The First-Person Resident Evil Game Has Been an Immense Success
Resident Evil 7, the 2017 first-person horror game, has sold more than five million copies worldwide, announced Capcom on Friday. The game has also recently won an award at the 2018Â Game Audio Network Guild Awards (G.A.N.G. Awards).
This recent sales figure makes Resident Evil 7 the fourth best selling Resident Evil game in franchise history. Only Resident Evil 5 (10.6 million copies sold), Resident Evil 6 (8.4 million copies sold) and Resident Evil 4 (7 million copies sold) have sold more than Resident Evil 7.
When it was initially revealed at E3 2016, fans were apprehensive about the game’s first-person perspective. While it wasn’t the first Resident Evil game to be in first-person (for example, there was the spin-off game, Resident Evil: Dead Aim), it was the first mainline game in the series to be in that perspective.
The demo that was made available soon after the game’s E3 reveal didn’t alleviate worries about Resident Evil 7 simply being an Outlast or Amnesia clone. Some fans felt that the game was trying to cash-in on the trend of popular YouTubers with face cams reacting to horror games.
Previous Resident Evil entries such as Resident Evil 5 or Resident Evil 6 were criticized for being more like typical action games than traditional survival horror games.
However, when Resident Evil 7 came out on January 24, 2017, it was widely seen as a return to the traditional survival horror gameplay of the older Resident Evil games. Our review said that RE7 was a flawed game but was “absolutely the sequel that Capcom had to make in order to make the series relevant again.”
“It features some fantastic scares early on, offers up the familiar gameplay that fans have been begging to return (even if the new ideas are even more exciting), and uses the first-person perspective to its advantage,” our reviewer wrote. “Resident Evil is back, and the future is looking bright as long as it continues to evolve.”
Resident Evil 7 is out now for the PC, Xbox One and PS4. You can also experience the game in VR.