Entertainment

Games: Horror doesn't get any better than Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

There aren’t that many foes, though disturbing ambient clanking means you're in constant fear of something gooey around the next corridor
There aren’t that many foes, though disturbing ambient clanking means you're in constant fear of something gooey around the next corridor There aren’t that many foes, though disturbing ambient clanking means you're in constant fear of something gooey around the next corridor

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (PS4)

By: Capcom

THE subtitle to Capcom's reinvention of their perennial survival horror is telling. 'Biohazard' harks back to the 1996 original's Japanese title and Resident Evil 7 is a welcome coffin nail for the series’ bloated action entries, bringing the horror back to a franchise that lost its scare tactics in the recent wilderness years.

A plantation romp that channels the southern discomfort of Deliverance and Texas Chainsaw Massacre with a good dose of Saw's torture-porn thrown in for good measure, all that's missing is the duelling banjos as you go through the keyhole with the Baker family.

As Ethan Winters, players travel to Dulvey, Louisiana in search of his missing wife and end up captive with a family whose skeletons in the closet are actual skeletons in the closet. Thanks to a biohazardous visitor, this redneck family's mutations go beyond the usual inbred webbed toes and vestigial tails.

The southern backwater is soon filled with more screaming than Ned Beatty on date night, and with zombies sooo noughties, going bump in the night this time are your country-fried captors and gloopy, mould-infested humanoids.

A complete reinvention of the series, moving away from the time-honoured third-person viewpoint and explosive, action-orientated feel of recent games, 7 is a puzzle and exploration-heavy mash-up of classic Resi tropes served entirely in first-person and with a sweaty-palmed snuff ambience. The focus here is on running and hiding in a handful of puzzle-box locations that give up their secrets as you discover keys and solve environmental riddles.

Its fiendish birthday-themed escape room is a noggin-scratching highlight and one of the best uses of lateral thinking seen outside Portal. Despite the new viewpoint, you're in classic Resident Evil territory here and before you know it you'll be playing inventory Tetris, mixing healing herbs and turning cranks.

Like the best horrors, most of your time is a slow-burn of anticipation, and although bayou bogeymen are pursuing you like you were a liberal ethnic, there aren’t that many foes, though disturbing ambient clanking means you're in constant fear of something gooey around the next corridor.

Clocking in at around ten hours, Resi 7 doesn't overstay its welcome, and as the first triple A, all-the-trimmings VR-release, it’s also the best experience I’ve had behind Sony's headset. The original Resident Evils stained our collective pantaloons because they were damned scary and RE7 finally sees the series regain its identity as a blockbuster fear-monger.

Let the Bakers show y’all some real southern hospitality in a reboot that’s scarier than anything Hollywood has produced in the last decade. For horror buffs, it doesn’t get any better.