of a crowd of shuffling Molded and detonate at will, severing limbs and halting their progress in the process.
Though, by the time you reach the Wrecked Ship in the second half of the story, the game hands out ammunition readily and defeating the Moulded, at least on normal difficulty, becomes relatively easy. This is in stark contrast to Jack’s house where you have to conserve every bullet just in case he’s about to come crashing through the wall.
Despite the disparity between the first and second halves of the game, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Resident Evil 7 and am looking forward to seeing where Capcom take the series next.
Oh, and remember to duck under those chainsaw scissors – you’ll get a trophy – and feel like a Jedi.
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