I just finished the game, in 2 sittings. Needless to say it's very short and at one point makes you feel like a decent portion of the game might've been cut.

This game turned out to be exactly what I feared it would, but it also didn't turn out to be as bad as I expected that to be. It very much feels like the Amnesia developers were given a bigger budget and told to develop for the mainstream audience. I was generally pretty impressed with the supporting characters performances, the motion capture was great but as expected the faces went a bit uncanny valley at times. It's also probably the best told story in any RE game if that means much? It's simple and predictable but the character performances keep it engaging and human.

Overall I liked it but if anyone is on the fence or just good at waiting for games to come out I'd say wait for it to be cheaper. The game play is very simplistic and the level progression is also quite linear so it's not something I could see people immediately going for replay value either. It's certainly far and wide better than RE6 I can say that for sure.

Below is my end game stats to show how long it took and also that I got a decent portion of the collectables too (Spoilered for those sticklers):

Let us know what you thought/think about it.

The first few setpieces in this game are pretty fucking insane in vr. Even just the stuff in the garage. Im at the first boss fight now, 3 and a half hours in, and that boss fight feels pretty insane to be doing in vr. Its really too bad they didnt adjust the cutscenes for vr though, I get they're prerendered but its still super jarring. Its definitely my favourite psvr game I've played so far. I tried to play it non vr as well but it just felt wrong on a tv with the ridiculously low FoV after experiencing it in life sized vr. Granted the resolution in vr is pretty shitty but it gets me waaaaay more immersed to the point that the resolution hardly bothered me.

@ivdamke: I haven't bought it yet but I've a few questions that you could probably answer having finished it. If you don't mind. Are there any difficultly settings in the game? Can you ever screw yourself over by running out of ammo? That happened to me before in an earlier Resident Evil game and as a result I just stopped playing it.

@lestephan: Are you playing this on a standard PS4 or PS4-Pro for the PSVR ? I remember playing the demo in VR on a standard PS4 and whilst most of it looked alright the characters just looked like a mess of pixels.

@lestephan: Yea, I can imagine some of the up close and personal stuff would be a real thrill in VR. I would like to experience it that way at some point and it may just improve my thoughts on it. I didn't find it scary at all but I'm sure it could be a pants changer in VR.

@jesus_phish: Yes there's Easy, Normal and "Madhouse" not sure whether any other difficulties opened up after finishing I didn't check. Ammo is very plentiful at least on Normal, I never actually had an instance where I ran out of it and you can craft it too. Boss fight arenas also usually contain ammo pickups as well so I doubt you will dig yourself a hole but instead just make it slightly harder for yourself.

@ivdamke: Thanks for the response, that's all I needed to know.

@pjgut: a standard ps4. I thought so far the opening forrest looked the worst, the trees were just a pixely mess, shockingly so. The rest looks way better. I actually tought the characters look pretty good up close\in your face. From a distance tough....not soo great but still more than tolerable imo.

I also forgot to mention that psvr does kinda make the shooting too precise, just like the wiimote did for re4 :p you aim with your head so you can easily be perfectly fast&accurate with your shots or knife swings. Its not like the game is as action relient as re4 though and I've already missed plenty due to shit feeling pretty intense in vr haha.

You just sold me on the game with that line. I loved Amnesia and Alien Isolation, so if it's anything like those then this will be right up my alley.

3 hours in and I'm loving the game so far! I'm playing on normal and I have died a few times. I have also run out of ammo a few times too, but it's mostly due to me panicking when enemies are around and I have auto aim turned off.

One of my friends told me that madhouse mode limits your saves just like the early games which is cool.

I was on the verge of buying it yesterday but forced myself not too. Have way to many games in the backlog anyway right now and have a feeling the price will drop quickly. Reading your impressions helped solidify my decision.

I haven't play much, but what i can say is the PC version runs real well (on my system.)

Even before the nvidia drivers that came out today. I'm getting 4k, HDR (i'm using LG OLED TV), and 60+fps (i have vsync on)

note, never run HDR in windows mode :) (even full screen windows mode) - it looks like crap :) Use real full screen (as one should anyway)

From what I played last night (2 1/2 hours) I found it hard to put down even tho I needed to sleep. The pacing is brilliant. I also liked the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 style chainsaw boss battle/duel.

I'm getting major freezing/hitching issues. I didn't have this problem when the game launched, but now the day after the game just randomly hitches up and locks up for several seconds. It is basically unplayable.

Runs smoothly on Very High settings otherwise.

And it's a shame because I really want to keep playing this, but having the screen just completely freeze for several seconds at critical moments is no fun.

I'm an hour in and not enjoying it at all. I suppose the 'game' part hasn't really begun yet but it's not scary or interesting so far.

Hope that the positive reviews weren't largely about the VR

I kinda agree with OP. The game just didn't really feel that scary, which is fine because I don't really think the earlier games are scary either, but the survival element is kinda lacking too. I was playing on Normal and you can literally run up and 1 v 1 enemies with a knife and take next to no damage. I really liked the setting and atmosphere, but it just didn't go on long enough. About 6 hours in the game changes and become a bit more linear. Towards the end you basically carry more ammo and weapons than Doom guy and just run down anything. This game is probably amazing in VR, but as a 10 hour long single player game the replayability just doesn't hold up to justify $60. The enemies are also really boring in design, except the 3 bosses you're introduced to. I don't know, I kinda feel like the demo, Beginning Hour, was such a fucking good concept to design a game around, but the main game is a lot different. It sorta lacks charisma and ultimately feels like a B-horror movie at a lot of times. There should have been a lot more video tapes to drag out the game as these were relatively interesting. I didn't dislike the game, but I think a lot of the reviews lack perspective and doesn't take into account that this is a $60 game that most people will play without VR (capcom's website show like 10% VR players).

My advice is to wait for a sale. When the game is around $30 it would probably be a good time to pick it up, as for now I'd just skip it as it really isn't all that it's hyped up to be. If you have a VR headset though it might be worth it based on what I've read.

I started playing it a couple of hours ago and got to the point where you see the woman down by the shack or whatever as you're on the second floor searching for the horse heads, and the guy that shot himself in the face (one of the main antagonists) came back. So far, I think it's great and find the way things are set up interesting, like how it is so unclear as to what is going to happen that I was worried as to who's voice it was when the cop asked me to come over. It's one of those games where it's tense to just walk down a hallway since I imagine one of the family members will walk around the corner just as I reach it. I'm not playing with VR, and think it's still effective. The visuals and camera view are great enough that it makes up for the lack of extra immersion through VR. The violence is pretty typical of a slasher horror film, but seeing it through a players view is disturbing, giving me a lot of 'wtf' moments.

I was surprised at how fast you get weapons, and how they feel, which I like. I thought it was going to be a bit more plodding. That said, the weapons early on so far don't instill a lot of confidence. The only thing I haven't really liked so far is that Ethan didn't react accordingly to some of the very first terrible things he saw. For instance, crawling under the horse legs or whatever those were, he had no reaction. Even the moment when you're about to go to the locked cell with your girlfriend and the dead body pops up out of the water, he has little reaction. Let alone he didn't react to just the look of the place he was going. I mean sure, you might love Mia, but come on, you can only be so determined. At least the first response after things go awry is that he wants to get the f out of there.

My 2 biggest complaints with the game are:

- You can't manually turn on the flashlight and it drives me crazy.

You don't get the Resident Evil guy saying Resident Evil 7 in a creepy way when you start a new game.

Hearing that its real short sort of makes me feel justified in my decision to wait for a price drop. I'm glad its good though.

@zurv:Yea I should probably state that I played on a 970/4690K/16GBRAM at max settings (except shadow resoltion down 1 notch) @1080/60 without any frame drops. I only had about 3-4 stutters when the game was clearly loading an area in the background. So in general the PC port for your average PC seems pretty solid.

@shivermetimbers: Yea I feel like I might have seemed a bit down on the game in my original post. I hope it's obvious that I generally liked it quite a bit because I played it in 2 sittings only stopping to cook and eat dinner.

@pompouspizza: Yea I noticed both those things too. The flashlight thing got to me too I kept pressing the flashlight bind I used in STALKER just a week ago but that button was healing item so I kept wasting them.

@demoskinos: Reading a lot of impressions I definitely seem to be in the minority? Most people are saying 10-12 hours. I dunno I just found everything to be so clear cut so I knew exactly where I needed to go and other than 1 boss fight I never got caught up dying much. I certainly don't feel like I rushed through it as I got 70% of the collectables so yea I'm a bit perplexed by the 10-12 hour statements.

So I think I just got through most of the hand hoody stuff, without spoiling anything I just left the environment thst is very similar to the demo. It's a hell of a start and I'm really looking forward to getting to the actual meat of the game.

I'm only 30 mins in and it's already exceeded my expectations. I had zero interest when this was first announced (I partly thought it was a VR game only when I first heard about it). But I played through the demo once (got the bad ending) and that sold me on the game.

Only bummer to me so far is your character seems so monotone and barely reacts when he is attacked for the first time. Game is super pretty though.

ugh.. i'm not enjoying this. Have play that liked this played alien isolation? this type of gameplay was much better in that... and pointless gore does nothing for me, in general, and just feels cheap in this game.

I can get the PS4 version for $47, or PC for $60. Are the graphical differences pretty significant?

I absolutely love it so far. It's everything I wanted it to be and I've only played it for like 2 hours. Boy what a 2 hours that was. It's PANIC inducing in PSVR.

@barrock: You could grab the PC version for $47 from gmg as well, though that would eliminate the chance to refund the game should you have any problems. The graphical differences between PC and PS4 are pretty minor provided you have a Pro, at least from what I've seen. PC does have the benefit of being able to disable CA and adjust the fov a bit which for me personally was a huge plus.

@positivelypudding:

Is GMG okay to use? I know there was some controversy about them being sort of grey market.

@barrock: There was that fight between them and CDProjekt Red around the release of Witcher 3 that did lead to gmg being more upfront about where their keys are sourced. They list it on each game page now I believe and Capcom themselves is listed as the source of the keys for RE7. Here's a quote on neogaf from a Capcom rep as well. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=226904036&postcount=609

I've used the site for years now and haven't had any issues, but yeah, I can't blame anyone for being wary about sites like that especially when so many of them have popped up in the past few years.

@positivelypudding: Oh that's fantastic. I'll just get it through them.

So despite my note of "it's not something I could see people immediately going for replay value either" I started up a madhouse run just to see what it was like. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that a lot of item locations are completely changed or removed, later game enemies spawn in earlier as well as traditional spawns and some jump scare locations are changed. Certain major events happen before their scripted event on Normal too for example Daddy Jack does his Nemesis-like following you before you even go upstairs to the bathroom. So it seems like theirs good gameplay reasons to replay the game which is great.

I also decided to give the other colour correction feature in the graphics options a shot and I actually quite prefer it. Here are some example comparisons of what it does. [second images are default setting]

Gallery

It's basically darker shadows with a higher contrast and a bit more film grain. It definitely soaks the game in more atmosphere but it's good that it's an option as it's hard to see at times without manual flashlights I can see that annoying some people.

I thought this game was fantastic! I'm a long time RE fan, in case my avatar didn't give it away, so I loved the return to form with this game. My only real complaint is how linear the last third of the game becomes. Also I wish the mansion was a little bigger. But overall this is the RE game I've wanted since they changed to a more action oriented focus. I'm even more curious now on what that RE 2 remake will be.

I played for nearly four hours tonight. As a lifelong RE fan, THIS is the game I've been waiting for since RE4. It's exceedingly intense and quite scary in spots. The survival and item management elements are intact, although not as rigid and unforgiving as they used to be. There are so many parts of the game that are great nods to the legacy of the series in terms of both design and content (i.e. the way you get the shotgun compared to how you acquire it in the original).

That said, my enjoyment stopped once I died to the first boss for like the tenth fucking time. The fight looks really great, but it's not fun to play at all and the rules seem to change every time I fight him making for some lame and cheap deaths. The mechanics just don't seem to suit something that hectic. I wasn't able to kill him tonight so I'll have to give it another go some other time this week, but that whole sequence really put a damper on what I otherwise considered, up to that point, a near-perfect experience.

I've played about 4 hours, and I've gotten to the Old House area. Honestly? I'm very impressed thus far. It definitely seems like they've managed to merge the sensibilities of old Resident Evil with stuff like Outlast and Amnesia in a way that actually works. I wouldn't mind if the puzzles were slightly less brain-dead, but this game feels like Capcom has finally figured out what the hell to do with the series in a modern context without just making it a dumb shooter.

I love me some first-person horror - particularly System Shock 2 and Frictional's stuff, so this seems right up my alley. But I've never played an RE game before. GMG still has this for 20% off, someone convince me to pull the trigger on buying this.

Basically, is this this year's Doom?

@beachthunder: I wouldn't say to the same extent as DOOM. The demo for RE7 was pretty cool so there was a inkling that it might be decent. It for sure is better than expected though and like I said it turned out to be something I didn't want it to be but it also managed to prove to me that that isn't a bad thing.

I can't be bothered to play this so I'm watching a streamer I like play through it. Yo fuck this shit lol. Just saw his crazy girlfriend hack his hand off with a chainsaw and then you just pick up your hand afterwards like it's a damn quest item...lmao.

I'm getting tense just watching this shit. Could never imagine playing it.

I'm only a few hours in so please don't spoil late game stuff but I'm curious if this has a new game plus? I'm really looking forward to playing it again and I might go for the platinum.

I've read that the madhouse difficulty changes all sorts of things, from enemy placement, to jump scares, to item locations. I don't think you get to keep all your weapons and start the game over, though, if that's what you mean.

Some say it is short. Maximilian_Dood literally just said the game felt long, and he's been at it for like...10 hours or so. Then again, he does it on VR, not rushing it. He says it now is one of his favorite games ever.

Been watching him from the start, and it has been extremely entertaining. VR is the way to go.

Seeing this game just really makes me sad that silent hills never came out.

I always thought horror games worked better in a shorter format. I'm pretty new to the whole genre- I only played through Outlast not so long ago, and even Outlast is too long for it's own good. Horror games have a tendency to overly rely on their atmosphere and fear factor, and neglect the gameplay mechanics- which are usually pretty basic compared to other genres to begin with and the game just ends up too boring to play.
That's probably another reason why they are so popular to watch but not play... (the biggest being not wanting to be scared but see others be scared themselves)

@choi: I very much agree with you, older Resident Evil games have a notorious habit of not knowing when to actually finish. The only games that for me personally managed to make up for their length were RE4 and RE5 and they were action/combat orientated not horror.

@choi: I agree with you. I loved Alied Isolation but it was too long. 10-12 hours for RE7 sounds perfect and I'll play it multiple times. Speaking of Outlast, the DLC is shorter than the main game and far better.

I was hoping for a return to form, and instead got a very middling action-horror game that poses as survival horror for the first 3-4 hours. As soon as you defeat Marguerite, the game takes a sharp nosedive in quality across the board, as you realize that there are only five enemies (if you count the two types of insects), and that the game won't be tying up any loose ends or making any effort to relate to anything else in the series. The real slap in the face though was the ending revealing that this is a reboot of the series, and the post-credits screen that implies that you're about to unlock a bonus mode, like Mercenaries or Leech Hunter, only to be a teaser for upcoming DLC.

4 stars seems incredibly generous. I plan on making a go at reviewing the game, and I felt that three, edging closer to two, would be more appropriate, though I'd like to cool off for a few days and go back to it on Madhouse Mode to see if I feel the same way once the taste of disappointment isn't quite so fresh in my mouth.

I could rave about this for hours, if I felt so inclined, but I played it all in a single marathon sitting yesterday, and I'm still collecting my thoughts. Also, I haven't had my coffee.

EDIT: Wasn't sure where to slip this in there, but somehow the game left me feeling very hollow and unfulfilled. I was never thrilled, excited, scared, or even angry, frustrated, or upset. I just felt nothing. RE7 simply felt, beyond a point in the story, bland and uninspired, going through the motions with none of the passion or soap opera-level drama that you've come to expect from the series. At least when I suffered through The Evil Within (another "survival horror" game that claimed to be a return to form), I felt angry when I was done with it. As uneven and, frankly, bad, as I found that game, it still managed to reach distinctive highs and lows, and left me with impressions and memorable moments, while RE7 peaked very early and then slowly slipped into mediocrity as it trundled along.

Re 7 is a relatively short game. Finished the game in about 10 hours. Though I did like the game and think this is a major improvement over RE 5 and RE6. This feels like going back to the basics of resident evil games.

Bought the game from Greenmangaming for about 40 euros so for me the price was just right. If I paid 60 euros I dont think i would have felt the same since the game is relatively short.

After 3+ hours in VR last night I discovered a few things

1. I'm not that brave

2. I hate old creepy mansions

3. Has anybody in history said "eff this I can replace this girl"

4. I really am afraid, but my wife won't even come in the room with me while I am playing ( it's the only ego boost this game has given me)

First time ever a game made me feel like this & I go back to the Pong days. 8 more hours until I return to Baker's horrific mansion. Nervous & anxious but oddly excited too

@keichan: when I see people get mad at games like this after playing in a single sitting, it's hard to take serious because like, if the game was dragging and becoming a chore why would you not just take a break and come back instead of having your attitude tainted by your fatigue

"Single sitting," may misrepresent how I played the game. I started it in the morning, and finished it at night. I took breaks, I went grocery shopping, I cooked dinner, et cetera. It's more apt to say that I played through it in a single day, than a single sitting.

I played through the prologue (in VR, natch), and... you guys. Damn. Damn! So much scarier than the demo. I feel like I was in the final reel of a really effective horror film. The cutting to black in and out of "cutscenes" started to get a bit disorienting at parts where it happened repeatedly, but other than that, I loved every second of it. With how much time I spent just checking stuff out and admiring areas, I can imagine that my playthrough will lean closer to the 10-12 hour mark (and Madhouse mode will probably add even more).

I don't normally gush about a game before the game proper even starts, but that was cool as hell. Can't wait to get back to it.

I'm going to lay down plastic like Dexter for my next time. This game scares the shit out of me & I thought I was a brave man.