RESIDENT EVIL VII
Survival horror has changed. Matthew Pellett ventures into the unknown – in virtual reality, no less – to face the Baker family from Resident Evil VII: Biohazard and discover whether an all-new perspective can revive the series’ fortunes on 24 January 201
Think you know Resident Evil? Think again. The classic series gets reimagined for PS4 and VR.
Whichever fool first claimed that “there is nothing to fear but fear itself” had clearly never anticipated the arrival of PlayStation VR. Nothing can prepare you for Resident Evil in virtual reality. No matter how many times you’ve played the free PS4 Beginning Hour demo, no matter how many reaction videos you’ve watched on YouTube, there’s no substitute for strapping PlayStation VR around your cranium and, for the first time in history, stepping inside the world of horror gaming’s premier series.
Don’t misunderstand. It’s not that there’s no escaping the terror; no chance to look away (sure, you could close your eyes, but cripes those sounds aren’t so easily shut out). Yes, the fact that you can’t easily avert your gaze from the Resident Evil universe helps drag you deeper into the experience than a static television screen can hope to achieve, but that isn’t the reason why Resident Evil VII: Biohazard works so well in VR. Instead, it’s the scale that makes it so impactful.
It’s the unshakeable sensation that slipping on PS VR drops you into a version of the game that’s a little bit different from the vanilla 2D experience. An ever-so-slightly twisted reality with different geometries, adjusted light levels and an extra few quarts of cloying atmosphere pumped in for good measure. The rooms seem somehow smaller. The corridors somehow narrower. The world somehow nastier than it is on a TV screen.
AMERICAN HORROR STORY
Hopefully by now you’re familiar with the Beginning Hour demo that’s on the PS4 Store. It begins with you waking up on the floorboards of a dark living room in what can only be described as a Louisianan farmhouse from hell. Once you’ve come to, you’ve got to creep around the creaking, definitely-notabandoned place to look for a way out.
We’ve seen garbage sites in better nick than this house. Wallpaper’s peeling off the plasterboard, ceiling tiles have rotted away, wooden beams up in the attic (you have made it up into the attic, right?) are splintered as if the whole house has been pounded by the
fists of a colossal titan. On a TV screen these elements are mere set dressing, but in virtual reality they’re features that seem to stretch towards us like the decaying fingers of the monster under the bed reaching beneath the duvet at night. That wallpaper flap? We find ourselves actually turning our shoulders as we walk past to avoid brushing against it. Those snapped struts? Yes, we really do duck to avoid a collision.
These things aren’t interactive, of course. We can’t actually bump into the scenery here, but it’s amazing to experience how the simple act of playing a familiar demo with PS VR can completely shift our sense of place in that environment. The lighting helps, too. Consider this: different television sets from different manufacturers display different pictures. Brightness, contrast, colour balance… these things matter, and while you can adjust these setting (and, indeed, are often asked to change the brightness when starting a new PS4 game), gamers across the world will be playing Resident Evil VII with visual settings that aren’t precisely as Capcom’s developers had intended.
“THE ROOMS SEEM SMALLER IN VR. THE CORRIDORS NARROWER.”
With PS VR, that isn’t the case. Every headset is the same, and that means developers can design things to look just right in VR, safe in the knowledge that the picture quality won’t be affected from player to player. So when we pull on the headset and tiptoe up those noisy attic stairs for the first time in virtual reality, we’re taken aback by the fact that we can’t actually see the end of the short corridor due to the lack of light.
Capcom has balanced VR visuals to favour darkness and shadows, meaning we won’t see certain things until we step through the gloom and peer at them from much closer up – or certain things do the same to us… Things aren’t too dark to see, of course, but there’s a notable reduction in visibility due to the brightness settings, and the balance is utterly perfect for the Beginning Hour demo’s boarded-up house and dim, flickering lamps.