I am personally an extremely lapsed survival horror fan. The last Resident Evil game I played was 4 not counting the remake, and I have to admit I'm wary to play this game in part because of the sloppiness the RE series has indulged in over the past several years and also in part because I often struggle to enjoy first person shooters and do not enjoy horror films. I've enjoyed survival horror games in the past but have never played a first person, straight up horror game other than the demo for P.T. which I didn't / couldn't finish. I think as graphical fidelity has increased and the jump scares and horror have come even more to the fore of the game design, I've felt satisfied with lighter horror elements like the Clickers in The Last of Us; it feels more like the idea of being a fearless character in a horrifying situation that the PS1 survival horror era ultimately portrayed than being utterly horrified as a player. Until Dawn also captured that feeling of being "scary" without many actual scares.

Still, if these reviews I've read so far are to be believed, I have to be glad Resident Evil 7 is a return to quality for this franchise and hopefully it does well. I'm looking forward to seeing the Quick Look because right now the scores aren't swaying me to give the game a try before I see it in action; given what I said before, I immediately took note that the only mediocre review published by a resource I trust anchors much of its criticism in the idea that RE7 is following in the footsteps of other recent, successful first person horror titles. Having not played those, I know that wouldn't bother me in the least were I to suck up my fears and give RE7 a shot.

100 The Guardian: "A masterclass: breezily new, yet quintessentially in character with its illustrious forbearers."

100 Destructoid: "Resident Evil 7 went beyond my expectations, and I feel we have an instant classic here. I want to jump back in right now, and I have a feeling I'll be doing so for years to come."

95 EGM: "This is easily the best Resident Evil game in years. It masterfully blends Eastern and Western horror sensibilities into a truly terrifying package that also harkens back to the series’ roots."

90 Shacknews: "Resident Evil was in dire need of fresh characters, ideas and mechanics to ensure we’d see additional numbered entries in the future, and this was one of the best ways to breathe new life into a franchise that’s been mistreated a bit in the past. From top to bottom it’s clear this was a project that was handled with great care, with excellent voice acting, gruesome surprises, and scenes you’ll be scratching your head about for days to come. To all Resident Evil fans out there, I say welcome home. You’re going to enjoy your stay with the Bakers."

90 Polygon: "It's hard to know if Resident Evil 7 will stand the test of time as much as classics like the original, or RE4. Taken on its own, however, it's an excellent game that pushes the series in worthy new directions."

85 Game Informer: "Capcom has successfully reinvented Resident Evil in the past, the most notable deviation being the brilliant Resident Evil 4. This new vision doesn’t reach the same heights of spectacle and gameplay innovation as that breakthrough release, but is a welcome addition to the series (both in terms of gameplay and lore), and a nice entry point for newcomers."

80 Giant Bomb: "Resident Evil 7 features just the right amount of modern twists mixed into the traditional formula. It may not reach the same heights as an industry-changer like Resident Evil 4, but it certainly ranks among the best entries in the series."

80 Gamespot: "By the end of the campaign, I was ready for the game to be over, but that's okay. RE7 ends just as it starts to outstay its welcome, and after the fact, I felt like I'd survived a truly harrowing journey. The boss fights may be slightly inconsistent and certain sections might drag after a while, but RE7 is still a remarkable success. It has a clear vision and executes it with impressive patience and precision. By returning to horror, Resident Evil has once again become something special."

77 IGN: "Resident Evil 7 grounds itself in elements that made the original great while still indulging in a risky new shift in style that both helps and hurts the beloved formula in equal measure. But it’s also the closest a numbered sequel has come to recapturing Resident Evil’s slow, but thrilling and atmospheric adventure game roots in a while — a welcome return that I truly hope to see more of in the future."

50 Time Magazine: "Casual players aren’t touching something with a “7” in the title (nor is it clear will newcomers). Fans of action-angled survival horror like Dead Space or Dying Light may balk at the game’s deliberately poky controls and too easily grasped opponents. Old-school fans seem like the obvious target. But survival horror is a crowded space in 2017, and too much of what Resident Evil 7 is up to we’ve seen elsewhere — and done better."

It's not a review per se but after watching the Kinda Funny Gamecast, they're pretty positive on RE7 too. Seems like the game is surprising (in a good way) a lot of people!

haha thanks for including GB's review

I was really excited after I played the demo and now it's been cemented and I cannot wait to play this game. I've been with this series for the high highs and the low lows, Im glad we are wrapping back around to what made the series is great. I kinda questioned why they went with the numbered sequel in this one, since (from what I've read) it plays on so much of what the first one did, I woukdvqe been fine with CAPCOM calling this "The Resident Evil". I suppose maybe their awesomely clever title may be functioning like they 3 in The Witcher title. I'm guessing the lamen may not see the 7 off the bat and wil just read it as Resident evil: Biohazard l whereas fans who already know the deal with this game will know it is actually Resident Evil 7.

Regardless, I cannot wait to see what is in store for this game, it feels oddly justifying to see Resident Evil back in top form.

Cannot wait to try this in VR

Can you play this in VR with an oculus or vive on PC, or is it PSVR only?

Year exclusive I think :( :( :( :( :(

Cool to see but I am very, very, very skeptical of the "10/10" reviews for this game.

@sammo21: How come? I'd be very skeptical if there were reviews that said it was better than 4. I don't take 10/10 to mean that a game is perfect but some people do.

But survival horror is a crowded space in 2017, and too much of what Resident Evil 7 is up to we’ve seen elsewhere — and done better

Is Survival- horror a crowded space in 2017? I can think of Soma, Alien Isolation, Detention and Bequest as relative recent games but i wouldn't call that crowded.

Unless you include all those survival games under the banner of Survival Horror. But at that point you're in such a different genre already.

Couldn't be more excited for tomorrow. I have PSVR

@sammo21: Well, I'm normally always skeptical when I see that from outlets but I'm also questioning Capcom's ability to put out a title that good let alone a Resident Evil game that good. That being said I also don't equate 5/5 or 10/10 as being "perfect" either but it does speak to a high caliber of product. My mind is not made up, I am just skeptical. Either way I'm not getting the game but if I hear positive enough word of mouth from people I may Red Box it at the most. I don't know how many people I saw giving MGS5 the same scores and I came out nearly hating that game.

I've seen about an hour worth of gameplay and it seems incredibly "swampy" in its controls. Facial animations look awful in my opinion too which is a big deal to me when it comes to AAA games.

@sammo21: At the end of the day, reviews are professional opinions. Rounding up these scores we can assume they the majority of people will enjoy the game while some may absolutely love it. Then there will always be people who it doesn't click with and the end of putting the game down. It's fine either way, but I don't think you need to be "skeptical" since it is an opinion. Unless you think Capcom.... actually let's not go there.

never heard of Giant Bomb. sigh just like metacritic including all these no name sites...

@sackmanjones: i can't even say I'm skeptical of the game being that good without the review crew defense force questioning me, lol. This is no different than when someone like Jeff says RE4 isn't good; its fine.

@sammo21: you said "very very very skeptical of the 10/10 reviews for this game". You can be skeptical of the game all you want, you just made it sound like you were particularly calling out the reviews and impling other things. Sorry to defense force you, but it's what we do.

I'll probably pick it up when it's on sale somewhere down the line. Seems to be surprising reviewers in a good way. Also the first sentence of that Time Magazine review summary: What?

@purplepartyrobot: it just comes as eye rollingly snarky...like when someone says, "your opinion" or "fixed it for you" online.

Time Magazine should change their name. When i see the word 'Time' i think about how this magazine has been around for 90 years, which makes it hard for casual readers and newcomers to jump in. I suggest calling it Persona 4, since that brought a lot of newcomers to the series.

That was pretty good.

It's obvious from even a cursory glance at this game's promotional materials that it's a completely new story that doesn't rely on past knowledge of the series. How Time Magazine played the full game and still managed to get that wrong is beyond me.

[edit] Wait a minute, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare? No casual gamer or newcomer would ever start playing a new game in a series with a 4 in the title!

I think they were implying that people who have not really heard of Resident Evil and aren't going to do any research while casually seeing the box in a store will be turned off by it being a 7th game in a series, irregardless of how it is actually related to past entries. Considering how it isn't connected in any way I'm actually surprised they decided to make this a named sequel instead of a reboot of sorts, and lord knows Resident Evil of all franchises could do with a solid reboot.

For those who don't often just scour criticism (something I admit most people don't), you might still recognize Matt Peckham (Time Magazine)'s byline from one publication or another, most prominently CGW and Wired. He's one of those folks that worked his way into writing about games primarily for publications that don't exclusively cover games, which I, as someone who only ever wrote hip-hop criticism for hip-hop and music publications and often found himself at odds with hip-hop reviews from, say, Entertainment Weekly or various newspapers, imagine is an interesting position to be in because you aren't preaching to the choir in the least when writing for those long-toothed institutions. I still find his insight valuable, though: there [i]are[/i] people that do or don't buy things just because of numbers attached to them.

(Also: I pulled the quotes from Metacritic, which as someone who used to get pull-quoted by them week after week for eight years is not always a great representative of the full review; Time's take has some of the best writing, and also starts with the sentences "This is where Resident Evil needed to go. Back to baleful shadows on shabby wallpaper and gasping crawls under [grungy] floorboards." I'd lay the weirdness on that first line from the quote in my OP more on TIME's online editors and Metacritic's editorial team than the writer himself. Publications that large should be able to catch idiosyncratic comments like that.)

The subtitle was among the smartest things Activision /Infinity Ward did with that series. Modern Warfare was the only Call of Duty game I enjoyed of their modern era shooters (I'm an Apple fanboy who stumbled across a PC that could play Call of Duty 2 and Allied Assault when they came out) and no one I knew was a PC gamer, so at least amongst them it was never even "CoD", just "Modern Warfare". The four was never part of the conversation, whereas I don't think "biohazard" will carry the same connotation here.

The smartest thing IW/Activision did with Modern Warfare 2 was drop the numbering of the series completely.

One wonders if there will ever be a Call of Duty 5...

@nodima: I didn't even realize that RE7 had a subtitle. Isn't Biohazard the japanese name for Resident Evil? I wonder if the game is called Biohazard 7 : Resident Evil in Japan or the other way around. To me it seems like an attempt to create one global brand for future games, while being afraid that japanese people won't recognize Resident Evil as a Biohazard game right now . If you plant that name in the minds of japanese fans now, they will recognize Resident Evil 8 more easily as a true 'Biohazard' game.

@onemanarmyy: I think the game in japan is called Biohazard 7: Resident Evil. Which i think is funny

@coolarman: Resident Biohazard: 7 Evil is my favorite game.

When it was first announced at whatever press event it was, the GB guys immediately picked up on the logo being Resident Evil VII: Biohazard, and it was noted that same day that in Japan the logo is (I can't reproduce it in print, but essentially): Biohazard 7, Resident Evil.

If you google it, the logos are pretty fucking cool.

@nodima :

That's neat. I never saw the japanese logo, so i thought the cleverness ended with 'oh they wrote VIL as VII ' .

Glad I'm not the only one a little baffled by the Time quote. Survival horror is a crowded space in 2017? I mean, the genre has had a sort of resurgence and reinvention, but it's hardly what I would call "crowded". The post-Amnesia wave has abated already, and even at its height, it was largely the domain of indie titles.

Also, the thing about casual players not jumping into a seventh installment... that's kind of refuted by an extremely famous seventh installment that introduced a hell of a lot of people to a particular JRPG franchise.

I'll agree with him, though, in that newcomers might not take a shine to the adventure game style survival horror of old that RE7 is calling back to. I'll be really interested to see the reactions of younger/unaccustomed players that may only know RE as an action game.

I do not believe in 100% reviews. I agree with 5/5 only with the provision it is not literally 100%., which to my mind is awkward. I'll leave it there.

I'm interested in this game. I will wait for more reviews. lol.

Amused that that Time magazine takes up the banner for Casual gamers. If one is interested in this game, they have already left the Farmville, no matter what they were playing before..

Curious how the PC version performs, as I've read the load times on PS4 are long at times.

Just picked it up on PS4. Looking forward to playing it. Anyone know if they're planning to have pre-load available, or am I gonna have to wait til 9pm pst and slow ass PSN download speeds?

Good for Capcom. I hope everyone enjoys it. I saw Patrick was praising it big time on Waypoint today.

@onemanarmyy: that whole paragraph from time seemed uninformed, or maybe they are thinking of those survival mine craft games in early access. But seeing how resident evil ia known to even casual gamers(especially since the movies still come out lol) i don't know what they were talking about. Smh

Anyway, i am definitely glad this game seems to be good but i will have to pass for a while atm.

Time is right. Nobody jumped on Final Fantasy VII. Abysmal failure for the PSOne.

@barrock: Running the game on an SSD on PC has instant load screens. I died a few times over the course of the game and not once did it have to take time to load. As soon as the "you died" screen went away I could just press F and be instantly back into the game. I did get about 3-4 instances of stutter as the game doesn't have loading screens between zones at all and that was clearly when it was loading in new areas while still playing.

Otherwise I ran the game on max settings @1080/60 minus Shadow Resolution dropped down 1 notch with a 970/4690K/16GBRAM.