Well, we only got the slightest of slivers to whet our appetites. But dayum was it a tasty sliver.
If you haven’t tried the teaser for Resident Evil 7, called Beginning Hour (PS4 link UK / US), you should definitely give it a shot. For Resident Evil fans, it might just be the resurrection we’ve all been waiting for.
Us fans know all too well how much the series has evolved over the years. From the tank-style movement of the first few games to the over-the-shoulder dose of action that Resi 4 through 6 received, Capcom has done a considerable amount in attempting to keep the series as exciting as it was for us back in the nineties with the original games.
One common complaint that could be leveraged against more recent Resident Evil games is how the horror aspect has become a little bit ‘meh’. This has been all the more contrasting when sized up against the uprising of indie horror games such as Outlast and Amnesia.
What must have been a more direct nail to Capcom’s head was the teaser for what would have been Konami’s Silent Hills. The Silent Hill franchise always leaned towards more psychological horror compared to Resi’s preference for zombies and biological weaponry, yet it seems to have really inspired Capcom to rethink Resident Evil.
In Beginning Hour, we have a first-person demo where we see characters that we have never seen before in a setting that is completely unfamiliar. Dilapidated houses are all the rage in horror games, but this one really seems to go above and beyond in trying to reach Estage Agents’ hot lists for the category.
Sections of exploration are broken up by videotapes that play across the demo. Here I was met with a familiar sight – the mysterious Kitchen demo that was only visible to those who sampled the PlayStation VR demo. At least, the tapes played snippets of the demo. It all joins together to draw a creepy picture; one with not a lot of information to go on.
Fans will surely be scouring the demo for all sorts of hints as to what to expect in Resident Evil 7, yet one thing is for sure. They’re hell bent on cranking the spooks up to eleven and I am more than hyped for it.
Are you?
