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So... P.T. or Resident Evil 7: Beginning Hour?

RE7: Beginning Hour, hands down. I hate the way BH's staggered release was handled, with Capcom pretty much just trolling it's own fanbase with the first two versions of the demo, before finally giving us something resembling a finished product. In the end though, it felt like a complete experience, offering combat, a (completely BS) puzzle, exploration, and three separate endings, plus an item to carry into the final game. P.T., in my humble opinion isn't anything special. It's got creepy atmosphere, sure, but there's really nothing else there, and while there's cryptic crap in both demos, it's mandatory for progression in P.T., which I abhorred. It's also not even clear if P.T. would've been representative of the final game, either.
 
Since we're talking based on the demos, as much as I am excited for Resident Evil 7, PT was just something else. Even though I never finished it because of how convoluted it got, it left a long lasting impression.

Honestly, even if the Konami bullshit didn't happen, I highly doubt PT would've translated into a full game all that well, but as a standalone thing, it was amazing. I'm gonna bust that out to show people for years to come.

Edit: I think if you've never touched the demo, the RE7 demo is pretty good, unfortunately I played each version as they came out, so each update was like "Let's find the new stuff" instead of treating it all as one big thing.
 
Never played PT, but the RE7 demo was seriously awful.

If I weren't such a sucker and series fanboy it would have completely turned me off from buying the game.
 
Starting to wonder if RE7 is gonna need to go beyond RE4 quality, even, to make up for the bad first impressions the original demo made

People ain't got time to waste replaying your shit, man, do it right the first time
 
RE4 is garbage, the demo and gameplay vids I've seen of RE7 are already far beyond it as far as good RE games go, thankfully.

RE7 is gonna be amazing. P.T. was never going to be anything like it was.
 
Team Alucard said:
Never played PT, but the RE7 demo was seriously awful.

If I weren't such a sucker and series fanboy it would have completely turned me off from buying the game.
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That's where I'm at. The demo hasn't sold me on the game. Dusk Golems posts and the leaks have done more to drive my interest in the game than the demo did.
 
P.T. is an expirence.

I'll never forget the 10+ hours it took my gf, a friend and me to finish it only to be blown away by the ending. Silent Hills never happening is something that hurts.
I still boot it up every now and then or make someone play it.
That said, I'd hate to play something like that as a full game.

RE7 BH demo is a game.

It has "game" elements, it's quick, you can replay it and try different (yet limited) things, etc... The final update is great and gives a glimpse of the final game.

I'd take another "PT" over a BH demo any day.
But it's clear to me that BH is closer to the real game that PT was to Silent Hills.
 
As an obsessive RE fan who doesn't really care for SH much, I've gotta go with...

P.T.

P.T. feels like a unique experience, a confident, inspired ordeal of give and take between storyteller and audience, employing a variety of extremely effective and genuinely unsettling techniques to give the player a serious case of the willies. It's imaginative, technically peerless, and still to this day effortlessly scary.

Beginning Hour is....what is it, really? Lacking both a sense of franchise consistency and a compelling hook in its own right, it manages to muster little more than a 'me too' sense of fashionable horror gaming aspirations, be it P.T. itself, or any number of YouTube-friendly first person jump scare LP suspects. Great visuals, but that's about it.
 
P.T. Was a masterpiece of a demo and marketing. I enjoyed the atmosphere and the scares in PT more than the RE7 demo. It also came first which made PT all the more original. And the reveal was insane, a Kojima Silent Hill game, it doesn't get much better than that.

But the true genius of PT for me was that it was the first ever online broadcast community puzzle I was a part of. Being there that night, broadcasting, following other broadcasts and trying to figure out how the hell to get those giggles was an amazing experience unlike anything I have been a part of. The RE7 version of that experience was like a bad copy.

RE7 final demo was great but all that came before ruined the experience. Plus none of it is as effective at creating a sense of dread and fear like PT did. PT was a masterclass in how to create a small effective gaming piece.
 
The early versions of the demo were a mistake.

They were interesting, but had no narrative hook. They were unsolvable mysteries, and not in a good way. In fact, they give the impression that they hid secrets for the clever and perseverant.

So they were kind of a troll, which seems like a silly way to go about things.

I found I was tired of it by the time the final version came out.

I think if complete demo and PT were the only things on the table, I would say tie or even BH. The way things happened, though, PT was a much more consistently intriguing experience.
 
Some textures on RE look terrible. I'd say PT was better.
I feel like RE was made for PSVR thats why they changed up the style or capcom was trying to ride the PT wave. Rather have my old RE back before capcom started to fall off. Seems like they have no idea what to do with RE now.
 
spannicus said:
Some textures on RE look terrible. I'd say PT was better.
I feel like RE was made for PSVR thats why they changed up the style or capcom was trying to ride the PT wave. Rather have my old RE back before capcom started to fall off. Seems like they have no idea what to do with RE now.
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lol. Never change, GAF.
 
PT.

Silent Hill always was more cerebral.

I like that RE7 has returned to the most important tenets of the franchise. However, the combat and lone bullet sponge enemies have me concerned.
 
RE is my favorite game franchise, but there's absolutely nothing I like about the Beginning Hour demo. It's just dull, boring and derivative.

PT, on the other hand, is one of the best games of this generation, and probably the scariest thing I've ever experienced.

So yeah, it's not even a contest. PT is a billion times better IMO.
 
Neff said:
As an obsessive RE fan who doesn't really care for SH much, I've gotta go with...

P.T.

P.T. feels like a unique experience, a confident, inspired ordeal of give and take between storyteller and audience, employing a variety of extremely effective and genuinely unsettling techniques to give the player a serious case of the willies. It's imaginative, technically peerless, and still to this day effortlessly scary.

Beginning Hour is....what is it, really? Lacking both a sense of franchise consistency and a compelling hook in its own right, it manages to muster little more than a 'me too' sense of fashionable horror gaming aspirations, be it P.T. itself, or any number of YouTube-friendly first person jump scare LP suspects. Great visuals, but that's about it.
Click to expand...

I feel the same way. Beginning Hour I just don't find impressive at all. Doesn't sell me on the game, and doesn't have that same feel and tight design like PT. Like I said I know it's a proof of concept. But you can tell they were wanting to appeal those who wanted "RE to be scary" more than anything else.
 
Jawmuncher said:
Not like it's anything new. "Not my resident evil" is gonna be every thread from here on out, until capcom makes strides in offering something for everyone.
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IIRC, RE6 was their attempt to offer something for everyone through its several campaigns, at least in Capcom's own minds. Didn't work out so well.
 
The RE7 demo doesn't even have half the mood, tension or style that PT does.

However PT was also a glorified tech demo with obtuse puzzles that made no sense and little variety. The RE7 demo benefits from being from a more complete game offering more variety, better defined gameplay and more developed lore.

Because they both come from very different stages of development, it makes this question a little apple and oranges to me. However based on playing both, I have no doubt in my mind that if Silent Hills had actually come to fruition, it would have been the superior horror product.

That's not the reality we live in though so I'm just happy to see RE7 stepping it up.
 
Korigama said:
IIRC, RE6 was their attempt at trying to offer something for everyone, at least in Capcom's own minds. Didn't work out so well.
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They gotta let go of the idea that one game can do that.

Leon's campaign didn't do it
Revelations 1 & 2 didn't do it either

It's just not possible to offer both horror and action in one game. Which they seem to understand with RE7. If they literally just offered up a Mercs Standalobe on consoles with RE6 gameplay, they'd please more with that than poor half measures.
 
RE7 demo is interesting because it does take more inspiration from Silent Hill design philosophy. More building on the psychological horror than the standard RE reliance on jump scares.

PT for me was mainly exciting because Silent Hill games tend to offer an interesting psychological horror bent with an intelligently thought out lore and world building that's otherwise lacking in most horror games.

The actual experience itself? That is not a game I'd want to play for 10+ hours. Far too cryptic, and it never really did anything to creep me out. I was mainly just poking about desperately trying to trip some kind of event flag.

Seeign a ghost then somehow intuiting that I need to walk backwards 17 steps and make two left turns before whistling into the mic on the controller? Things like that to me = stuffily pretentious game design.
 
I think P.T. just sort of edges it out for me. I really, really like the content in the updated RE7 demo, but I think that P.T. had a better overall vision. I think part of it is that P.T. feels more in theme with the Silent Hill series versus RE7's new approach to the RE series.

Honestly, my opinion of the demo will probably change after RE7 is released.
 
The RE demo is pretty cool, but it didn't absolutely terrify me like PT. I can go launch that RE demo right now and I'll be fine. If I want to launch PT I have to mentally prepare myself ahead of time. The audio design and atmosphere in PT really fucks with me. It really captures the dread of being in a hellish nightmare. Reminds me of the anxiety and pure fear I get right before waking up from a nightmare. A scream that starts loud, but turns into a fatigued whimper when awoken.
 
7 looks and plays disturbingly too close to PT. Total turn off and can't unsee it. Capcom should be ashamed.

PT is clearly better too.
 
I preferred PT. I'm still afraid while playing it.

Once you realize Resident Evil's limits in terms of killing off the player, it's not scary. Hopefully gonna be more survival horror with the full game, but as it is, everything's so reliant on set triggers.

F0rneus said:
RE7 was in development long before P.T. We know that already. Come on dude.
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Yeah, not sure why a lot of people are forgetting stuff like Amnesia really kicked this whole thing off.

Edit: Though to be fair, the demo was likely heavily inspired by P.T., even if the full game wasn't. Pretty sure there's a telephone easter egg pulled straight from P.T.
 
I can agree that some of the puzzles in PT were bull fucking shit, but that's not what I focus on. When we're talking about a horror game, I focus on the atmosphere, the sound design, the ability to build a sense of dread an tension. PT shattered all of my expectations and made me rethink what made a good horror experience. The fact that it will never be made is extremely unsatisfying to the point that I don't think this appetite for horror can ever be whet.

Especially not by the poor showing that was RE7's demo. As others have said, it was boring and derivative. Allow me to append "predictable." Nothing about this demo made me want to commit to a full purchase and nothing about it even interested me in the final game. PT mindfucked me. BH felt like a bad mashup of Texas Chainsaw and Blair Witch with bonus stiff Japanese Capcom animation. I played it on PC a few days ago - I don't know if this is the most recent version of the demo, but the way some people are talking about the update I feel like I must be missing something here.

At this point I'll keep watching PT playthroughs on Youtube and maybe pick up a copy of RE7 on a Steam sale in 2019. I'm happy some people are satisfied with what we got in BH but I am far from satisfied, personally. For context, REmake and RE4 are in my top ten favourite games.
 
Conkerkid11 said:
I preferred PT. I'm still afraid while playing it.

Once you realize Resident Evil's limits in terms of killing off the player, it's not scary. Hopefully gonna be more survival horror with the full game, but as it is, everything's so reliant on set triggers.
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I felt that same way about PT.

Oh, it's virtually impossible to die, and you just get groundhog day'ed regardless? Tension gone. Now where's the next damn flag to flip?
 
Jawmuncher said:
They gotta let go of the idea that one game can do that.

Leon's campaign didn't do it
Revelations 1 & 2 didn't do it either

It's just not possible to offer both horror and action in one game. Which they seem to understand with RE7. If they literally just offered up a Mercs Standalobe on consoles with RE6 gameplay, they'd please more with that than poor half measures.
Click to expand...

I dunno, I think RE4 did it perfectly. And while the earlier RE games were more heavily invested in horror than later titles, I still consider them action games at heart.
 
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