Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

 Four hours inside Capcom’s first person reinvention cranks up the nostalgia factor

Jill sandwiches might not be on the menu during the Baker family’s mealtime, but it’s one of only a few ingredients from the first Resident Evil that haven’t been brought back for the series’ latest makeover. As we’re let loose inside the game for an entire afternoon, it’s hard to decide whether the biggest shocks come from some fine-tuned jump scares or the sensation that Resident Evil 7 is simply a modern-day remake of the original with zombies traded out for Nemesis-like menaces.

Familiar items, weapons and even puzzles are riddled throughout, and the structure of the world is too similar to Chris and Jill’s Spencer Mansion episode to be accidental: early hours are spent clearing out the rooms of a large house harbouring secret passages to hunt down a trio of emblems in order to unlock the exit. It’s a doorway that leads not to safety, but a path winding to a second, smaller building. That the route takes us to a dilapidated swamp house rather than a guardhouse, or that the main area’s a dingy, unkempt Louisianan manor instead of a gleaming stone mansion high up in the mountains, does little to mask the similarities; the switch to first person might once have sounded like a drastic step into new territory for the mainline series, but this is the closest Capcom has come to recapturing the atmosphere of the 1996 original since the 2002 GameCube remake.

Cast as the vulnerable Ethan Winters, we pick up the story approximately 45 minutes into the game as the entire Baker family – father Jack, mother Marguerite, son Lucas and a wheelchair-bound grandma – sits around an offal-laden table. When arguments and phone calls tempt the family into other rooms, Ethan topples his chair, frees his legs and we begin our escape attempt.