It is no exaggeration to say that Resident Evil 7: Biohazard brought the series back from the brink. I’ve been with these games most of my life, enough to enjoy the waxing and waning of quality throughout the entire series. The bombastic creative choices, the outlandish presentation, and the puzzlebox gameplay just appeases my mind. Resident Evil 7 is an interesting one for me, though, because I’ve always appreciated the impact of it more than the game itself. It does a lot right, but it loses me in the details.
To celebrate the series coming to the Nintendo Switch 2 with Requiem, Capcom has also decided to revisit the modern era with ports of Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 8. I was genuinely excited for this because I wanted to critically revisit Resident Evil 7 for some time. The ports largely meet my base expectations and are a decent way to play these two games on a portable system. They target 60 frames per second and hit a relatively crisp resolution target docked. It’s also nice that this is the Gold Edition, so you get all the previously released DLC bundled with it.
Resident Evil 7 involves Ethan Winters going to Louisiana to find his missing wife. His search finds him at the Baker Estate, where a fungal parasite has taken over the family. You’ll spend the runtime mostly exploring the Baker mansion, trying to grab puzzle items, and avoiding danger. Jack Baker brought the stalker horror of the likes of Mr X and Nemesis back in a big way, with his personality making up for any mechanical simplicity to him. The game shines in the segments where he chases you from room to room in the main mansion.
Opening the map or inventory doesn’t really pause the game in this entry, so the entire segment of trying to solve puzzles in the Main House as he relentlessly follows you is a really memorable one. In hindsight, though, I wish more of the game was like that. I think Resident Evil 7 could have been a bit better overall if it had been more willing to introduce more danger early on. I had forgotten just how forgettable the Molded were as an antagonistic force, mostly just being annoying damage sponges with little variety. I won’t be breaking the mold either to say that the momentum does dip in the final act of the game as well, once you leave the Baker Estate.
The experience overall, despite these gameplay pitfalls, is a delight. The slow descent into the gross style of horror, this game is genuinely delightful. The atmosphere is tense and creepy, and I love how it’ll switch perspective to camcorders of past victims to show how dangerous the bakers are. Yet, this is Resident Evil. It knows when to let loose and indulge in the absurdity of the situation. Jack doing donuts in the garage or blowing his brains out with your gun before regenerating after fills me with delight each and every time I replay the game. There’s also a genuine heart to the story as it nears its conclusion, and I think where it goes will catch most people off guard.
With most of this game involving walking through dim corridors indoors, there’s not too much here to cause any perceived framerate dips. The only time I saw the game dip below 60 frames per second was in the yard that connects you to all the areas that make up the second act of the game. The dips are never severe, showing up mostly as minor camera movement stutters, but if you’re sensitive to inconsistent frame rates, you might want to consider playing this on another platform. VRR does help smooth things out in undocked, and the dips are not that bad to begin with here, but there is no way to enforce a 30 frames per second cap.
Resolution won’t be as crisp as you might expect it to be on other current gen platforms, but I think it looks good overall when played docked on a good 4K TV. Undocked isn’t exactly ideal, with the image quality being noticeably blurrier. Texture quality isn’t a massive downgrade from my memory. Shadows are fuzzy, but not cut back so much to notice if you aren’t actively looking for differences. The biggest downgrade is hair, with the edges noticeably dithered. This isn’t the worst, but it does make Resident Evil 7’s already dated hair physics stand out more. These are all common Switch 2 porting concessions, and I think the RE Engine has potential if properly optimized with the system.
For the controls, it plays about as you might remember it. However, the gyro implementation is inconsistent. My Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller had little issue, and you can modify the sensitivity of the X and Y axes in the settings to match. The Joy-Con 2s were where it felt strange, and the behavior is best described if you take the system and place it directly in front of you, as if you were holding a steering wheel. The only way to move the camera left or right isn’t to tilt the screen in those directions, but instead to turn the “wheel” as if you were making a left or right turn. The vertical aiming behaves entirely normally.
While this is largely an impressive port in regards to the visuals, to the extent any PS4 game running on this console could be, I do have an odd visual issue. The HDR implementation of this port is faulty, leading to a pretty washed-out image. I recently got an OLED TV, and have been playing all my games in HDR just to get the most out of the display. I’ve calibrated my screen for accuracy over all else, but this version just unfortunately blows out all the color depth in this mode. After hours of tinkering and comparing, I came to the conclusion that on both my TV and the Switch 2 screen itself, the HDR is washed out.
I redownloaded Resident Evil 7 on my PS5 to compare and contrast the two versions, confirming this to be a problem with the port. The dark areas shine and are rich with detail, enhancing the mood of walking through a decrepit house. This isn’t just me expecting PS5 visual fidelity on a Switch 2, it’s important to note that I did not have any issues with the HDR on Resident Evil Village compared to the PS5 version. The HDR might not be as vibrant on Switch 2, but it doesn’t kill the atmosphere. One thing both of these new ports offer over PS5, though, is an SDR color space option (which I believe is brought back for the PS4 versions), letting you switch between the default sRBG and Rec.709. For this particular game, the Rec.709 SDR mode looks fantastic.
All things considered, though, this is a solid way to play a solid entry in the series. Capcom learned a lot from this game, with the experiments made iterated on in all the future entries. I can’t really stay mad at Resident Evil 7, and this was a fun revisit. This won’t be the best version of the game, but most newcomers will be able to play a version of the game with solid parity to the other console versions. A patch to clean up some lingering performance issues, fix up the HDR as best as possible, and improve gyro aiming would go a long way.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review Copy Provided by Capcom
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