After putting it off for many years, I finally got around to catching up on the recent Resident Evil games -- 7 and 8, respectively. Despite some initial reservations about the series’ new direction, I am officially won over. Mostly.

Let’s get into it, starting with 2017’s Resident Evil 7.

Resident Evil 7

Right before Resident Evil 7 came out, I played the demo and walked away confident I wouldn’t be missing much. The setting of a dilapidated, claustrophobic crumbling manor did little to excite, the Baker family seemed hardly remarkable as antagonists, and Ethan Winters’ cardboard personality did even less.

Now make no mistake, I did think Resident Evil 7 seemed like a better offering than the previous main entry in the series, Resident Evil 6.

And boy, Resident Evil 6.

Resident. Evil. 6.

You know what?

Let’s rewind and briefly discuss Resident Evil 6.

Resident Evil 6

Resident Evil 6 is what happens when a lifetime of additions to a franchise reach a breaking point and the series smothers itself in its own lore. In an effort to try and give the sprawling cast equal spotlight, Resident Evil 6 is multiple games in one -- none of which, in my estimation, are any good.

Looking back, I find it impossible to describe Resident Evil 6 succinctly. It is a genre-bending emancipation from everything one could call “Survival Horror”. In the interest of fairness, ever since Resident Evil 4 the series started trending towards action with hints of horror, but 6 reached a fever pitch. Leon and Helena’s campaign has elements of horror in it, but both protagonists are so well versed and trained they never really feel in danger. Meanwhile, Chris and his partner Piers - who is somehow both a new and old war buddy - go on a militaristic BOW killing spree, tearing apart zombies and monsters with speed and precision. Meanwhile, Sherry and Jake run from a giant BOW, not unlike the premise of Resident Evil 3. However, Jake is a superhuman BOW himself, which keeps tensions low. They also primarily run through active war zones, which is a... different kind of survival horror than the Resident Evil series usually goes for.

In re-examining these plot threads and the baffling directions they go, I believe I have identified what it is about Resident Evil 6 that never sat well -- in a narrative sense, at least. If we get into the mechanical sense, we’ll be here all day. An article for another time.

Resident Evil 6 got, to use a colloquial term, “way too up its own ass.” It’s so bogged down in all its own lore and history that it ceased to be anything other than a game about itself. It’s a series of interactive cutscenes, followed by non-interactive ones. It might’ve even been better off as a series of feature films rather than a game, quite frankly.

So, how does one correct course on a franchise lost in itself?

Resident Evil 7 and Ethan Winters

The introduction of Ethan Winters marks a much needed Resident Evil breaking point, in my estimation. A new protagonist who stumbles blindly into this world of reanimated corpses and B.O.W.s, who is ignorant to the full scope of the dangers surrounding him -- and perhaps more importantly, unaware of the spiraling scope of T-Viruses, Plagas, and clandestine Umbrella Corporation experiments tying all the chaos together.

By throwing Ethan Winters into the Baker Estate, the RE team has successfully brought the franchise back to its horror roots. Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Leon S. Kennedy, and all the other usual suspects are too competent and capable now. A night in the Baker estate would just be another Tuesday to them. Find the funny lookin’ keys, slide around the bookshelves, horde all the ammo until the final boss, put 30 incendiary rounds in it, badda bing, badda boom. Be home by dinner time.

From this perspective, Resident Evil 7 is a resounding success. The Baker Mansion is evocative, tense, and atmospheric. You hear things in the distance, slight scrapes and creaking walls. You’re never quite sure if something is crawling about nearby, or the house is simply settling around you. Ethan is... a bit dense, but his terror and fear is real, vicarious, and rings true.

Aside from atmosphere, there’s a few other things the game does resoundingly well.

Limited Adversaries, Limited Resources

In returning to the roots of Resident Evil, 7 pares down on both enemies and ammo. There’s only so many foes in the Baker Estate, and likewise, only so many tools to confront them. While you’ll predominantly be squaring off against members of the Baker family, there are also a handful of moldy creatures roaming the halls. Once you’ve killed the foes in a given area, the path is clear. Ethan is free to explore at his leisure.

Ethan Winters always feels out of his depth, like he’s just scraping by in every encounter. When someone from the Baker family catches up to you, it’s always a horrific and graphic nightmare. I wrapped up the vast majority of these fights with barely any ammunition left. They were tense, horrifying, and immensely memorable encounters.

First Person Terrors

As something of a Resident Evil purist, I was initially opposed to the shift to a first person perspective. I cynically thought of it as a thinly-veiled attempt to cash in on the growing VR trend at the time.

In practice however, it is tremendously effective in cranking up the tension and discomfort. It ends up a third person perspective added an extra layer of removal, which I didn’t realize cut the tension down until it was gone. Resident Evil 7 is the most horrified I’ve been playing a Resident Evil game, due in no small part to all the terrors being front and center. There’s something much more unsettling about getting spun around by something grabbing you, rather than watching it happen to Leon or Claire from an outside view.

Perhaps even more effective, though, are Resident Evil 7’s use of VHS tapes. Throughout the game, Ethan will find recordings tucked away in various dressers and drawers. When you watch them, you assume control of the recorder. The first such tape is a crew of ill-fated ghost hunters who picked the wrong damn house to canvas, while many others will be from Mia’s perspective, Ethan’s missing and captured wife. These tapes serve a fantastic multitude of purposes.They act as exposition, reveal the area ahead, and give you a preview of what horrors await. It also helps Mia remain an ever-present character, even though she’s not always immediately present in game.

For the most part Resident Evil 7 is a fantastic entry, but I do have a few gripes.

Fuck the way Resident Evil 7 does Key Items

Resident Evil 7 brought something kicking and screaming back from the past best left there -- the intentional obscurity of key items.

Here’s how it works. You find a crank, a key, a special commemorative coin. Whatever. It takes up space in your inventory as you navigate the mansion and use it on everything with a vaguely appropriately-sized opening until it helps you progress. Eventually, you will have used said item everywhere possible and the item will be useless -- but you will have no way to know this.

So now, you end up with a dilemma. Do you continue to cart the item around, or do you throw it in the item box, and thus risk having to make a return trip should you find the requisite door? Or, the truly chaotic option, toss the item and risk being unable to complete the game later on?

From a diegetic perspective, I get this. It’s not like Ethan knows how many Crow Key doors are in the Baker estate. He wouldn’t know when the item is all used up, clear to be tossed on the ground and forgotten. So maybe, as an optional mode, I would understand keeping this as is. For the rest of us, however, it adds an obnoxious inventory management guessing game, one I don’t feel adds much to the experience.

The baffling part is this issue has already been addressed; not only in recent releases, but in remasters of old Resident Evil’s as well. In all the multitude of remakes of the original Resident Evil, the game prompts you to discard an item once it has no more use, thus immediately giving back a much coveted inventory spot. More recently, the Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes mark the item with a red check mark, denoting it as safe to discard. Why 7 chose to buck these changes and return to the past is beyond me, and I hate it.

Bugs

The middle section of the game pits Ethan against Marguerite, the Baker Family matriarch who has power over bugs.

It’s awful.

It’s beehives and wasps for days, and when the final battle against Marguerite starts, it doesn’t get any better. In fact, it gets worse. Much worse.

Depending on how you feel about giant bugs this may be a non-issue for you, but I wasn’t pleased.

Final Resident Evil 7 Thoughts

As a return to form for the series, Resident Evil 7 is a huge success. However, much as I enjoyed it, any desire to spend more time in the world was totally expunged. Ethan’s romp through the Baker Manor is exhilarating, violent, and exhausting. The game presented me with all sorts of bonus modes upon the conclusion, but I felt no need to engage with any of it. If anything, I felt like a shower.

Now don’t get me wrong -- Resident Evil 7 is great, but great in the way The Ring or It Follows is great. It’s a tremendously effective horror experience, but like those equally effective films, it left me rattled and uncomfortable.

Resident Evil 8, meanwhile, I have not been able to stop playing.

Send help.

Resident Evil 8

Ethan Winters returns as the protagonist in Resident Evil 8, now living in some remote corner of the world while Chris Redifeld trains him as a B.O.W. elimination operative. Everything is mostly great since the Baker Manor incident -- Ethan and Mia have a baby daughter now, Rosemary, and there seem to be no long-term lingering effects from the mold infections they endured. Yes, all is well and good until one day Chris Redfield and his agents blow Mia away in a hail of gunfire and kidnap Ethan’s daughter.

And thus begins Ethan’s second horrible, no good, very bad day.

A Man of Action

The biggest departure mechanically from Resident Evil 7 is a greater emphasis on action, a reflection of Ethan’s new training and experience. Ammo is far less sparse in this mysterious village. In fact, Ethan’s learned how to mold scraps of rust into functional first aid meds, bullets, and even land mines. As such you’re free to be more aggressive with your weaponry, but even so, I still barely scraped by numerous encounters in Resident Evil 8.

This increased focus on combat also means more options. Ethan gets a much larger arsenal here, carting around rifles and pipe bombs by the bushel. The development team cited Resident Evil 4 as the primary influence here and it shows, even going so far as to emulate the shop, upgrade system, and attache’ case system of inventory management.

There is, however, one element from 4 I wish had been emulated better, and that is the weapon variety. In Resident Evil 4, every weapon had a unique specialty of some kind. One might not do as much damage but in turn it would have a higher chance to crit, or maybe hit multiple enemies if they’re lined up. Something like that. In Resident Evil 8 however, every weapon you find later is simply better. Better shotgun, better handgun. Throw your old shit in a ditch the instant a new weapon becomes available, because it’s worthless. In addition to narrowing your options for play style, it also makes any upgrades you’ve put into earlier weapons feel like wasted money. Sure, you get some extra money refunded upon selling the upgraded weapon, but the odds you will ever use said weapon again is extremely low.

One final thing to note in this section is the incredible pacing the game takes to make this increased combat work and still maintain tension. Resident Evil 8 starts ratcheted up to 11. You are absolutely hounded by lycans, vampires, all sorts of horrifying shit. From there you wander into Lady Dimitrescu’s Castle, and while your resources and options are still tight, the giant Lady of the House and her murderous daughters pursue you in every chamber.

Then, just as you’re finally starting to feel powerful, all your equipment is stripped away by Donna Benieviento. The less I say about what occurs in the Benieviento’s Doll House after this, the better. Suffice to say, it is the most horrifying location in either game. Hands down.

And finally, only in the back half of the game does Ethan get to make full use of his heavily expanded arsenal. Where Resident Evil 7 felt like you were merely surviving, Resident Evil 8 feels like you are bringing everything to bear as the conclusion draws near.

As you might imagine, this also makes the prospect of replaying Resident Evil 8 for gameplay purposes alone much more tantalizing.

Key Items, you say?

Resident Evil 8 has the perfect inventory system to manage key items. Just think -- things would take up varying degrees of space, and you’d have to play tetris to rearrange your stuff to make it fit.

If that was how Resident Evil 8 chose to use Key Items, that is.

But it isn’t.

Key items go to their own inventory space and stay the hell out of your attache’ case. That space is for guns and explosives only. No fiddling with keys, no item box to sort. You’ll still have to examine key items to notice new details or slap some pieces together, but the inventory space for these items is now limitless and separate.

Is this the best solution for a Resident Evil game? Maybe not. Is it the best solution for a Resident Evil game that wants you to care less about key items and more about shooting shit? Yes.

Showing Restraint

To close out, I think it’s worth celebrating how all the promotional material surrounding Resident Evil 8 held so much back.

While I found Resident Evil 7 enjoyable, it was, more or less, exactly what I expected based on the marketing material. It wasn’t until the last quarter or so it managed to surprise me with an unexpected setting.

Now, back to Resident Evil 8. I’m sure if you use the internet enough to know how to navigate to our website, you also recognize Lady Dimitrescu. The internet fell in love with her (or parts of her, you thirsty fiends) long before Resident Evil 8 came out.

So, imagine the collective surprise when we all discovered Tall Vampire Lady herself isn’t the main antagonist. Not even close. Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters are but a small part of a larger narrative, one where the mysterious “Mother Miranda” sits front and center.

Within two hours, everything in Resident Evil 8 was a mystery. Only as it happened did I realize how rare it was, to feel completely oblivious to the twists and turns ahead. It made for a thrilling experience on a fresh play, full of absolutely wild surprises and revelations.

Mr. Winters

In the end, I recommend Resident Evil 7 and 8 to all fans of the horror genre. Resident Evil 7 is perfect for anyone who wants a slower, more methodical horror experience, while 8 is the place to go for anyone looking for more action to supplement the terror. If 7 doesn’t sound like your jam, you could absolutely skip straight to 8;make no mistake, the plot of 7 factors in heavily, but the game makes an effort to get newcomers up to speed.

Oh, there is one last surprise I must reveal about 8 to explain why I’ve been unable to put it down.

Return of The Mercenaries

Back in my review for Resident Evil 3 (2020), I remarked on the surprising absence of a special Resident Evil mode.

The original appearance of The Mercenaries happened in the 1999 release, a ubiquitous bonus mode which became a staple of later sequels. There’s no sign of a side adventure with the U.B.C.S. soldiers here at all.

2 years later, Resident Evil 8 delivered the goods.

The Mercenaries returns in Resident Evil 8, a bonus mode which unlocks after you clear the game once on any difficulty. In it, you are dropped onto a map after buying your starting arsenal. The goal is simple -- eliminate all foes and reach the exit. It’s a much more arcadey experience than the game itself, as your run is scored and judged. Get high enough ratings, and new stages unlock. Get high enough ratings on all the stages, and you’ll even net yourself some new weapons to buy from Duke on subsequent plays of the core game.

Including a lightsaber.

The Mercenaries is the main reason I’ve been unable to put down Resident Evil 8. Every stage is like solving a puzzle -- to get the highest rating, you must efficiently eliminate foes in quick succession. The first run is exploratory, figuring out where they all reside, what the optimal path is, where the supplies lie. On each subsequent one, you’re making tweaks to optimize. Eventually you deduce a new strategy, make a new discovery, and hit a higher score plateau.

In the final four stages of Mercenaries, the puzzle-solving aspect is taken to new extremes. The only thing Duke has available for you in the shop is the starting pistol and a grenade launcher, meaning you’re required to make better use of available items and weapons within the stages themselves.

In short, Mercenaries kept me entertained long after I would’ve normally moved on to something new.

By the way, this lightsaber? It requires an SS rating on every Mercenaries stage to unlock. Which means I’ll still be here, optimizing the killing. As the GM of a Star Wars Edge of the Empire game, I feel an obligation to acquire this thing.

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