Resident Evil 7: Biohazard’s 10 hour campaign can be played entirely in virtual reality — every jump scare, every grueling boss fight, every disgusting enemy encounter, experienced up close and uncomfortably personal with the help of Sony’s PlayStation VR headset.
As someone who was initially skeptical about how a full-length, entirely VR-optional game would work in VR, I was surprised to discover that it was actually… pretty good!
Resident Evil 7's strongest moments in VR were the ones where it just let me exist in its world.
So far, most successful or well-known virtual reality experiences have been created specifically with VR in mind: Job Simulator, Batman: Arkham VR, and so on. These games take advantage of VR’s unique offerings to craft moments that wouldn’t be the same played on a screen. Seeing your hands in-game using PlayStation Move or the HTC Vive controllers goes a long way to make you feel physically present in a virtual world, even if you are just sloppily putting together cartoon sandwiches in a comedy game. But while it’s important for developers to identify what some of VR’s specialized capabilities are sooner rather than later, the result has been a lot of games attempting to experiment with the same few ideas, over and over again. It’s easy for VR skeptics to feel unsure about whether these isolated mechanics are enough to carry a full-length AAA game campaign.
Resident Evil 7 avoids this trap by focusing mostly on its powerful, dreary atmosphere — something I have a feeling a lot of horror games that go the VR route will end up doing. Not only is this enough to make Resident Evil 7 a consistently strong, fun, and impressive demonstration of VR’s capabilities, but it allows it to avoid an over-reliance on VR-specific mechanics and thus remain fun on a traditional display as well. And that might just be the thing that will give Resident Evil 7 longevity as a VR game — the fact that it can be played both ways.
I was worried that Resident Evil 7 would fall victim to 3D movie syndrome. When 3D in movies became a trend, it wasn’t uncommon (and still isn’t) to see a movie in 2D and be able to immediately identify what moments were designed to make 3D movie goers feel like the extra money they paid was justified: an explosion might cause debris to fly at the screen or an object might bounce right into the audience. In 2D, it looks lame.
Resident Evil 7 in VR gives me confidence in the future of virtual reality.
Similarly, Resident Evil 7's horror is at its weakest in VR when it decides to remind you you’re playing a VR game. A handful of sequences involving sharp objects or some other unpleasantry shoved in your face are neat spectacles, but I couldn't shake the feeling that they were included only to sell the player on VR’s “immersive” qualities. Unlike the difference between 2D and 3D movies though, these moments weren’t eye-rolling experiences in 2D, thanks to games’ unique familiarity with the first-person perspective to begin with. It was obvious when those moments were there for the VR users, but it rarely pulled me out of the moment no matter which way I was playing.
Resident Evil 7's strongest moments in VR were the ones where it just let me exist in its world, free of distractions. Standing in the dimly lit yard outside the Dulvey house or slowly making my way down a dark hallway, physically leaning to glimpse around a corner, were much stronger representations of the magic VR can work, and are pleasingly abundant in Resident Evil 7.
A host of adjustable options ensure that that VR magic isn’t ruined by physical discomfort — another reason Resident Evil 7’s VR experience is such a good example of how to do AAA VR right. Smooth camera controls in the Beginning Hour demo made some (including me) feel sick in VR, but Resident Evil 7 lets you disable that in favor of incremental rotations. What you’d think would be a jarring way to move around is surprisingly comfortable, making longer play sessions in VR a possibility.
Simply being present in a strange new place, with comfortable controls, and customizable settings, is enough to make Resident Evil 7 a strong full-length VR game experience — especially given it’s one of the first. As someone who was never particularly excited about VR, this was a pleasantly surprising element of an already surprising and fun game that gives me a lot of confidence in the future of VR.
Chloi Rad is an Associate Editor for IGN. Follow her on Twitter at @_chloi.
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