Beastly Byte: Resident Evil 7; The Soft Reboot or The Binding of Ethan

     After three years of a missing wife, the main protagonist Ethan runs off during work to save Mia from the clutches of redneck America. Ethan travels to Dulvey, Louisiana, to a worn-out manor of the Baker residents and is trapped and must escape the evil lurking within. However, Resident Evil has not been innovated since Resident Evil 4 and many fans feel that the mechanics and gimmicks of the game did not age well. Let's not mention the what happened afterwards because of the lost of focus on Capcom's part! Will this game be able to re-innovate the horror franchise, even though it barrows from past games like Outlast meets Resident Evil HD?

Positives:

• The game actually use elements of horror with only small moments of jump-scares
• Saw the missed potential of the cancellation of Silent Hills and took advantage
•  The 3D options make the horror experience deeper
•  The limited inventory from past Resident Evils helps the horror via item management
• Over four (the quickest normal run) to over six hours of game-play
• A crafting system to help add the feeling of survival 
• High quality SFX audio and an actual realistic flashlight in a horror game
• Has the charm of horror of each of the Bakers
• Classic Safe-Room music magic and horror music
• Cleaver use of shadow puzzles
• Well played scripted events that keeps everyone guessing
• The Bakers stalks the player in Madhouse difficulty, adding to the already added challeng

Negatives

•  The other half of the game drags on for way too long and is boring
• The common enemies of the game , while not zombies, are bland and repetitive
• There's only three bosses that reoccur as rematches within the game
• One boss is coming soon in a free DLC, so players have to wait
• The background looks out of the PlayStation 3 graphics
• Some of the voice-acting are mixed at best, molded cheese at worst
• The Game unlocks can make the hardest difficulty too easy with practice 
• The PlayStation 4 pro is needed for 60fps
• The PSVR option give players the worst motion sickness
• Could have been a game on it's own if Resident Evil didn't need a shot in the arm

Grade: B

     While I do want to give it an A Grade , the minor problems is what decided the final grade of the game. However, this is the focal-point that Capcom really needed to find! This game is the best possible way to go back into survival horror as the franchise. While Inde-devs helped keep the genre alive and Capcom took note from these games and famous horror movies to the point of almost plagiarism or tribute, this is a horror game the fans have been hungering for. Will it be dated as Resident Evil 4 is slowly falling into? Only time can tell. For now, Resident Evil 7 is a great Rent-to-own for the counsel players and an absolute buy for those who are planning to get it for their PC.  Hopefully, Capcom is willing to push ahead and learn from their mistakes. Until then, hope that the industry can learn to not acting like Konami and Actionvision.