Like scares, do you? Well, it was just Halloween and all that. So here’s a modern horror romp with monsters and grunting. Hurray!

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

After meandering around with pretty mediocre fifth and sixth installments, Capcom returned with this son of a gun in early 2017.

Resident Evil 7 first launched as a VR (virtual reality) title, but you can now play it in standard console form.

This innovative shift was a big deal. It was the biggest critical smash hit the series has had since Resident Evil 4, a back to basics chiller with a pretty nerve wracking premise going on.

Ethan (a bloke) heads out to Dulvey, Louisiana. He’s investigating an unusual message from his wife Mia, who’s missing and presumed dead.

Once at the address, Ethan heads into a seemingly abandoned big old house. And there he finds Mia, who seems shocked but otherwise okay.

What transpires is she’s infected with something, along with the terrifying Baker family who apparently live in the house.

One of them, Jack, hounds you about the place. And you have to spend quite a lot of the early stages avoiding the bastard. Behold!

Capcom ramps up the tension straight from the off. Equipped with a pathetic torch, Ethan’s initial trek through the dimly lit house is spooky as all hell.

At one point, you realise you’re stuck in the house. Turning to head back into the kitchen, in the distance you see a shadowy figure silently walk out of sight.

It’s a bit of a horror cliche, we suppose, but Resident Evil 7’s handling of atmosphere, use of lighting, sound effects, and music work a real treat.

That bit freaked us out big time, proper tingle down your spine and all that.

The initial stages of the game involve a lot of creeping about. It’s similar to Alien Isolation (2014) in that respect. Creep, creep—don’t let the lunatic hear you.

What plays out is a kind of haunted house, jump scare horror romp. Kind of like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), but with fewer chainsaws.

Indeed, you spend a lot of time solving puzzles and hiding from Jack. The latter you can’t really kill, you just knock him out for a bit.

So, there are stealth elements. Which play out a bit like A Plague Tale: Innocence, but with fewer rats. No plague. Just a psychotic family out to get you.

Which is a return to the game’s 1990s roots, for sure, although the first-person perspective is pretty new and radical for the series.

And whilst the title is steeped in claustrophobia and a sense of fear of the unknown, it doesn’t shy away from the more gung-ho crazy stuff.

We’d go as far to say Resident Evil 7: Biohazard isn’t for everyone. It’s a carefully paced romp with lots of ducking and diving around things.

The resource management is on the scale of ZombiU, meaning you’ll have to be very bloody careful with your ammo and whatnot.

But it’s certainly not a crazy all out shooty fest, the puzzle solving (another traditional Resident Evil thing) is ever present.

But if you like a mixture of stealth, patience, practice makes perfect type tense horror, then this is definitely for you.

It’s bloody scary. It’s bloody entertaining. And we think it’s a fine entry into a *blood curdling scream* series.