Resident Evil 7 Biohazard is the latest AAA title to hit Apple platforms. The game originally launched on PS4, Xbox One, and PC in 2017, and has since graced many other platforms, including Nintendo Switch and even the now-defunct Google Stadia. It’s now available on iPhone 15 Pro, all iPad models, and Macs with M-series chips.
RE7 is a celebrated entry in the RE library, even by the series’ generally high standards. It was a return to basics for the franchise, with a heavy focus on survival horror versus the action and gunplay that dominated the previous two games. It was also the first to switch to a more intimate first-person view for the character, making the body horror feel particularly visceral and effective.
RE7 tells the story of Ethan Winters, whose wife disappears for three years, until one day she sends him a cryptic message calling him to a house in the backwaters of Dulvey, Louisiana. While disturbing enough, nothing could have prepared Ethan for the horrors that await him there.
RE7 was a fantastic return to form for the series originally known for its survival horror gameplay. It is, without a doubt, the scariest game in the entire series, with the opening mission in particular often leaving you rooted to the spot, too scared to move even though all you’re being asked to do is walk around this seemingly empty house. The long, dark corridors of the opening area are especially reminiscent of PT, a short horror demo made by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro for a game that never came to fruition.
RE7 makes incredible use of darkness, flashlight-induced tunnel vision, and pupil dilation when you enter a new room in the house or turn the camera. Your mind begs for more information from your eyes that the game won’t give you, while you’re hyper-aware of every creak coming from this decrepit old place. Did you see something moving in the shadows up ahead? Too bad, because that’s where you’re supposed to be going next.
RE7 on Apple platforms is the exact same game previously released on other platforms. On iPhone, the initial free download from the App Store is 1.19 GB. After that, the game prompts you to download an additional 10 GB when you launch it. If you choose to purchase the full game via in-app purchase, you will be prompted to download an additional 14 GB or so. When fully downloaded, the game will take up approximately 25 GB of storage space without the DLC and 31 GB with the DLC.
The DLC for the game includes the Gold Edition upgrade, which includes an additional story mission ‘End of Zoe’ and two mini-games called Banned Footage Vol 1 and Vol 2. The Gold Edition upgrade costs $20 more than the $20 for the full base game. You can, however, download the base game, which includes the first chapter, for free.
The review will focus on the game’s technical performance, as tested on an iPhone 15 Pro. Like Village, RE7 features adjustable graphics and resolution settings, but in a more minimal way. You don’t get the full PC graphics settings that you get in Village, but there are three graphics presets available that let you toggle between performance priority, graphics priority, and a balanced mode.
Starting with the Prioritize Graphics preset, the game presents an impressive image considering its age and platform. You get dense foliage in the few outdoor scenes you have early on with decent texture resolution, shadows and screen-space reflections that are slightly blurry but present on bodies of water. Inside, you’ll notice subtleties like volumetric crepuscular rays piercing the musty interiors, along with cascading shadow maps. And when enemies try to stab you in the face, you’ll notice a slight depth of field effect on the knife.
Switching from Prioritize Graphics to Balanced has a fairly limited impact on the visuals, to the point where it’s not immediately obvious at all. Only after a lot of nitpicking was it possible to notice even blurrier screen-space reflections, slightly lower resolution shadow maps, and reduced ambient occlusion.
There’s nothing subtle about the Prioritize Performance preset, however, which looks noticeably worse. There’s a reduced geometric density on the outside with less foliage and simpler meshes for plants. Texture resolution is completely destroyed to the point of being almost non-existent. All screen-space reflections, volumetric lighting, and ambient occlusion are also lost. Depth of field is also of lower precision, making it look like a screen blur rather than a soft camera blur. Finally, shadows are noticeably blockier.
Prioritize graphics • Balanced • Prioritize performance
The game also lets you choose your resolution. On the iPhone 15 Pro, you could choose between native 2556×1179, 2342×1080, 1952×900, and 1560×720. The game then apparently uses MetalFX temporal antialiasing upscaling to upsample the image to the display’s native resolution if you choose a lower setting. However, there were noticeable checkerboard artifacts in the image even when running the game natively, suggesting that the game may be using the RE Engine’s interlacing feature, which runs the game at half the resolution on one of the axes.
The resulting image can be quite soft at times, but the game’s design allows for it. RE7 has a heavily post-processed look with noticeable lens blur and chromatic aberration along with motion blur to create an almost found-footage horror film look. The softer look adds to the VHS quality the game is aiming for, although it can be a bit too soft at times, especially during the actual VHS video cutscenes that take place in some chapters.
Overall image quality, however, is still quite good. Most of the game takes place in very dark environments, which hides many of its visual flaws, and what is visible looks quite good. The performance preset cuts it down a lot but remains usable, while higher presets would look better on devices with more GPU processing power and memory.
The game renders in true ultra-wide on iPhone, so you get a wider field of view than 16:9. However, some of the pre-rendered cutscenes will still play in 16:9 with black bars on the sides.
Italian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoyUpF4Rms0
In terms of performance, RE7 once again does well. The game is known for being exceptionally light on rendering load, which is why it was one of the few AAA titles on the base PS4 to run at 60fps at the time. The performance preset on the iPhone targets a similar lock to 60fps while it is balanced and the graphics are locked at 30fps. Setting the game to 720p and the performance preset, the iPhone 15 Pro stays at a near-locked 60fps most of the time. In fact, the device doesn’t even feel stressed as it barely heats up. You can try increasing the resolution but the difference isn’t really noticeable.
Unfortunately, the most noticeable visual upgrades in the Balanced and Graphics preset come at the cost of a halving of the frame rate. Now, RE7 is the kind of game you can get away with playing at 30fps thanks to its deliberately slow gameplay. However, once you get used to the smooth 60fps in Performance mode, it’s hard to switch to the other presets, no matter how much nicer they look.
If you think otherwise, then the Balanced default setting is the right one, as the subtly nicer graphics setting often struggles to maintain 30fps even at the lowest resolution, and since these default settings put a lot of strain on the phone’s hardware, it will definitely overheat during use.
One final note on graphics concerns HDR. RE7 on iOS takes advantage of the excellent HDR displays on the iPhone 15 Pro models. However, the game is even more aggressively dark in HDR, making it only suitable for playing in dimly lit or completely dark environments. If you have trouble seeing things, you may want to turn HDR off at the expense of some brightness and contrast. You can also further calibrate the image in SDR, which you can’t do in HDR.
RE7 features touchscreen controls similar to the previous two RE games on the platform. The controls work well enough at first when you’re mostly walking around and not firing weapons. However, once you have weapons, it’s difficult to aim, shoot, and move at the same time since these are essentially controller buttons placed on a touchscreen. The game strongly recommends using a controller every time you boot it up, so it’s probably best to take that recommendation seriously. Also, no, there’s no mouse and keyboard support.
Finally, RE7 on iPhone supports cloud saves and iCloud syncing. It is a universal app that works on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS once purchased, and your saves can be synced and accessed across these platforms. As before, you cannot import your saves from other platforms like Steam.
Overall, Resident Evil 7 Biohazard is an impressive title for the iPhone. The age of the game and the light graphics help it perform like a champ even on this pocket-sized device, and the graphics are perfectly workable on the small screen. In the meantime, it is one of the best horror games ever made. With all that in mind, RE7 for iPhone gets an easy recommendation. Just make sure you have a controller and a spare pair of pants.
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