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I realize this will probably have people jumping down my throat, but here it is: RE7 is a good horror game. It's scary. It even has the survival horror thing down.
Gameplay-wise, it feels like an RE game. Storywise? ...Less than stellar.
I got excited in the demo (first or second? It's been a bit and I'm posting this late) when you picked up the phone and Ada was talking to you. That's something that would have really helped sell it as an RE game--Ada, talking to you, giving you directions and advice. It would answer a few questions about what she'd been up to. Instead they cut that out for a new girl, Zoe, who's fairly bland in comparison and doesn't do all that much.
Horror? Sure, terrifying.
But what I liked about the originals was, well, the camp. They were pure Silver Age, delicately balancing the goofy camp with the terror of opening a door and not knowing what was on the other side or if your few remaining bullets were enough to deal with it before whatever was waiting ended your life. This ditched that completely. RE5 made the mistake of taking itself too seriously, too (though no one else did, and the best playthroughs to watch are where people aren't taking it seriously).
It didn't have fun with it. And neither did I. Some people love that stuff; Outlast, for example. Guts and scare factor just 'cause you can.
But the thing is, without that early RE tie-in that they'd had in the demo (and now I'm really starting to wonder why that was removed), you could easily call it a different game than 'Resident Evil' and not lose anything in the making. There were documents here and there, but the majority of it felt tacked on as an afterthought in the end. Discordant, disconnected.
tl;dr
RE7 does the gameplay of the first couple entries really well with a changed camera, without any but the most tenuous ties to the series as a whole. You could rename it and the only thing you'd lose would be series hype.
Gameplay-wise, it feels like an RE game. Storywise? ...Less than stellar.
I got excited in the demo (first or second? It's been a bit and I'm posting this late) when you picked up the phone and Ada was talking to you. That's something that would have really helped sell it as an RE game--Ada, talking to you, giving you directions and advice. It would answer a few questions about what she'd been up to. Instead they cut that out for a new girl, Zoe, who's fairly bland in comparison and doesn't do all that much.
Horror? Sure, terrifying.
But what I liked about the originals was, well, the camp. They were pure Silver Age, delicately balancing the goofy camp with the terror of opening a door and not knowing what was on the other side or if your few remaining bullets were enough to deal with it before whatever was waiting ended your life. This ditched that completely. RE5 made the mistake of taking itself too seriously, too (though no one else did, and the best playthroughs to watch are where people aren't taking it seriously).
It didn't have fun with it. And neither did I. Some people love that stuff; Outlast, for example. Guts and scare factor just 'cause you can.
But the thing is, without that early RE tie-in that they'd had in the demo (and now I'm really starting to wonder why that was removed), you could easily call it a different game than 'Resident Evil' and not lose anything in the making. There were documents here and there, but the majority of it felt tacked on as an afterthought in the end. Discordant, disconnected.
tl;dr
RE7 does the gameplay of the first couple entries really well with a changed camera, without any but the most tenuous ties to the series as a whole. You could rename it and the only thing you'd lose would be series hype.
