The Resident Evil franchise has been with us since 1996, and is a pioneer of the survival-horror game genre. With over 10 installments including spin-offs, and countless remakes, Capcom has experimented with survival horror and action-platform gameplay over the series.

Resident Evil games were never known to be really scary, but they provided tense and adrenaline-pumping moments, such as being chased by the Nemesis in RE 2’s police station. Resident Evil 7 provides a much scarier experience than other games in the series, putting you in a first-person horror film.

In this article we’ll highlight the 4 things in Resident Evil 7 that makes it the scariest in the franchise.

The PSVR support

The tense, eerie atmosphere of Resident Evil 7 is enhanced a million times with the use of PSVR. The virtual reality headset immerses you into the game, feeling as though you’re really exploring the dark corridors and creepy basements of the Baker’s estate.

Although the game has plenty of jumpscares, it also creates a fantastic dread, a sense of knowing you’re headed towards something bad. There are numerous moments where you’ll say “nope, I’m not going down there” and rip off your headset, just knowing you have to traverse through the basement.

You’ll need the PS4 version of Resident Evil 7, as Capcom hasn’t developed VR support in the PC version. Rumours of a PS5 version have leaked, and Sony is quietly working on a PSVR 2. The gameplay of Resident Evil 7 would be absolutely terrifying in 2160×2432 resolution, and we may experience that terror sometime in 2021.

The found footage tapes

Throughout the mansion, you’ll find VHS tapes that were filmed by previous victims of the Baker family. But you don’t just watch the tapes, you experience the events through their eyes and witness their demise in first-person.

The tapes are super scary, and some are a nod to films like Saw, such as the tape where you play as a victim who was put in a death-trap room. There’s also a bit of a Sinister feel, with the tapes showing the sadistic torture and murders of the Baker family’s victims.

Collecting all of the tapes involves a lot of puzzle solving throughout the mansion, so fans of puzzle mansion browser games like ones found on CrazyGames will enjoy it. Finding all the tapes is worth it for piecing bits of the storyline together, and playing the additional side-content.

Exploring the mansion

The mansion itself is an incredibly creepy place to explore. The mansion in Resident Evil 1 had more of a palace feel, with ballrooms and suits of armour. The Baker estate in Resident Evil 7 is a colonial-era mansion on a Louisiana plantation, surrounded by harsh swampland. It’s a nod to “kidnapped by mutated redneck family” films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Wrong Turn.

Creeping through the dark, eerie estate with every floorboard creak sending chills up your spine, is a truly terrifying experience. The claustrophobic hallways are filled with tension and dread, and the modest mansion turns into a cramped prison when you’re trying to evade the psychotic residents.

The Character Design

Resident Evil spawned the zombie survival-horror genre, which has influenced games like Left 4 Dead to Zombs Royale.io. Resident Evil 7 gave us a different kind of horror – the old hillbilly cannibal trope, though as TVTropes points out, the Baker family is technically a “zombie redneck torture family”, similar to The Cabin in the Woods.

If you’ve watched films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and thought to yourself, “what would I do if I found myself strapped to a chair in a cult family’s dining room, with human meat on the table?”, Resident Evil 7 puts you in that experience.

Each member of the Baker clan is unsettling in their own way, and your dinnertime meeting with them is highly disturbing. Rather than brainless zombies and corrupt mad-scientists, the antagonists in Resident Evil 7 really feel like evil personified, when they’re inches from your face with a VR headset.