Resident Evil 7: 10 Essential Things It Must Have

Missed the mark by a Wesker...

By Michael Downie /

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last 18 years or so you'll have been witness to the cultural phenomenon that the Resident Evil series has been. From it's humble beginnings and scares of the Arklay Mansion through the nigh on perfect jaunts into Raccoon City in the days of the original Playstation and genre defining RE4 across the Nintendo consoles, the series kept going from strength to strength. Capcom had the ultimate cash cow, a game beloved by many, which sold by the truckload and rarely dipped in quality. Then Shinji Mikami, the twisted mind behind the series who had steered every game to his very specific vision left Capcom after they went against his wishes and made RE4 available for other platforms than the Nintendo Gamecube. Without the mastermind guiding development the franchise has been in persistent decline, with RE5 and 6 failing to live up to the quality of previous games and actually losing the fear that made the earlier titles so wonderfully addictive. When Capcom outsourced to a third party developer to make the woeful Left 4 Dead clone Operation: Raccoon City alarm bells were ringing and fans were turning away in droves. With the impending release of RE: Revelations 2, the hype train has started to build for an expected full reveal of Resident E vil 7 in 2015 at some point, but given the extremely poor reception for the last two main canon games fans are worried that it may be too late to save the series. It's been 2 years since Resident Evil 6 disappointed everyone and apathy has started to kick in for the whole brand, RE7 needs to be an absolute revelation (pun intended) to win the fans back. Capcom should take note of these 10 things that the next major release needs to save the series.