The close of Resident Evil 7’s second act challenged the player with an important choice; do you choose to rescue Mia (your wife) or Zoe (the saint who helped you survive the lunatic Baker house)? When I played Resident Evil 7, I chose Zoe because it made the most sense. End of Zoe, the final installment of Resident Evil 7’s downloadable content, assumes the player chose Mia. This was troubling until I began playing End of Zoe.
Within moments of clearing the title screen, I assumed control of Joe Baker. Joe is the brother of the Baker patriarch, Jack, and he appears to live in a nearby swamp. Before it burns down in the first act, we get to see Joe’s decomposing wooded hovel, his outhouse, and a lean-to next to a dock. He also appears to have an intense rivalry with nearby gators and no identifiable aspirations. Zoe, who he stumbles upon after Ethan leaves her behind, is put on ice almost immediately. Joe hustles an Umbrella operative into giving up the location of a cure, which sets Joe and End of Zoe in motion.
Inside of Joe’s pockets are hand-written notes for dealing with Molded, Resident Evil 7’s gross wandering mud monsters. Joe has discovered that one left punch followed by two rights is an effective way to knock them down, and two sets of left and right are capped with a left-handed uppercut that makes their heads explode. Joe doesn’t have guns. Joe has fists. Fists are good.
Resident Evil 7’s unrealized melee mechanics are warmly embraced. L2 and R2 suffice for left and right punch, and L1 performs a crude block. Joe’s defenses are mostly impenetrable, as his forearms are quickly proven to protect against the razor-blade knife-arms of basic Molded. As long as Joe’s blocking, he can suffer about a dozen hits before presenting indications of damage. I suspect that Joe is a lapsed immortal.
The first ten minutes of End of Zoe are wonderful and sublime. Joe aggressively beats up four or five monsters without issue and punctuates each encounter with different arrangements of the word, “motherfucker.” He also eats crawlfish tree grubs to restore health and can combine bugs with “chemicals” to restore larger amounts of health. Soon it’s revealed that Joe can adapt tree branches and metal pieces into javelins, which are great for throwing at dangerous alligators. Joe is a killing machine with no need for cowardly firearms.
Joe’s abilities are soon tested by the appearance of—I promise it’s actually called this—Swamp Man. Unlike the lackeys that go down in a few hits, Swamp Man can absorb punishment and aggressively return fire. He has his own set of canned moves and combos which you will no doubt internalize after dying a few times. It’s here where End of Zoe’s combat mechanics reveal their limitations, as blocking (which restricts your view) and fighting back are revealed to be a more effective test of patience than strategy.
Still, Swamp Man, man. Here’s a list of the things Joe can do to Swamp Man: punch in face, uppercut, tombstone piledriver, kick, curb-stomp, and, finally, rip his head off and throw it in a lake. And Swamp Man still comes back! The constant presence of Swamp Man gleefully references the titular Nemesis of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis while creating an effective foil against Joe’s reverence for bog dwelling. He’s lived here (I guess) all his life, and now a creature made of swamp parts is challenging him for supremacy. We all have demons in our environment, Joe’s just happened to manifest more literally.
Awaiting Joe in End of Zoe’s third act is a surprise upgrade that would be cruel of me to spoil. It’s the equivalent of setting a birthday cake completely on fire and serving it people as if everything was normal. It makes no sense if any of this were taking place in reality, but neither does the bulk of Resident Evil 7. Horror fantasy concludes its transition into power fantasy, completing the plot by obligation and completing the player by intention.
Duty binds me to mention End of Zoe’s post-game activities. After its two-hour run is completed, actual guns and “extreme challenges” are available on successive attempts. There are also a small assortment of collectibles in the form of action figures that add 1% power, each, to Joe’s strength. I assume all of this exists to justify End of Zoe’s $15 asking price (End of Zoe also included along with Resident Evil 7’s season pass), but I felt adequately satisfied with the base offering.
End of Zoe is a Resident Evil 7 gaiden that replaces guns with fists, herbs with bugs, and grenades with javelins. Becoming a bog frolicking ex-boxer uncle who fights monsters with his bare hands is precisely how I wanted to end 2017. End of Zoe is temporal, unhinged, and, either by intention or accident (it doesn’t matter), often hilarious.
