@pompouspizza: I was seriously disappointed when my ears weren't graced with a classic "Resident Evil...seven"

Still really enjoying the game overall though.

@marcsman: Haha, I might have to as well. Just did the first major fight, and my heart is still racing.

Just by side effect of being a horror nerd, I don't scare easily. Outside of isolated jump scares catching me off-guard, I can only think of two games to have this profound an effect on me: Amnesia and White Day (especially White Day... man, if that game is still coming to PSVR, I may die an early death). But this is well on its way to joining that hallowed tier.

Who would have guessed that fucking Resident Evil, not exactly the most terrifying of horror franchises, would pull this off?

Also, I hope there's some 11th hour twist that reveals the player to be Chris Redfield and I have to punch a boulder in VR.

@shagge: I hear you. Never was I so happy to make it to a safe room. Running around the couch and trying to get away, aged me in a not so good way. Lower resolution my ass. This is the way to play it. Finally a game that makes me truly proud of owning a PSVR ( and also justifying the purchase to my wife)

I think it's great. Not my favorite game of the series, but it is certainly the scariest Resident Evil game by a healthy country mile. The competition isn't even close.

@marcsman: Yeah, this is definitely going to sell some headsets, and hopefully secure VR's future (and Resident Evil's future) for a while.

Funny moment that's going to stick with me for a while: In the prologue, when you're in the water and that body comes down in front of you... I have an extreme real-life phobia of maggots. So I'm inspecting the corpse's face, and I notice the empty eye socket is squirming... I came this close to tearing the headset off, haha. I was pretty happy about the low resolution right then.

@shagge: Yeah that got me too. I'm not a phobia level of them, but totally repulsed by them.

@marcsman: fuck.... I just got a vive but this sounds so awesome in VR. Once it comes off of its exclusivity deal with Sony I will most likely be buying this game again on pc for the vr experience. I've seen more people than I expected to see saying that the vr is incredible. Still an awesome game (so far) playing on a tv.

@sackmanjones: It will only be better on the Vive. Your time will come my friend

After fixing some of the performance issues I had (still some occasional frame rate hitching), I've played some more of this game and so far I am liking it. I'm about 3.5 hours in, going real slow taking my time exploring.
I've just gone through the underground section with the black tar creatures which was pretty cool.

I'm interested to see where the story goes.

Hmm played further into Madhouse difficulty and it seems a lot of those gameplay alterations might be heavily front ended. Past the first boss fight most of everything has been the same as Normal which is a shame.

Just the second boss fight where you have a chainsaw battle with Jack.

Good LORD that was incredible in VR. Disgusting and tense as all hell. This game is going to sell some headsets I swear. That was one of the best moments in the franchise.

I'm so happy with this game.

Finally got to play it yesterday and the VR really sells it to me. I've always enjoyed horror games but never actually felt scared or even tense (besides being afraid of dying in RE1 and losing a lot of progress). VR helps build the presence of the house and suddenly I'm making sure at every corner that I'm not going to get jumped.

@frostyryan: it's the only game to even come to making to consider picking up a PSVR. Unfortunately my flat is tiny and I don't have the recommended amount of space.

@marcsman: Do we know that it's a timed exclusive? Microsoft often make timed deals, but I feel like Sony normally make permanent ones.

@odinsmana: I could be wrong but I think the exclusivity window has been confirmed to be 1 year.

I watched his madhouse difficulty play-through tonight, and he said that the VR play-through was one of the most amazing experiences he's ever had with a video game, 10 out of 10. He also only quit because of how late it was, and said that even though he finished the game in VR already, he just wants to keep going.

Sounds pretty great for fans of the series.

It's funny you should say that:

@odinsmana: Sony has it locked up for one year.

@marcsman: OK. Thanks!

I'm maybe five hours in, I've been playing for my YouTube channel.

While I like the concept of the game, worth playing or watching someone play, the default control to aim a gun was so slow I had to change it. One room full of muck men i had to do like three times. The game isn't clear when a fight is winnable or not, I retried the mother fight thinking I wasted ammo missing a gimmick like the garage fight. I also hate the inventory system, much like I hated it in 1997. If we can have magic boxes that transfer items, why not infinite space to hold things.

I am a horror enthusiast, so maybe the cliche evil family just doesn't phase me. I'm also unpussed by jump scares, they're a nuisance. Early on when Ethan seemingly kills a character he shouldn't want to, that's good horror.

I am hopeful this ties in with previous games las plagas t-virus stuff, thus far nothing but some hints at side characters and that picture of the mountains.

lso, I was bothered that a giant cast iron skillet was passed over for a pocket knife as melee weapon of choice. That seems so silly. Horror story logic is in full swing. A police radio is ignored, glass windows to circumvent door puzzles also ignored. Even going into someone's home without knocking, what a crazy thing to do, almost as crazy as the silent hill 2 like mentalitlity of going to a known mysterious letter, all alone. Why not have anyone go with you? And lastly, for a game that takes place in 2016, nobody has a cell phone or any scene where they can't use a cell signal. I'm maybe looking into the abyss to hard.

I really felt good in the garage when I figured out the gimmick, I started singing how does it feel, since that encounter had the same gimmick used against me. That and the chainsaw scene are great gaming moment award worthy, this is a game worth checking out of you're at all curious.

Updated thoughts, as I'm pretty sure I'm at the final stretch of the game [edit: I was not, as it turned out] unless there's a location that hasn't been revealed...

The scariness abates rather quickly. It's a little bit of a letdown in that regard, as the first couple of hours are so amazingly intense. But that's fine, really. The gameplay and setting are still extremely enjoyable. The only part I actively dislike is the bug area building up to the Margeurite fight. It succeeds at being nasty and uncomfortable, but it's annoying from a gameplay perspective. And as cool as the boss fight looks, it's pretty uncreative compared to the earlier ones.

The Molded never stop being intimidating in VR, which is great. They're also so satisfying to kill that it's hard not to waste ammo on them. I wish there were more varieties of enemies, but given the small scale of the game it might have been a bit much, so that's fine.

I didn't realize how brilliant the garage section was until I watched someone else play it on Youtube and saw it go down completely differently. I love fights that have multiple solutions like that. So good.

The Birthday tape. Awesome.

Wheelchair lady. Still nervewracking to be around. As Dan would say, she's got that "up to something" look.

Can the game please tell us when items are no longer needed if we're going to be doing inventory management? Please?

All in all, I've cooled off a bit as I've progressed, but I still think the game is awesome and exactly what the franchise and VR needed. I do wish there was more to the overall package, given the precedent set by earlier REs (maybe a Molded horde mode a la Mercenaries? I dunno. Just something to do after the credits roll besides speedrunning and an unlockable difficulty), but ah well. It's a damn good game, and an experience I'll be talking about for a long time.

@magmamud: Can you elaborate on how you "fixed some of the performance issues" you were having? I was having serious hitching when running and rounding corners, and turning down settings didn't really seem to help, and it otherwise stayed at a near-constant 60 fps with most settings maxed. I had no problems with the demo whatsoever.

The only difference I could determine between the demo and the full game, as far as my system was concerned, was that I had the demo installed one of my HDDs, and the full game on my SSD. Curiously, when I transferred the full game install from the SSD to the HDD the demo was installed on, the hitching decreased significantly, even at the same settings. I have no idea why that would be. The initial load times were significantly lower when installed on the SSD, but it became almost unplayable with the degree of hitching in some places. I'd prefer to have it on the SSD for the load time improvement, so I'm just curious what worked for you so that maybe I can try to replicate it.

I'm running a 970, i5-3570k (still stock clock), and 8gb ram.

@ralphmoustaccio: The hitching issues actually came back again. I thought I had fixed it by setting the textures down a notch (doesn't seem to be a notable difference between medium and high), shadow cache off and everything else maxed. It seems to be totally random, I had some good 1 hour sessions with no problem, then suddenly it will just slow down like crazy and I'm forced to restart the game.

I read similar accounts in the Steam forums about drive speed having something do with it, or the RENET causing issues, but I have no idea, I feel like I have tried everything.

For the record I have the game installed on my HDD.

@magmamud: Thanks for the reply. Sorry it came back. I wonder if there's a memory leak of some kind that's causing it. I agree that it seems to get worse the longer the continuous playtime. I did read elsewhere that setting the re7.exe process to high priority via task manager has helped some people avoid stuttering. I tried it and it seemed to help, but that might also be because I had restarted shortly before doing so. It's a bit frustrating.

@ralphmoustaccio: Yeah the fact that it seems to get worse with time might point to some sort of memory leak. I haven't tried setting the process to high priority, thanks for that tip. Hopefully that improves things, because I'm not hopeful Capcom will try and address this issue in the near future since it seems to happen to a relatively small percentage of players.

Stuck on the fight in the butcher room, not enjoying this at all. Don't enjoy the hide and seek stuff either.

The boss fight is systematically obtuse with really awkward mechanics that make me just not want to play anymore. Bummed out :(

Really shocked at some of the reviews so far

The hide and seek stuff is tense survival stuff, it's what a lot of survival horror games do these days. When done well, it works and RE7 does them well. The butcher fight isn't systematically obtuse. It's pretty clear what you should be doing. There are multiple ways to beat certain bosses though and I don't see how that's a negative.

That's why reviews and reception among fans is good.

I beat the game yesterday, and I think I agree with the people who say that the back-end is noticeably weaker than the start. Between the ship being an out of left field self-contained extended sequence and the mines not having a lot to them other than an excuse to burn through all the ammo I was hording, definitely seems like most of the effort was spent on the Baker estate. And don't get me started on the cutscene disguised as a final boss. Did like the implication that your character isn't actually getting rescued by the BSAA at the end, instead you're getting kidnapped by whatever new resurgent Umbrella cell is responsible for the E-series bioweapons in the first place. I imagine we'll find out what exactly the deal is with the guy who introduces himself as "Redfield" in the free DLC they teased at the end.

As a whole though, I still really liked the game. It's honestly a little light for what it is, but as a foundation for the series moving forward I think it's an incredibly solid one, and I could see myself doing a couple of replays for the sake of speedrunning and Madhouse difficulty. It also has me super curious to see what they're doing with the Resident Evil 2 remake, and what cues that will take from this, if any.

My finding with the butcher fight is that it feels a lot like the Revolver ocelot fight in MGS1. A lot of running around and pacing trying to get around a guy so you can hit him. It doesn't feel like the game has the necessary systems in place to facilitate this long sparring match they're going for. I feel a lot of the problems come down to this block system where I'm not sure if it's a last ditch attempt to mitigate damage when you know you're going to eat shit or if it is supposed to be used like dark souls and the strategy here is to turtle up and hit in between attack windows.

This game has a great look but these big encounters with the family have been major bum notes compared with wandering around the house finding items. That garage fight felt like a clumsy cutscene-ridden mess that I got through just cause

I've gotten to the Mansion and I felt that up until then the tensions were super high but past the dinner scene... the family feels a bit goofy to me. There's a certain charm to it and it's still fairly scary in VR, but I find that the dad can sometimes sounds like a goofball, he'll be chasing you around and then say things like "I'm going to squash you like a bug... oh don't tell Marguerite I said that". When I think about it I actually find it cool to think that they're a somewhat functioning family, but it just makes me fear them less.

@pjgut: Yeah the game still retains some of that B-Horror, almost comedy horror vibe to it that I feel past RE games also has. Personally I like it, gives it some more personality. But I can also see it being less scary as a result.

I've only played for about one and a half hour and I'm not sure how much more I can play. The game stresses me out and scares me too much. Something about unkillable monsters really scares me. That said, the game seems very well made so far.

Told myself I'd play just an hour last night and played for 5. The point I'm at seems like it'll be just before some sort of boss fight/encounter with Lucas, and I'm really digging the game so far. I'm guessing that the second half people dislike starts around here though.

Still, the game has had enough awesome moments to be among my favourite Resident Evil games now. That "Happy Birthday" tape in particular was terrific, and I just saved right before where I think it'll become handy.

I haven't beaten it yet (pretty far in though), but it already feels like it could become a classic of the genre. It's the most well realized first person horror game I've played, and it easily stands alongside the best of the series. If this is what were getting at the beginning of the year, then 2017 is shaping up to be a banger.

Side note: The "happy birthday" tape is an early contender for moment of the year.

So far i think the game is great im a huge resident evil fan and its good to see that they are going back to their survival horror roots

i just started a playthrough on my youtube channel if you guys want to check it out

I cant wait to get deeper into it

Beat it last night, I really loved it. I'm not the biggest RE fan, I've played REmake, about half of 2, love 4, played about half of 5, and hated 6 like everyone else. As many have been saying, RE 7 feels like a return to form for the franchise. The puzzles feel a bit watered down compared to say REmake, which was clearly done to make it appeal to a more mainstream audience, but they were still rewarding and satisfying to solve. My only complaint would be that it was not scary at all for me. I didn't play in VR, so that may have something to do with it, but aside from the rare jump scare, I kind of just felt like I was playing an action game with limited resources. Still, the progression and story I felt were extremely satisfying, and the ending left me really wanting to know where the series will go next.

That's Resident Evil, though. It's always been "a little goofy." I'm happy it's tonally in line with the rest of the series. Keep playing though, there's still plenty to be genuinely terrified of.

I am SO damn glad I decided to bite the bullet and buy this game at full price.

This is EASILY one of the best games I have played in a LONG time. It has been so damn long since I played a game where I was eager to get off work so I could play more of it, but holy shit everything about this game just clicked with me. I love how it's similar to the first Resident Evil with collecting and storing the items, but they pulled back and made it significantly less tedious. The puzzles are a lot more simplistic, but that just makes the game have a great pace the entire way through. I felt the enemies were tough, but fair, and I can't even think of a single time I died where I felt like it was unfair. I enjoyed EVERY single level in this game, even the second half that I've read people dislike. I felt like the progression from horror to action worked even better here than it did in Alien: Isolation, and like Alien: Isolation, I love how the levels are littered with goodies all over the place if you look hard enough. I liked the length of the game, and I also enjoyed the ending, even if it was predictable.

I can't believe Capcom made this. I recently played through Revelations 2 (It was ok), Resident Evil 4 (It's good), Resident Evil Remake (I felt it was tedious), and Resident Evil 6 (It was ok, I didn't hate it a like a lot of others, but I can definitely see why people don't like it), and I'm just completely blown away by how much of a MASSIVE improvement this is over all of those games. Honestly, I like this game way more than Resident Evil 4, and I'm sure that's a controversial statement since everyone and their mother loves Resident Evil 4.

It's going to be incredibly hard for another game to come out this year to top this for me to be honest.

Edit: Also want to note I didn't play this in VR. If the Oculus Rift was a few hundred dollars cheaper (and if RE7 actually supported VR on PC), I would seriously consider getting one just to replay this game.

I just beat the game in 2:50 in a single sitting on easy. That speedrun trophy is entirely doable when you know exactly where to go, run everywhere, and use the pistol you get for beating the game to bypass enemies easily. Though, if I'm going to be entirely honest, beating the game that quickly did really emphasize how light RE7 is in terms of actual substance. The current Any% world record is already down to a little more than 90 minutes, including cutscenes.

To be fair, that's not very far off from speedruns of older Resident Evil games, but I feel like those require a lot more route optimization and inventory management to be run quickly, whereas I did this sub-3 hour run on my second playthrough after just skimming the aforementioned world record video. Don't get me wrong, still enjoyed the game enough to want to play it again as fast as possible, but I wish there was a little more meat on its bones. At the very least, it will make going for the platinum fairly easy, which I might just do. Collectibles certainly won't be that hard to find with the X-Ray specs, and beating the game on Madhouse unlocks infinite ammo, which will certainly make that "Don't use the item box more than 3 times" and the "Don't use more than 3 healing items" trophies a lot easier to get.

loved it from beginning to end! also, it's much more resident evil than outlast, which i love, but was afraid re7 was basing itself off of. also, this is the first...1st person re game ever. it succeeds on a number of different levels. resident evil, and doom are back baby.

I'm fairly early on (facing the first goo enemies) and I'm already finding it too tedious to continue. I guess I don't have much patience for this type of game at the moment.

RE5 is still my favorite in the series because it actually had good gunplay. The pistol in this game feels terrible to shoot, which is a cardinal sin. Edit: and the enemies are basically all bullet sponges with poor hit feedback.

So, is this the best VR game yet? Seems to be the most praised i've seen a game get with a VR mode.

@dharmabum: yeah, if your favorite in the series is 5 then I would say this isn't the game for you. I'm not sure of your history with the series but this is mainly a callback gameplay wise from 1-3. It gets closer to 4 the farther you get but it never goes full on action movie like 5 does.

Don't get me wrong, 5 is a great game but 7 just isn't in the same style

@sackmanjones: I agree, and I went into 7 expecting it to have the callbacks that you mentioned (things like resource and inventory management). I think it says more about my personal taste rather than the game's quality per se. However, shooting with the pistol so far has been unsatisfying and ineffective due to lack of ammo, while running past enemies and hiding seems like the only alternative. I'm just not in the mood for that type of combat right now.

@dharmabum: That's because RE5 is an action game and RE7 goes back to what the series always was, which is survival horror.

You're not supposed to have enough ammo. Shooting isn't supposed to be incredibly effective. That's the whole point. Overpowering your character is what made 5 and 6 not tense in the slightest. RE7 is a slow horror game.

@frostyryan: It is still different than RE in the classic sense though. Even there I can pretty much take out enemies.

For me, I don't love the getting chased by a guy I can't or is really hard to take down thing. I don't mind zombies I can pick my way through as much. It is a different style of gameplay. That's why I'm not into what I see of this. I think it looks successful at that but it's not my style of game.

@artisanbreads: But in Resident Evil 2 and 3, Mr. X and Nemesis were specifically designed to be just that, and that's what RE7's influence with the Baker family comes from.

I'm just saying that aspect in particular is definitely RE in the classic sense. It takes influence from old games in its own series for sure...

@frostyryan: Yeah there is some history to it but not quite how it is here. To me it clearly shows the influence and relation to modern first person horror games like Amnesia and Alien: Isolation in that way more in how it is actually done in this game. Mr. X in 2 was really scripted in how he worked. It is similar to Nemesis but I don't actually even like RE 3 so something that's again not for me I guess.

@acidbrandon18: yea the second half of the game was real linear. right after the ship.

the game was a great experience. the pace died down towards the end. definitely looking forward to re8 and re2 remake!!!!! even that re1 remake is super hype now after this game

@keichan: interested to know the setup you played on

@ralphmoustaccio: turn shadows from max to high quality.