Resident Evil 7 Biohazard is the latest AAA title to come to Apple’s platform. The game originally launched on PS4, Xbox One and PC in 2017, and has since been available on a number of other platforms, including Nintendo Switch and even the discontinued Google Stadia. Now, it’s available on the iPhone 15 Pro and all iPad and Mac models with M-series chips.
RE7 is a highly regarded installment in the RE library, even by the series’ typically high standards. It was a return to roots for the franchise, with a greater focus on survival horror than the action and gunplay that dominated the last few games. It was also the first game to switch to a more intimate first-person view for the characters, making the body horror particularly visceral and effective.
RE7 tells the story of Ethan Winters, whose wife has been missing for three years, until one day she sends him a mysterious message, summoning him to a house in the backwaters of Dulvey, Louisiana. It’s creepy enough, but nothing could have prepared Ethan for the horrors he finds in the place.
RE7 was a great return to form for a series that was originally known for its survival horror gameplay. It is undoubtedly the scariest game in the entire series, with the opening missions in particular often forcing you to stay rooted to one spot, so scared you can’t even move, while all you’re expected to do is wander around this empty house. The long, dark corridors of the opening area are particularly reminiscent of P.T., a short horror demo created by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro for a game that never came into existence.
RE7 makes incredible use of darkness, the tunnel vision caused by your flashlight, and the dilation of your pupils as you enter any new room of the house or turn your camera around. Your brain is begging your eyes for more information that the game won’t give you, all the while being hyper-aware of every creak emanating from this dilapidated old place. Did you see anything moving in the shadows up ahead? Well, too bad, because that’s where you’re expected to go next.
RE7 on the Apple platform is exactly the same game as previously released on other platforms. On iPhone, the initial free download from the App Store is 1.19GB. After that, the game asks you to download an additional 10GB upon launch. If you choose to purchase the full game via in-app purchases, you will have to download 14GB or more. When fully downloaded, the game will take up about 25GB of storage without DLC and 31GB with DLC.
DLC for the game includes the Gold Edition upgrade, which adds an additional story mission called ‘End of Zoe’ and two minigames called Banned Footage Volume 1 and Volume 2. The Gold Edition upgrade is $20 plus an additional $20 for the entire base game. However, you can download just the base game for free, which includes the first chapter.
The review will focus on the technical performance of the game tested on an iPhone 15 Pro. Like Village, RE7 brings back adjustable graphical settings and resolution, but in a more minimalist way. You don’t get the full PC-like graphics settings that you get on Village, but there are three graphical presets available that let you switch between prioritizing performance, prioritizing graphics, and balanced modes.
Starting with the Priorities graphics preset, the game presents an impressive image considering its age and platform. You get dense foliage in some outdoor scenes, with decent texture resolution, shadows, and slightly blurry but present screen space reflections on water bodies. Indoors you’ll notice details like volumetric crepuscular rays penetrating humid interiors, as well as cascaded shadow maps. And when enemies are trying to stab you in the face, you’ll notice a soft depth-of-field effect on the knives.
Switching from Prioritized graphics to Balanced graphics has a very small impact on the visuals, where it’s not immediately obvious. It was only after looking at a lot of details that it was possible to figure out that screen space reflections and shadow maps with slightly lower resolution and less ambient occlusion are blurrier.
However, there’s nothing subtle about the Priority Display preset, which looks noticeably worse. Geometric density in outdoors is reduced, with less foliage and simpler meshes for plants. Texture resolution is completely destroyed to the extent that it’s almost nonexistent. You also lose all screen space reflections, volumetric lighting, and ambient occlusion. Depth of field is also of less precision, making it look more like screen blur rather than soft camera blur. Finally, shadows are noticeably blockier.
Prioritize Graphics • Balanced • Prioritize Performance
The game also allows you to choose your resolution. On the iPhone 15 Pro, one can choose from native 2556×1179, 2342×1080, 1952×900, and 1560×720. If you choose a lower value, the game uses MetalFX Temporal Antialias upscaling to upsample the image to the display’s native resolution. However, there were noticeable checkerboard artifacts in the image even when the game was running natively, which suggests that the game is probably using the RE Engine interlacing feature, which runs the game at half the resolution on one axis.
The resulting image can be quite soft at times, but the game’s design allows it to be so. RE7 has a very post-processed look, with ample lens blur effects and chromatic aberration, as well as motion blur, creating an almost found-footage horror movie look. The soft look enhances the VHS quality the game is meant to have, though it can be a little too soft at times, especially during the actual VHS video sequences that play in some chapters.
However, overall image quality is still quite good. Most of the game is played in a very dark environment, which hides a lot of its visual flaws, and what is visible looks quite good. The performance preset drops a lot but remains usable while higher presets will look better on devices with more GPU processing power and memory.
The game renders in true ultra-wide on the iPhone, so you get a much wider view than 16:9. However, some pre-rendered cutscenes will still play in 16:9, with black bars on the sides.
In terms of performance, RE7 once again performs well. The game is known for being exceptionally light in terms of rendering load, which is why it was one of the few AAA titles running at 60fps on the base PS4 at the time. The Performance preset on the iPhone targets a uniform 60fps lock while Balanced and graphics have a 30fps lock. With the game set to 720p and the Performance preset, the iPhone 15 Pro stays at around 60fps most of the time. In fact, the device doesn’t even seem stressed as it barely heats up. You can try increasing the resolution but the difference isn’t really noticeable.
Unfortunately, the more noticeable visual upgrades from the Balanced and Graphics presets come with a frame rate halving. Now, RE7 is a game you can get away with playing at 30fps due to its intentionally slow-paced gameplay. However, once you get accustomed to the smooth 60fps of Performance mode, it becomes difficult to play with the other presets, no matter how good they look.
If you think differently then the Balanced preset would be a better choice for you as the better looking graphics presets often struggle to maintain 30fps even at the lowest resolution and since these presets put a load on the phone’s hardware, it definitely heats up while running.
One final note on the visuals is about HDR. RE7 on iOS makes use of the excellent HDR display 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’re struggling with being able to see things, you may want to disable HDR at the cost of some highlight brightness and contrast. You can calibrate the image even more in SDR, which you can’t do in HDR.
RE7 has touchscreen controls that are similar to the previous two RE games on the platform. When you’re mostly walking around and not firing weapons, the controls work well enough initially. However, once you get weapons, it becomes difficult to aim, fire, and move at the same time since these are essentially controller buttons placed on the touchscreen. The game explicitly recommends using a controller every time you launch it, so it’s probably best to take that recommendation seriously. Also, no, there is no support for mouse and keyboard.
Finally, RE7 on iPhone supports iCloud cloud saves and synchronization. This is a universal app that works on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS once purchased, and saves can be synced and accessed across these platforms. As before, you can’t bring over your saves from other platforms like Steam.
Overall, Resident Evil 7 Biohazard is an impressive title on the iPhone. The game’s age and lightweight visuals help it perform like a champ even on this pocket-sized device and the visuals are perfectly viable on the small screen. Plus it’s one of the best horror games ever made. With all that in mind, RE7 on the iPhone is easily recommendable. Just make sure you have a controller and a spare set of pants.
