Built with some of the most impressive VR support we've seen so far, Resident Evil 7 is now available for Xbox One X, bringing with it the lure of 4K display support. Capcom targets 1080p on the regular consoles, but for the standard Xbox One, this causes a problem, with the game struggling to deliver anything like a consistent 60 frames per second. The X addresses two issues then, with the new patch delivering massively improved pixel counts and restoring performance to what it should be. And in turn, that begs the question: just how does it compare to the current PlayStation 4 Pro version?
Let's kick off by talking numbers. The fact is that Resident Evil 7 is a notoriously difficult game to pixel count. That 'found footage' style - with depth of field, film grain, chromatic aberration and other distortion effects - deliberately degrades the image for cinematic effect. As a result, the pure resolution metrics aren't just harder to nail down, but in practice, the visible divide between consoles is that much more hidden.
In our original analysis of the PS4 Pro edition, Capcom told us that the game rendered at 2240x1260, with additional lighting enhancements. Since then we've heard reports of a different number being used on Pro's 4K output mode. YouTube channel VG Tech in particular dissected the most recent patch 1.06 on PS4 Pro, finding a 3200x1800 resolution with what they believe to be checkerboard rendering.
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Capcom has finally released its long-awaited Xbox One X update for Resident Evil 7, bringing with it a range of fancy visual enhancements.
Once the patch is installed, Xbox One X owners can, according to Microsoft, enjoy 4K output, HDR support, and "improved skin tone display through Screen-Space Subsurface Scattering." You can see at least some of that in the accompanying comparison trailer below.
Resident Evil 7's long-promised update has been lingering around Microsoft's list of upcoming Xbox One X Enhancements for a good while now, so it's great to see it finally come to pass. Hopefully with this one crossed off the list, Capcom might finally get around to bringing VR support to Resident Evil 7 on PC some time soon. Eh, Capcom?
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Opinion regarding Sony's Playstation VR is mixed. On one hand it's a brilliant piece of kit that gives you plug-and-play access to a new frontier in gaming. On the other it's an expensive novelty that lacks proper support from Sony.
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The Gold Edition of Resident Evil 7 isn't due out until Tuesday, 12th December, but you can already snap up a copy with a discount by pre-ordering about a month early. Head over to Tesco Direct today and you'll be able to pre-order a copy of the Gold Edition on Xbox One or PS4 for £30.
For that price, you'll be getting the base game, naturally, along with every bit of DLC packed onto the disc. That includes the two already-available Banned Footage packs as well as the upcoming 'End of Zoe' episode and the free 'Not A Hero' content which lets you play as Chris Redfield.
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Resident Evil 7's long-delayed - and free - Not a Hero DLC will finally reach PS4, Xbox One, and PC on December 12th, along with the concluding season pass story episode End of Zoe. Both have been given a brand-new airing in Capcom's latest DLC video.
A Gold Edition of Resident Evil 7 is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on 12th December, Capcom has announced.
The Gold Edition includes the content from Resident Evil 7 as well as all three DLCs: Banned Footage Vol. 1, Banned Footage Vol. 2 and the upcoming DLC, End of Zoe.
The End of Zoe DLC reveals what happens to Zoe and lets players explore new swamp-filled areas. The DLC is included in the Gold Edition or available as an update for Season Pass members. Otherwise it can be bought separately for £11.99.
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Resident Evil: The Final Chapter may not be the final chapter in the zombie film saga after all, as the production company in charge of the series, Constantin Film, has unveiled its plans to reboot the sci-fi horror franchise.
Editor's note: Heterotopias is a new zine that looks at the intersections between video games and architecture, and I'm delighted to welcome its editor Gareth Damian Martin to Eurogamer for the first of a series of regular articles exploring the same territory. You can pick up the latest issue of the zine over here, and I strongly recommend you do so as it's a rather lovely thing.
Resident Evil 7 sales have passed the 3.5m mark worldwide, developer Capcom's latest financial results have revealed.
But this is still 500k short of the bullish 4m target set by Capcom itself prior to the game's release in January this year (thanks, Gematsu).
Resident Evil 7 topped the UK charts with the third-best launch for the franchise in terms of week-one sales, behind only Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6.
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Not a Hero, Resident Evil 7's free epilogue expansion, has been delayed from its previous spring release window.
Resident Evil 7 boldly reinvented the survival horror series with a return to the franchise's roots reimagined as a first-person southern gothic adventure, but there's a couple of cool ideas that didn't make the cut that Capcom recently revealed in a "making of" documentary.
Resident Evil 7 is getting an upcoming free expansion, named Not a Hero, which stars series legend Chris Redfield - but fans had been speculating all was not what it seemed.
Resident Evil 7's first two pieces of Banned Footage downloadable content landed on Xbox One this week. In the video below, we attempt the restful-sounding Bedroom DLC. Sadly, said bedroom is in the Baker house, and therefore contains a lady who vomits centipedes onto your face.
UPDATE 4PM: Reports are surfacing that the problem has been fixed. The original Reddit thread has been updated to say that person can now play the game, so the issue for them appears to have been resolved. I've separately downloaded, installed and played the game on Steam in the last hour and encountered no problems.
With Resident Evil 7's previous DLC pack, Banned Footage Vol. 1, I suggested that Capcom would need to "pull out some new tricks" in order to keep us interested in its smart but slim pseudo series reboot. With its latest add-on, Banned Footage Vol. 2, Capcom hasn't strayed far from the well by delivering an expansion that's even slighter than its first, yet costs 50 per cent more. That's not to say that this latest add-on isn't entertaining - as it's still quietly captivating - but rather that it's inessential and only caters to Resi 7's most devoted fans.
Resident Evil 7 may have been made in Japan, but that doesn't mean its native country is getting its native version. Either that or the Japanese version is the developer's intended vision and Capcom simply added more gore to appease a western audience's bloodlust. Either way, the Japanese edition of Resi 7 is less gory in a myriad of ways.
Capcom has released a new trailer for Resident Evil: Vendetta, a new CGI movie set in the same universe as the games.
I've lived in some pretty awful places in my time, but even I have to take my hat off to the squalor in which Resident Evil 7's Baker family resides. Given how filthy the house is - and how nasty its inhabitants - you wouldn't expect it to be particularly fertile ground for a video game cooking show, but then Marguerite Baker does have a pretty strong fixation with food.
When Capcom announced that it would be releasing its first paid DLC pack a scant week after the game's launch, it drew equal parts excitement and scepticism from the community. On the plus side: we only have to wait a week for more Resident Evil! On the downside: isn't that a little soon? Clearly this was prepared ahead of time and should have been included in the game, right? Both perspectives are reasonable and indeed this first batch of DLC, Banned Footage Vol. 1, doesn't add much. What it does add, though, is a delight.
PlayStation 4 Pro's native 1260p rendering resolution for Resident Evil 7 turned out to be something of a surprise, representing a relatively slight 36 per cent uplift in pixel-count over the base PS4 version of the game. It's a curious choice for a console designed to service the new wave of ultra HD displays, and that led us to wonder - just how does the Pro mode compare to a full-fat 4K presentation? For a game with RE7's heavily stylised aesthetic, to what extent does a high native resolution actually matter?
Given the soft 'found-footage' nature of the game, there could be diminishing returns over higher pixel counts, with clarity and intricate detail masked by the heavy post-process pipeline. In many ways, RE7 produces an intentionally 'lo-fi' image, but on the flip-side, the boost in resolution could possibly flesh out more detail from the existing assets alongside greater precision in rendering effects - essentially keeping the film-like image intact while adding additional refinement to the core aesthetic.
With Resident Evil 7 geared towards running at 60fps, one might assume that jumping from 1080p to 4K might not require ultra high-end hardware to get the job done, but that isn't the case here. A locked 60fps at max settings is somewhat off the table, but with an i7 paired with an overclocked Titan X Pascal it's possible to achieve a mostly solid 4K60 during more demanding scenes. And as it turns out, brute-forcing ultra HD resolution does indeed result in a considerable upgrade over the PS4 Pro's higher resolution mode, although the console version can hold up well in many scenarios - not a bad turn-out considering that our PC set-up is handing in a 2.9x increase in raw pixel-count.
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UPDATE 03/02/2017 1.45pm: As it turns out someone has completed Resident Evil 7 using only a knife on Madhouse mode. It's Eurogamer reader Quizzle, who posted the following video of their arduous task:
It was my birthday last week and, thanks to some tactical holiday allocation in 2016, I managed to roll five days over into 2017 which I used to give myself a whole week off work to celebrate.
Austrian company Denuvo has enjoyed unprecedented success against PC game piracy with games going uncracked for months - a feat seemingly impossible a few years ago. Notorious hacking group 3DM even predicted the end of PC game piracy altogether.
Resident Evil 7 is off to a solid sales start in the UK, hitting top spot in this week's chart.
The horror game is the third-best week one debut for the Resident Evil series in the UK. The week one record is held by Resident Evil 5, which launched on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2009. Resident Evil 7 launched on PC, PS4 and Xbox One (the PS4 version works with PSVR).
For some reason, UK numbers company Chart-Track failed to mention the second-best week one debut for Resident Evil. Presumably it's 2012's Resident Evil 6.
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And so it was that another Saturday rolled around. I may do a little long-overdue DIY on my bathroom, or (as is more likely) play several rounds of Overwatch in my PJs in a bid to nab that delightful new D.Va skin. How will you spend yours? I imagine at least some of you will be getting properly stuck into Resident Evil 7 now that it has finally launched. If you've finished it, did you enjoy it? I thought, overall, it was a fantastic return to form, a game that managed to be current and classically Resident Evil at the same time. And, crucially, creepy to boot. If you have indeed finished it, by the by, you might be interested in checking out the video below, in which I take you on a blood-soaked jaunt through the Baker household and the queasiest moments that I experienced within.
Resident Evil 7 is the biggest shake-up the series has seen since the switch to an action-based focus in RE4. With a new first-person perspective and gameplay elements reminiscent of Konami's cancelled PT, this new horror title delivers a fresh take on Resident Evil that also manages to bring the series back to its core survival horror roots. From a technical perspective, a 60fps update offers up a level of smoothness usually reserved for remasters, rather than the latest current-gen instalments. The change in direction isn't just used to facilitate a return to survival horror gameplay either: it's also a direct result of the game supporting PlayStation VR, where the first-person action and 60Hz refresh makes an immersive low latency VR experience possible.
These aspects clearly drive the look and feel of the game, and used in combination with a heavy layer of post-processing, generates a vision unlike any other Resident Evil title. Boasting a dark and gritty aesthetic, liberal use of chromatic aberration, depth of field, static, scanlines, and other screen distortion elements, Resident Evil 7 generates a presentation resembling 'found footage' running on an old CRT. The result is a soft-focused image that is suitably grimy, but intentionally so, despite the high native resolution of the game across all platforms.
Both PS4 and Xbox One present Capcom's bleak vision at a native 1080p, with raw clarity sacrificed in favour of a more organic video-like image. Both appear visibly soft, though the PS4 version looks more refined due to its implementation of higher quality anti-aliasing. Here Capcom appears to combine post-process AA with a temporal component, providing a clean image virtually free of edge-related artefacts. In contrast, shimmering is often visible on Xbox One across sub-pixel scenery and specular reflections resulting in a rougher overall look. A simpler post-process AA solution appears to be in effect here, seemingly lacking the additional temporal coverage found on the other versions of the game.
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Braved your way to the end of Resident Evil 7? Stay put until after the credits and Capcom will reward you with the promise of free DLC.
I've completed Resident Evil 7 and, I have to say, I really enjoyed it. However, I stayed as far away as I could from the game's widely touted VR mode because honestly, nope to every part of that. For some bizarre reason though, I said yes to undertaking the Resident Evil 7 Experience, a real-life escape-the-room in London that sets you against the twisted Baker family as you attempt to rescue the camera crew featured in one of the game's playable VHS found footage segments. It was all rather stressful, but thankfully I had Luke from our lovely sister channel Outside Xtra to keep me company. I imagine if we'd sent Ian or Bratt they'd have gotten as far as the kitchen before curling themselves into a ball in the cupboard.
A batch of broken Baker Mansion statues has left GAME customers with a last-minute refund rather than their £99 Resident Evil 7 Collector's Edition.
Stock of the special edition pack - exclusive to GAME in the UK - was delivered damaged, the UK retailer has admitted.
One GAME customer told Eurogamer he was only informed of the issue yesterday, at the last possible minute. Resident Evil 7 launched this morning in the UK.
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Resident Evil 7 launches today, but you won't have to wait long for even more survival horror.
With Resident Evil 7 launching today, series superfan and modder Rod Lima has reenvisioned the original adventure as a modern first-person affair in the following video:
Two decades since players first stepped over the threshold of the Spencer mansion, Resident Evil has rediscovered the peculiar thrill of opening a door. Among the original game's most distinctive flourishes are its unearthly, cutaway room transitions: doors gliding through darkness, their jaws creaking open to engulf you. Resident Evil 7 draws on vastly different design traditions - many of which it sadly struggles to build on in any significant sense - but at least to begin with, its doors give off a comparably eerie vibe.
You'll nose against them tentatively, feeling for the chink of a lock, the pickled paintwork glistening under your flashlight in a way series creator Shinji Mikami could only have dreamed of back in 1996. You'll nudge them ajar and pause, ears pricked for a reaction, eye trained on a sliver of mantelpiece or desktop. If you're making use of the game's slightly ramshackle but quite impressive PlayStation VR support, you might physically crane your neck around the frame. Then - after checking your ammunition and, perhaps, reshuffling the weapons you have mapped to the D-pad - you'll sag forward into the room, angling to place your back to a wall as you scan its invariably grim contents: the fizz of a CRT screen in a corner, flyblown pans of meat, the frayed aurora of a bloodstain. Encountering nobody, you'll spin on your heel to appraise the corridor you've just left. Nope, no obvious signs of malicious intent. Returning your attention to the room, you'll take another few steps forward and slowly breathe out. Then the door will swing shut behind you with the gentlest of clicks, and you'll throw the controller at the ceiling.
Resident Evil 7 is, in its way, as much a grab-bag of influences and themes as the would-be series capstone, Resident Evil 6, a game that set out to merge every form Resident Evil has taken over the years into one, ungainly whole. The first-person perspective and lumbering character movement evoke F.E.A.R. and Condemned (narrative designer Richard Pearsey's credits include two of the former's expansion packs), while the dreadfully greasy and emaciated art direction calls to mind the Amnesia series and Resi's ancient rival, Silent Hill. Resident Evil 4's crowded encounters are a distant memory, but there are shades of its frenzied risk management in combat - you can target the limbs of certain enemies to stall their attacks, or aim for the head (or whatever most resembles a head) in the hope of a swift, ammunition-conserving finish.
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Resident Evil 7 will be a Cross-Buy affair on Xbox One and Windows 10, meaning that if you buy it on one platform you'll get it on both.
There are plenty of custom console controllers out there. But few are as... disgusting as this one.
Watch out, Resi fans - a big spoiler from the ending of Resident Evil 7 has popped up online.
A note from the editor: Jelly Deals is a deals site launched by our parent company, Gamer Network, with a mission to find the best bargains out there. Look out for the Jelly Deals roundup of reduced-price games and kit every Saturday on Eurogamer.
I realise I've spent plenty of time on this site already writing about my thoughts on spending five hours with Resident Evil 7. But I was still seeing the same doubts creep up again and again from readers and commenters, that Resident Evil 7 didn't look Resident Evil enough, that it looked like it shared little with previous series entries aside from name alone. Though the game is out within the month, I thought I'd have one last go at explaining why exactly I think that 7 is worth your time, and why the Beginning/Twilight/Midnight Hour demo is - and isn't - representative of the final game.
Welcome back to Outside Xbox, where this week we were playing Resident Evil 7. In spite of its new first-person perspective, it feels like Resident Evil of yore, packed as it is with happily familiar Resident Evil tropes, such as minimal ammunition, a mansion full of weird door puzzles and the sinister presence of the Umbrella Corporation.
Someone is making an officially-licensed Resident Evil 7 candle for you to burn while playing the game.
Diligent dataminers on Reddit have delved into the code of Resident Evil 7's Beginning Hour demo, now that it's on PC, and the resulting file names have strongly hinted at the return of a familiar character from the series.
We have discovered the purpose of the mysterious "dummy finger" in the Resident Evil 7 demo.
Capcom's excellent Resident Evil 7 demo will at last get a PC launch - two weeks today on 19th December.
It wasn't my intention to make Resident Evil 7's director Kōshi Nakanishi apologise for the hours I wasted trying to find a use for the dummy finger in the game's Beginning Hour demo, but that's exactly what he did when I told him of my frustrations (which I think a good portion of the internet shared) during an interview last week at Capcom's headquarters.
"Sorry!" he laughed. "To be completely honest with you, all the commotion with the dummy finger was definitely a surprise for us. We were not expecting a response of that level, so yeah, we panicked a little bit.
"Our plan from the get-go was always to have the demo go side-by-side with the announcement, so we wanted to have a lot of puzzles in there that would lead to something else in the future. But it was always something we were planning on updating as time goes by, so we're hoping that everything ties together and it does leave a satisfying experience at the very end."
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Perhaps it was the shark-jumping boulder punching that did it. "Resident Evil 5 was, for me, a big step towards being able to develop something like Resident Evil 7," says Jun Takeuchi, executive producer of the latest Resident Evil game.
UPDATE 28/11/16: A week on from the US Resident Evil 7 Collector's Edition announcement comes word of the UK-specific version.
UPDATE 08/11/2016 5.26pm: The final two teasers in the Resident Evil 7 mini-trailer ad campaign have come out and they give us a glimpse of the sort of spooky foes we'll encounter.
Resident Evil 7's VR mode and Batman: Arkham VR are going to be exclusive to Sony's PlayStation VR for quite some time.
New ads on the official PlayStation Facebook page noted that Resident Evil 7 will be exclusive to PSVR for 12 months.
Batman: Arkham VR's exclusivity deal isn't as long as it will expire on 31st March 2017, over five months after the game's release on 13th October.
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Despite being another four months away, Capcom has already revealed Resident Evil 7's PC system requirements.
UPDATE September 16th 2016: Here's a rundown of what's new in the Resident Evil 7 1.01 demo update - including a use for one of the teaser's most mysterious items. Be wary of spoilers ahead if you've yet to try it yourself.
The biggest addition is an entirely new room in attic, which you can access almost immediately by starting the demo over again and using the Fuse that's found in the opening area's secret compartment.
Inside are several never-before-seen items, but none seemingly have any application. There's some Handgun Ammo (but no Handgun), a Basement Key (but no door to use it on) and an 'Object made with Celluloid'. This in particular combines with the Dummy Finger - which Capcom teased its fans about since the demo's release in June - to create the Dummy's Left Hand. This, however, doesn't seem to have any use either.
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New Resident Evil 7 details have emerged out of a Capcom presentation at game developer conference CEDEC, along with pictures revealing new characters.
Capcom has kept pretty quiet about the plot and characters of Resident Evil 7, choosing instead to slowly tease out information via a number of mysterious demos.
However, a new ESRB listing for the game reveals several things - including the name of the game's main character.
Here's your complimentary spoiler warning.
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Resident Evil 7's new demo is a step-up from the first. It features a creepy, roaming antagonist, new clues to the main game's plot and a huge amount of atmosphere.
A new Resident Evil 7 trailer has been released, this time starring a female character.
The trailer takes the form of a found video tape - something that should be familiar to anyone who played the Beginning Hour demo released at E3 this year - in which a woman attempts to send a final message to a man named Ethan. Rather more pressingly, however, she's being chased around an underground labyrinth by a lantern bearing woman, who was introduced to us previously as Marguerite.
As you can see yourself from the trailer, the area she's trying to escape from turns out to be beneath the house from the first teaser, suggesting the mystery goes far deeper than previously thought. Quite literally.
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The sixth Resident Evil film will take the series back to its Raccoon City roots, as evidenced in the below trailer.
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is due to launch in January next year and finally bring the 15-year-long movie series to a close.
The Final Chapter is once again written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and, unless its title is completely misleading, will finally round out the series.
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Resident Evil 7's healing items have been detailed by Capcom - and there's a twist to how the game's health system might work.
The hype around Resident Evil 7 may have settled down a little, especially now we know we have to wait to find out the true use of that finger, but the feeling around the game still seems positive.
Everyone loves a mystery, don't they? I mean, why else would news about the discovery of Loch Ness Monster bones be trending on my Facebook feed right now?
UPDATE 16th September 2016: At last, there's a use for the mysterious Dummy Finger in the demo's latest update - you can read how in our Resident Evil 7 endings and demo secrets guide.
Resident Evil 7's lead developers have reassured fans the full game won't be a ghost story, despite the recent playable demo and announcement trailer suggesting otherwise.
We've decided to take a slightly different tack with our E3 awards this year. Rather than pick a single game of the show, or nominate games to other sub-categories based on genre or achievement in some specific area of technology or design, we've simply picked five games that particularly impressed us this week and presented them with our Editors' Choice Awards.
UPDATE 8/7/16 9:19: Capcom has been in touch to reassure us that the game runs at full 1080p: "Resident Evil 7 biohazard utilizes a locked Full HD resolution of 1920x1080 in all areas, with the exception of the found footage, which implements a lower resolution to portray an appropriately VHS-like quality for dramatic effect. The refresh rate is 60Hz throughout"
Resident Evil 5 and 6 were full of guns. Resident Evil 7, not so much.
The Resident Evil 7 demo currently available on PS4 for PlayStation Plus subscribers isn't actually part of the full game.
In theory Resident Evil 7 is easy to appreciate. After a series of increasingly action-focused entries trying to capture the magic of Resident Evil 4 - and falling short to varying degrees - Capcom has finally listened to its fans and scaled back the shooty bits in favour of an eerie slow burn through a funhouse of horror cliches. Based on the publicly released 20 minute demo of Resident Evil 7, there isn't even a weapon to be found. Yet this minimalist first-person entry doesn't seem like a return to the series' roots either, but rather the restless folks at Capcom chasing a different trend: that of the minimalist sensory horror experience.
A new direction for the series.
UPDATE 2: Capcom confirmed on its blog that the entirety of Resident Evil 7 will be in first-person.
"In the classic Resident Evil games of yesteryear, players braced for fear in the first-person via the creepy door-opening scenes, and Resident Evil 7ramps up that tension with an immersive first-person view and a photorealistic graphical style," said Capcom's Tim Turi.
Capcom also noted that this sequel is set after RE6 and will transpire in a "foreboding, derelict plantation mansion in rural America."
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