Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Resident Evil 7 is the seventh main game in the Resident Evil series and the first one from the canon series to switch from a third-person to a fully first-person perspective. The game features Ethan as an entirely new protagonist not seen in any of the previous titles. After receiving a strange video file from his wife Mia, who's been missing for several years, Ethan sets out to find her in a rural part of Louisiana, taking no heed of her warnings about staying away and forgetting about her. Unable to give up on the love of his life, Ethan arrives at a derelict farm house, determined to bring Mia home... or at least uncover the truth behind her disappearance.

While the game introduces more weapons and increases the levels of action as the story progresses, it starts with the protagonist in a fairly helpless situation, with foes that cannot be killed easily, and don't even stay dead when they are. Ethan will find himself running for his life or trying to hide in order to save bullets for when he may really need them. The inventory size is limited and can be increased by collecting additional backpacks, and items cannot be dropped anywhere to be collected later. Instead, there are various item boxes around the map, mostly in save rooms near the tape recorders (which are used to save game progress), where the player can store and retrieve items (the boxes are all "magically" connected, so stored items in one box can be retrieved from another). There are four weapon slots for quick change, while the rest of the slots are just for holding items. Healing items have their own dedicated button which automatically uses healing items from the least to the most powerful, in that order (in other words, if you have small and big healing potions, the small ones will be used first). The game is not paused while in the inventory, meaning enemies can attack you while you're browsing it.

The game was built for VR from the get-go, featuring a full-fledged VR mode in addition to the regular mode using a TV or monitor. The VR mode sacrifices resolution for levels of realism and uses the headset for aiming (the character automatically aims at the point you are looking at). In VR mode, most of the character's arms are visible rather than just his hands holding the weapon, adding some extra layers of immersion. Going back to the origins of Resident Evil games, this installment uses a similar system of door animations being displayed when moving from a room to another without showing what's on the other side, with the difference that this doesn't act as a loading screen this time. This feature brought back from the first games in the series adds to the overall tension, as you can never know who or what awaits behind each door.

RE7 is as much horror as it is survival, boosting up scare elements and minimizing downright shooting action. The game offers Normal and Hard difficulties, with an extra Nightmare difficulty level unlocked upon completing the game. For most of the first half, the game has a very oppressive atmosphere more akin to titles from the Silent Hill franchise, but as it progresses toward the ending, its ties to the Resident Evil franchise become more apparent, with many questions (what happened to Zoe, how does Chris Redfield play into all this, or where did Lucas go) being answered in story-based DLCs. The game uses an auto-save feature, but also supports manual saves in save rooms at the audio recorders. No items are required to save, unlike the ink ribbons for typewriters in earlier titles of the series.

The Japanese release of the game had the gore heavily censored and has been released both as a regular (gore-less) and "grotesque" version. However, even the grotesque version is not fully uncensored and still has some key elements removed or toned down in comparison to the US and European releases.