True to my word, I’ve still been deep into Resident Evil 7. I have beaten it three (3) times now, and have started up a fourth run. This run is what I’ve been dreading since the start… the Madhouse run.
“Madhouse” difficulty is RE7’s hard mode. Unlike standard hard modes, it doesn’t just increase the health of monsters and the damage you take. It does those things and more, like shuffling around key items to slightly change how you progress through the game. It locks certain items behind collectibles. It removes almost all checkpoints, and makes you use consumable items to save, just like the REs of yore. There’s probably even more to it, but I’m still stuck on the boss of the first chapter. I spent nearly half an hour last night being killed by her over and over again, each time inching ever closer to victory.
Needless to say, Madhouse is really, really hard. I am terrified of how bad the rest is going to be.
I also began playing some of the “Banned Footage Vol.1” DLC pack. The first “tape” is called Nightmare, and it’s a mini-game that tasks you with surviving several waves of enemies. And it plays out in hours from midnight until dawn, so it kind of feels like RE7’s take on the Five Nights at Freddy’s formula. I ran it twice, and made it to about 4:30 on the second try before I accidentally got backed into a corner and torn to shreds.
The game takes place in the basement of the Baker house, and you have to craft items and weapons from scrap. Scrap is collected from several machines around the area, which will constantly be filling up throughout the run. The game kind of forces you to mix it up too, as every time you craft something, the cost in scrap goes up a little. So you can really only fall back on that shotgun for so long. You can also place turrets and traps throughout the basement, which I definitely need to fit into my strategy better.
The cool thing about it is that even failure moves you closer to getting through the night. You score at the end of every run is added to a running total, and once you hit certain thresholds you’ll unlock some helpful feature. Sometimes it’s an increase to the scrap you start with, sometimes its new things to craft. The final reward, infinite ammo, is placed at a cumulative score of ten million points. By the time you earn that sucker, you’ll probably have gotten good enough to clear the game without it anyway. Probably helpful for the harder Night Terror mode.
I did not play the “Bedroom” mini-game at all. I have no idea what it’s about.
The last bit of DLC is the “Ethan Must Die” mini-game, wherein you’re plopped down in a super-hard remix of the Baker house, with the goal of unlocking the greenhouse and killing the boss there. You start with nothing, and you only find items in crates, which are randomized. When you die, you leave behind a statue that lets you reclaim one (random) item you had been holding. I tried playing once, and found two chem fluids, which left me with only the knife to battle through a gauntlet of Molded. As one might expect, it didn’t go so well.
I think that there’s definitely some appeal here, but it’s going to be a long road. People are finishing the mini-game, but they’re probably people more dedicated than I. If it allowed you to earn upgrades through failure like Nightmare, I may be more inclined to keep playing. However, it’s more like Dark Souls where the upgrades you earn are knowledge of the layout of the house and where all the monsters are placed. From that point on, you’re just hoping that the crates work out in your favour.
Anyway, I think the point here is that I’ve cleared all of the easy stuff in RE7. It’s all expert-level content from here on out. I might have to dial it back to easy mode and complete the 4-hour speedrun to unlock… a thing… that might help the Madhouse run. It’s the only unlockable item that I don’t have yet, so it’s my last chance to soften than extreme difficulty even a bit.
But enough of the blah blah blah. Time to get back to dying playing!