| Diverse Meinungen zur Demo |  |
Das klingt alles so unfassbar gut!
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The sequel also eschews the traditional third-person perspective for first-person, and in doing so, has drawn comparisons to story-driven horror titles such as Outlast and Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
But after spending four hours with Resident Evil VII during a recent trip to Capcom Japan, one thing is clear: this is a survival-horror game in every sense of the phrase, with inventory management, item scavenging, and a constant sense of dread.
In fact, based on my time with it, Resident Evil VII so closely adheres to the tenets of the franchise's early entries that I can best describe it as the original Resident Evil set in first-person.
(...)
Cut to a few minutes later--I found the key in a labyrinth of damp passages, evaded the enemies, and emerged from the cellar after a brief chase that felt like it lasted an hour--I'm reminded of a phobia from my childhood, when I imagined monsters pursuing me up the basement stairs.
These emotions, and that kind of thought process, pervaded my time with Resident Evil VII. And although the puzzle and survival aspects reminded me more of the first Resident Evil, there are influences from elsewhere in the series' history. Members of the Baker family, the presiding clan at the decaying manor, became boss encounters during my demo. I won't spoil the specifics of the two fights, but they were both preceded by sequences straight out of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, in which a singular monster stalked you throughout the game. The Baker family was almost always slowly pursuing me throughout my time with the upcoming sequel, instilling a definite urgency and removing any sense of security I might otherwise have had. Lethal hide-and-seek games became bookends to brief chapters of calm.
When I did have a moment to breathe, I was engrossed in the game's storytelling.
[http://www.gamespot.com/articles/resident-evil-7-hands-on-with-four-hours-of-horror/1100-6445818/]
What I saw and played that day was five hours of Resident Evil 7 in Capcom's central offices in Osaka, Japan, taking in the game's early stages and meeting some of its major antagonists. And honestly, it's the most Resident Evil game I've played in a long time.
It's easy to fixate on the first-person perspective, on the virtual reality and on the lack of recognizable characters, but for all that, Resident Evil 7 still feels like a true old-school title. It feels like survival horror.
And though, sure, what Resident Evil means to people has changed over the years, with some embracing its shift towards action and co-operative gameplay, the series' roots are embedded in survival horror.
[http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-11-30-resident-evil-7]
Initially, Resident Evil 7 looks and feels very different to what came before, but familiar elements soon creep back into view. Some are pretty obvious: green herbs replenish your health, a limited inventory requires micro-management, items can be combined in various useful ways, and the arsenal is almost identical to that of the original (after four hours I’d salvaged a knife, handgun, shotgun, flamethrower, grenade launcher and spied a magnum). But these are superficial similarities, of course – staples you’d find in plenty of recent Resident Evil games. What’s far more meaningful to me is how much RE7 felt like the original in its bones.
Strip away the first-person perspective, new setting and unfamiliar characters, and you see the underlying structure bears an uncanny resemblance to the original. There’s good reason why I still remember inching my way through the rooms of the Spencer mansion 20 years ago: that familiarity and fondness sprang from having memorable encounters in specific rooms, backtracking with a purpose, and the satisfaction of unlocking a meaningful shortcut. Even now I can close my eyes and walk every corridor. While the Baker house, built upon stinking Louisiana swampland, may be stylistically different from the polished mansion Spencer built up in the Arklay mountains, it rests upon the exact same foundations: exploration, backtracking, and puzzle solving.
(...)
Curiosity draws you to those doors. You want to better understand in order to escape. Resident Evil 7 does a fantastic job of forcing you to walk through those forbidden doors, and it does an equally great job of making those doors feel as intimidating as possible, decorating them with dead scorpions, butchered snakes, and mutilated crows – each a gruesome hint to the kind of key you must find somewhere in the sprawling plantation.
Of course, unlocking the secrets of the house requires more than a series keys. The Baker house conceals a network of absurdly-engineered traps and puzzles. After completing one, which involves rotating an elaborately carved statue to cast an equally-outlandish silhouette on a painting, Ethan groans, “Who builds this shit?” If you’ve played Resident Evil, you’ve probably had the same thought. Who had the time and resources to build all of this? Although entirely implausible, these puzzles are an essential part of Resident Evil’s DNA, and thankfully they haven’t been discarded in a misplaced drive towards realism. RE7 is happy to block your progress with outlandish riddles involving coloured-coded dog heads or a brainteaser scribbled on a note found in a morgue. So while I love Ethan’s wink to the camera, I really love how Resident Evil 7 also embraces those tropes, no matter how implausible.
Through exploration and puzzle-solving, doors begin to open and connections start to be made: literal ones, of course, as previously detached corridors are stitched back together, but also figurative ones, too – you begin to better understand. Ethan, like us, starts from a position of total ignorance, but through a series of notes, VHS cassettes, and mysterious phone calls, he (and the player) begins to piece together what’s really going on, and how the events within the Baker house connect to the wider Resident Evil story. After a few hours I’ve got a tantalising, if still hazy, theory about how this all connects back to the characters and stories we’ve known for 20 years, but for now – and just in case I’m right – I’ll keep that to myself.
[http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/11/30/answering-3-important-questions-about-resident-evil-7]
After the clomping, camp action of the last few installments it’s a genuine pleasure to say Resident Evil has returned to the bloodstained walls and don’t-open-them doors of its roots. Although where the original game took inspiration mainly from George A. Romero’s zombie movies, this cribs from a far wider palette. Films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes inspire the main villains, the Baker family; building scares, before members of the clan take turns to mount plodding pursuits with all the persistence of a Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. To a lesser extent, movies like Hostel and the later Saws play a part in inspiring its violence and death. And, finally, it all plays out in the decrepit, peeling, mildewy house from your nightmares - made from grimy, gore encrusted corners full of things that’ll never wash out.
What I’ve played so far has been encouragingly strong, to the point where this could easily stand alone without the Resident Evil name as a great horror game. The fact that it still can with that name attached (and its connotations of a melon-biceped Chris Redfield fighting bone dinosaurs) probably says more. The four or five hours I’ve seen has actually been one of the best things I’ve played this year, riffing the series’ familiar values off the uncertainty of its newer ideas to create something unpredictable and, above all else, interesting
[http://www.gamesradar.com/a-four-hour-demo-of-resident-evil-7-is-one-of-the-best-things-ive-played-this-year/]
I bring up the map, something I haven’t done this regularly in a Resident Evil for years. Backtracking, collecting keys and solving contrived door puzzles used to be as much series’ staples as the zombies, and I was surprised to see them back. When I chugged through the re-release of 2002’s Resident Evil Zero earlier this year, with its seemingly endless trips across the map to fetch more bloody keys, I certainly wasn’t hoping this idea would make a comeback. Even more unexpected is how much I’m enjoying it. Backtracking across old Resi games has lost its power to scare me over the years, but the Baker household is a modern masterpiece in tension. A creaking Louisiana estate that has you constantly questioning if that noise was your footsteps, the house settling, or a member of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired Baker clan creeping up behind you to rip out your spine. Maybe it was just the wind.
[http://www.pcgamer.com/meeting-the-horrifying-baker-family-in-resident-evil-7/]