Resident Evil 7 Demo

So recently I streamed the Resident Evil 7 demo so I thought I'd take a moment to talk about it here since I was too sleepy on stream to really sum up how I felt about it.

The Resident Evil 7 demo feels like it suffers from the same problems that PT did.  The idea being to give us an idea of the plot while trying to freak us out rather than being a demo indicative of the final game.  Or at least I hope that's the case because if the final game plays like this it's going to be a fucking mess.  The Resident Evil 7 demo plays a lot more like one of those walking simulator type games that I fucking hate and while it is somewhat more enjoyable than your average walking simulator, if the final game ends up as a creepy, first person "stealth" horror game, I'm going to be rather miffed.

The demo tries insanely hard to be creepy and scary but fails mainly because we've seen this kind of horror a million times before.  It does look rather nice on PS4 hardware and creates a good atmosphere but ultimately falls flat because you very quickly realize that the scary dude teleports behind you based on certain flags you hit rather than stalking you around the house.  Aside from scary dude the general imagery is too overt for it to be scary and ends up being almost funny instead.

Interestingly enough, the demo has multiple endings which you can discover by taking slightly different paths through the game.  However this has led to something particularly frustrating and thanks to this one item the demo is more of a time vampire than an enjoyable demo of the latest Resident Evil.  The dummy finger, which I pictured above, is an item you can find while exploring and NO ONE can find a use for it.  The devs are also being intentionally douchy about it and not giving us any hints as to why it was included.

My personal theory is that it doesn't actually have a use but the demo will be changed nearer to release and then we will be able to do something with it.  The demo is ultimately a forgettable experience but this mystery gives the devs an excuse to reignite the hype near launch when we are allowed to solve it.

Hopefully the final game will be good and judging from the direction the demo has taken its gearing up to be leagues better than the hot mess that was Resi 6.  Hopefully it'll be more survival horror than walking simulator and we can go back to taking about this series with a sense of excitement and joy rather than disgust.