Resident Evil 8 is approaching fast, and many players are eager to get their hands on the next foray into survival horror from Capcom. In the meantime before the game’s release, though, there’s time to catch up on the story leading up to the events of Resident Evil 8 and to check out other games in the genre to get a sense of where the survival-horror genre stands as a whole right now.
Many fans of the franchise are awaiting new information about Resident Evil 8 and the story of Umbrella Corporation. Luckily, there is a showcase planned for Resident Evil 8 soon that will hopefully answer some of these fans burning questions about where the next chapter will take Resident Evil. Through then and until release, though, there’s still some horrors to be had.
Taking place in a decrepit house in the Louisiana swamps, Resident Evil 7 players were met with an experience that was more survival and more horror than the previous two installments. Creepy ambience and slow building of story through voice memos and video tapes helped recreated the sense of dread from the original Resident Evil games in a way that many players found fresh for the series. With the upcoming Resident Evil 8 set to seemingly take the same approach, Resident Evil 7 is both a great way to catch up on the story, specifically that of series mainstay Chris Redfield, and get a taste for the gameplay mechanics.
After his departure from Capcom, Shinji Mikami was free to create games with the more supernatural elements he had originally wanted to inject into Resident Evil 4. The original plans for that game included ghosts, phantoms, and many other paranormal elements that ended up making their way into The Evil Within and its sequel. Featuring the now-standard third-person shooting mechanics pioneered back in Resident Evil 4, The Evil Within 2 continues the original’s story about Sebastian dealing with both the trauma of the loss of his daughter and his wife’s abandonment afterwards.
Still shook by the supernatural events that occurred at the Beacon Mental Hospital during the first game, Sebastian has descended into severe alcoholism, while the grim tone is matched by the game’s overbearing atmosphere of dread. It should be noted that expanded gameplay mechanics made to The Evil Within 2 fun to play, but the game was met with criticism from some fans over its story. Overall, the Evil Within franchise is a worthy addition to the genre and Mikami’s influence is still evident in Resident Evil to this day.
The first in what Capcom has said will be a strategy of remakes and remasters of its classic games going forward, Resident Evil 2 Remake was lauded by fans for its adaptation of the original game’s story and mechanics into the modern Resident Evil world. Retelling the story of Leon and Claire, Chris’s sister, as they navigate the T-Virus outbreak in Raccoon City and incorporating the third-person shooter gameplay of RE4 and RE5. For its recent pedigree alone, it’s an easy recommendation for any survival horror fan.
Topping more than a couple 2020 game of the year lists is The Last of Us 2. A great way for players to gauge the state of the genre at large and a bar for storytelling, The Last of Us 2 continues the story about a world overrun by a plague that turns humans into hideous monsters. The series is known for its blend of storytelling and intense stealth-centric gameplay, while the survival-horror title features on-the-fly crafting as players travel as silently as possible to avoid the monsters left in the plague’s wake. The Last of Us 2 is definitely one of the games that Resident Evil 8 will be contrasted against as the top of the genre, so players would do well to play through The Last of Us 2 if they haven’t already.
The second of Capcom’s Resident Evil remakes, RE3 Remake, again is a modern adaptation of the classic game. Expanding on the gameplay conventions in RE2 Remake, RE3 adds more options for surviving the hordes of zombies and Umbrella bioweapons. It maintains the difficulty and actual survival aspects improvements that RE2 brings, although it cuts a lot of content and ventures far too much into action territory for some fans. However, that doesn’t make it less of an important game to play before Resident Evil 8, if only so fans can compare the two.
The Playable Teaser released by Konami and famed director Hideo Kojima was a surprise to many players on PS4, ultimately turning out to be a demo for what would have been the next Silent Hill game. The project had also involved horror film legend Guillermo Del Toro and the playable protagonist was revealed to Norman Reedus of Walking Dead fame. Even as just a demo, P.T. quickly became a big influence in the horror genre. Clever use of alien geometry, a horror visual device that makes subtle changes to otherwise normal environments, made the recurring loop through the demo’s single hallway incredibly unsettling and the first-person perspective made the jump scares even more frightening. It’s hard to get hands on today, though, so fans will want to keep that in mind.
Resident Evil 8 is set to release in 2021 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
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