Resident Evil 7 is capcom’s attempt to make its beloved horror franchise scary again,
by taking the series original formula of claustrophobic locations and limited ammo and mixing it with
newer horror concepts like first person cat and mouse chases.
This first person perspective also allows for a new way to play, Virtual Reality.
Resident Evil 7 is a big deal for VR because unlike Batman Arkham VR or whatever that Final
Fantasy XV thing is, this isn't a short experience.
RE7 is a big budget AAA numbered sequel.
So I saw a golden opportunity by playing the entirety of RE7 in PSVR.
The whole thing.
Which means experiencing moments like this.
And this.
The game does a good job offering several adjustable options in VR like Field of View,
walking speed, and crouch.
The big thing is camera rotation options but I’ll admit that none of them are perfect.
On the default setting, the camera snaps at angles of 30, 45, and 90 degrees.
This is the safest option if you want to minimize the risk of motion sickness but the jerky
nature of it took me out of the experience.
The option I used is called smoothing and while I felt a little sick at first I was
able to get used to it and play the whole game this way.
I would seriously advise caution though when trying this setting and if you're prone to
motion sickness, I would avoid it all together.
Issues like this are partially due to the fact that Resident Evil 7 isn’t designed
to be VR only, it has to work as a traditional game too.
That means no use of Playstation Move controllers to simulate your hands.
The most you get is the camera is now controlled by your head.
So Resident Evil’s Virtual Reality is less about enhancing the gameplay experience and
more about immersing you in its environments.
The true strength of playing something in VR is the sense of presence you gain.
You are more aware of what's around you and what's behind you.
You can tell how long a hallway is and how close an enemy is with greater accuracy.
You really feel like you are walking around this mansion.
And Resident Evil 7 is the perfect game for this because its environmental design and
art are top notch.
The realistic art style fits perfectly.
Every room is full of notes to read, pictures to look at, and the disgusting imagery, my
god it's almost to gross to look at sometimes.
This game is gnarly and fantastically disgusting regardless of how you play it but being able
to see it so up close without that disconnect between you and the TV makes your stomach
churn.
Now let's talk about everyone’s favorite part, the scares.
There are plenty of those in your face jump scares that will get you for sure, but for
me the memorable moments come from entering a new location for the first time and just
having to walk through it.
You have no idea what's gonna happen next and that is just the worst feeling.
I hated, and i mean hated the Old House.
Its dark, its rotting, and I seriously wanted to take the headset off when the giant bugs
showed up.
We’d be here all day if I mentioned every memorable moment but a few stand out scares
include; crawling inside this wall full of centipedes.
Walking through neck high water, the entirety of this location.
After beating the game I went back and played outside of VR to see if there are any differences
and the answer is yes.
For one it's way easier in my opinion to shoot in VR because you can aim with your head.
This might make the game slighter easier in VR but I never found the difficulty balance
to be an issue when playing.
This also means if you freak out or try and look away it messes up your shot which is
pretty neat.
Side Note: It is possible to use your added camera moment from VR to slightly break the
illusion of some scenes.
It doesn’t ruin anything but it's pretty funny.
Another thing is that a lot of character animations are absent in VR.
Stuff like getting knocked down or jumped by an enemy doesn’t happen.
This is most likely because taking camera control away from you for even a moment would
induce motion sickness.
Having played it in VR first I never missed these animations or noticed their absence,
but playing it again I was surprised how many of them were taken out.
Of course sometimes the game can’t cut scripted moments when they are story related.
So to avoid motion sickness the game jarringly switches to you floating in a black void with
a screen playing a pre-rendered cutscene in front of you.
It's the worst part of the VR experience in that it quickly reminds you that you are playing
a video game.
Perhaps the strangest part of playing Resident Evil 7 a second time without VR is that I
think playing in VR first actually kinda ruined the game for me.
It’s like when you go back and look at vacation photos.
It's the same thing, but everything is flat now.
You aren’t there in the same way.
There's a real lack of punch to it.
Don’t get me wrong I still think Resident Evil 7 is a great game but this is a weird
and slightly amusing issue that I think a lot of people who play this in VR first will
experience.
You might also be wondering what it's like to play a 9 hour game from start to finish
in VR?
Well I wouldn’t recommend playing it all in one day like I did because at the end of
the night my eyes felt really awful after having a screen stuck to them all day.
But other than that I felt fine.
You’d think I’d have wanted to take a break to save my heart from all the tension
and scares but honestly I was enjoying the game so much I just kept wanting to play it.
My first playthrough of Resident Evil 7 is gonna stick with me as one of those memorable
gaming experiences partly due to playing it VR.
Even if it's not a perfect example of how the technology can reshape games as we know
them, getting to see the Baker Mansion for the first time that way is something you only
get one chance at and if you have the opportunity to experience it this way, I highly recommend
it.
By the way if you are interested in just watching a bunch of people get scared playing Resident
Evil 7 in VR, there is a video where I threw some GameSpot employees into a room for your
enjoyment.
And If you have played Resident Evil 7 in VR or if you want to try it now let me know
in the comments.