Banned Footage Vol. 1 is a test to grade how well Resident Evil 7's innate talents extend past survival horror. As a wave based survival game, it is eager but routine. As a grueling roguelike, it is chaotic and formally aggravating. As an escape room, however, its fiendish motif fits neatly inside of a clever and contained challenge. All three accumulate to a zealous B-, which is a clean score for Resident Evil 7's first post-graduate exam.
Resident Evil 7 was an idol built to honor the philosophy of survival horror. Banned Footage Vol. 1 is an experiment where that idol is removed, attacked with a hammer, and then methodically reshaped to facilitate the needs of three divergent systems. Genre hopping is dangerous, but Banned Footage Vol. 1, performing with a mixture of passion and duty, doesn’t collapse under pressure.
Two thirds of Banned Footage Vol. 1 (which I’m just calling Banned Footage for the sake of clarity) functions as in-universe sequences that correspond with the fiction of Resident Evil 7. Two videotapes, found at different points over the course of Resident Evil 7, presented opportunities for the player to endure the cruel fate of Clancy Javis, a TV show cameraman who preceded Ethan into the Baker’s plantation. Banned Footage gives players two more peaks at Clancy’s delightful dalliance with members of the Baker family.
“Nightmare,” the first tape, evaluates Clancy’s ability to survive a night in Jack Baker’s basement. This translates into a familiar wave-based survival mode, where a different onslaught of enemies is deployed at regular intervals over the course of six night-spanning segments. It stars off easy, with normal Molded dropping after a few pistol potshots. Business quickly gets out of hand, however, as Clancy finds himself overrun with relentless hordes and, occasionally, boss-like appearances of the casually immortal Jack Baker
Nightmare’s basic organization fits snug inside its genre’s framework. Machines spread across the basement roll out scrap at a regular clip. This can be collected and used as currency at the in-game store. You start out with a little cash, but generally you have to buy everything, including weapons, health items, and ammunition — and the former gets more expensive with every transaction. Skills, such as increasing Clancy’s health and boosting the power of your weapons, are also available for purchase. Nightmare even makes a few concessions to tower defense games, with a limited number of traps Clancy can (for a price) arm around the basement.
Combat was the most traditional and least appealing part of Resident Evil 7. The shift to first-person combined with Resident Evil’s naturally slow pace created a shooter that relied more on precision and resource management than fast reflexes and bloodlust. It was extremely rare to be fighting more than two things at a time, and, at least until the Salt Mines, Resident Evil 7 usually preferred to keep the action light. Avoiding the Bakers, solving weird puzzles, finding every last item, regretfully basking in Ethan’s doomed existence — none of these facets were particularly strong on their own, but they all coalesced into a binding sensation of purpose and place.
With that in mind, Nightmare does its best to incorporate Resident Evil 7’s ethos. Ammunition is extremely limited and, fair or not, this creates a significant amount of (intended) stress. The furthest I made it was the fourth hour, and after that I was actively dreading playing it again. The repetition and the conscious task of having to reproduce my otherwise excellent run created a wall of tedium and apathy that I didn’t care to try and leap over. Nightmare is fine, but it wasn’t my thing.
If Nightmare is most definitely your thing, however, there are a few hooks built to encourage additional runs. High score intervals unlock additional bonuses, like the ability to buy better weapons and environmental traps. Assuming you’re determined enough to finish Nightmare, Night Terror will become available. This is (presumably) a harder version of Nightmare, which sounds inviting for people who are not me.
The second tape, “Bedroom,” is dramatic 180 from Nightmare. Clancy returns to find himself receiving breakfast in bed from the circumspect, hell-mouth matriarch of the Baker family, Marguerite. This is a previously unseen level of hospitality until it’s revealed that Clancy is strapped to the bed and breakfast appears to be a fine bowl excrement puree. After Marguerite leaves, Clancy is charged with the delicate task of escape (optionally, at any point Clancy can also choose to eat the black discharge and eventually commit suicide).
Delicate is the operating word for the Bedroom scenario. A hole in the wall reveals a key that may lead to Clancy’s escape, but poking around the dark room for items or clues may agitate Marguerite. With a bit of warning, she’ll rush back in and Clancy better still be strapped to the bed. Worse, if Marguerite notices anything in the room has changed, she gets very upset and starts vomiting unpleasant, violent bugs at Clancy. This can happen three times before it’s game over.
Essentially, the challenge of Bedroom is to enact a specific order of operations while being careful not to make a mess along the way. Light puzzle solving, adventure game item-hunting, and some requisite trial-and-error should power the Clancy safely through this goofy series of traps. Bedroom took me about thirty minutes, and was smart not to over complicate itself before it reached its conclusion. Somewhat similar to the Happy Birthday videotape in Resident Evil 7 proper, Bedroom succeeds with a nod to brevity and an appreciation for structure.
“Ethan Must Die” is the final piece of the first installment of Banned Footage. Rather than accelerate Clancy’s backstory, Ethan Must Die (obviously) stars Ethan and functions as more of a what-if spinoff of the proper game. Ethan is deposited just outside of the main house and is objectively tasked with taking down Marguerite over in the greenhouse. Simple, right? Not so much.
The rules have taken a dire turn sideways. Enemy loadouts and item drops are in set places, but randomly distributed. Different pieces of the house and blocked off, leaving any sort of weapons (or keys!) available exclusively by chance. The first time I played Ethan Must Die I was dead in less than a minute. The second through fifth time wasn’t much of an improvement.
Harsh difficulty is likely the point. Ethan Must Die, while technically playable, feels like a mode constructed with streamers in mind, artfully crafted so other people can watch strangers struggle with a videogame. With the ability to find where you last died and reclaim one of your items, along with the randomized tools, Ethan Must Die partly conforms to the rogue-lite principles of modern roguelikes, but it doesn’t have the depth of more focused games. Also, for whatever reason, Ethan Must Die is not PSVR compatible.
Like Nightmare, Ethan Must Die delights transitioning Resident Evil 7 into a more action-focused experience. Dozens of other games do this better, which makes this mode feel like a weird spin off of a different game—which, yes, is exactly what it is. Ethan Must Die could have either been a passion project for a few members of the Resident Evil 7 team or a hastily assembled mess of concepts and assets, and I doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference. While not my cup of tea, it’s fine, especially when viewed as bonus content to extra content.
Bedroom is the star of Banned Footage’s show. Whereas both Nightmare and Ethan Must Die adapt Resident Evil 7 into amusing (if not predictable) decents into combat-focused anarchy, Bedroom shows how badly the series is bursting at the seams to grow into an all-out adventure game spin off. I have no idea how or why that hasn’t happened yet, but Bedroom (and the Happy Birthday videotape) showcase Capcom’s talents for pushing Resident Evil in a more subdued position without losing its sense of panic. More of that, please.
As a whole, Banned Footage Vol. 1 is a test to grade how well Resident Evil 7’s innate talents extend past survival horror. As a wave based survival game, it is eager but routine. As a grueling roguelike, it is chaotic and formally aggravating. As an escape room, however, its fiendish motif fits neatly inside of a clever and contained challenge. All three accumulate to a zealous B-, which is a clean score for Resident Evil 7’s first post-graduate exam.
