Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

A welcome surprise from Capcom, this thing scared the crap out of me! They really dialled this franchise back into survive horror territory with a greater emphasis on puzzles, resource management, and crafting. The plot focuses on you (Ethan) getting a video message from your deceased girlfriend and figuring that she's still alive you travel down to Louisiana in search of her. It's not long after that you get taken captive by the lovely Baker family and things get pretty cray cray from there. The setting is terrific matched with the games impressive visual and sound design, and the Baker's steal the show as far as the narrative is concerned. Each family member elicited a unique brand of horror and the voice acting was surprisingly good coming from a Japanese game. The plot itself follows a lot of typical horror tropes tastefully but what I thought was particularly well done is how they managed to tie this seemingly unrelated story into the Resident Evil universe so naturally in the last act of the game.

The design in this game is fairly consistent until you reach the 2/3 mark where the game takes a very different turn and you're taken away from the Baker household. I'm glad this final section exists because of the story elements and scares, and it's a fairly tense and exciting part of the game to be honest. But in terms of design it's less intricate and interesting than the Baker's Manor. Also by this time in the game you now have an arsenal of weapons and enemy encounters become a little less frightening. There's also the "choice" the game presents to you later in the game where the obvious choice ends up being the bad one and the "not so obvious" choice is the good one. IDK it was just a silly element to add to the plot since it wasn't fleshed out in a thoughtful way. But those are all small gripes, the game does end really strong and the final boss encounter is an absolute nightmare!

All that and I didn't even mention the VR component... Which I didn't get the chance to try... But still, from the research I've done it seems to be really effective and one of the - if not thee - best VR experiences on the market right now, so long as you're not put off by the floating hands and fades-to-black. Yeah this was just a really well done game and I think it really celebrates horror in a really tasteful and heart racing way. It's a shorter title but one dense with detail and great ideas, ya gotta get on this if you've got the stomach for it!