Resident Evil is 30 years old, this year. And in that time the series has gone through a number of reinventions as it kept up with trends, tried new ideas and ultimately sought to hold true to the spirit of what had us all staying up into the darkest hours, attempting to play our PlayStations with one hand over our eyes. In recent years, we’ve seen attempts at both the “traditional” rhythm of survival horror in the original games and the more action-oriented style pioneered by the beloved Resident Evil 4. But Resident Evil Requiem is perhaps the boldest go yet, splitting the two ideas up between Grace Ashcroft and Leon S. Kennedy – a fresh face and a returning favourite sharing the spotlight.
There are so many ways in which this setup could’ve gone wrong, or at the very least just felt that little bit jarring. Instead, this is Capcom and the Resident Evil team firing on all cylinders, deftly weaving together everything they’ve learned and nailed over the history of the series and doing it with such a precise and masterful sense of direction that Requiem can simultaneously feel like multiple different games and a cohesive, relentlessly forward-pushing whole. This is the kind of game you stay up all day and all night playing, just because it refuses to let you go, and knows exactly when and where to punctuate every hour that goes by.
It all starts with Grace, the daughter of Resident Evil Outbreak‘s investigative reporter and Raccoon City Incident survivor, Alyssa Ashcroft. Having witnessed Alyssa’s murder as a teenager, the game picks up proper with Grace taking up the torch and joining the FBI as an intelligence analyst. On assignment investigating a string of mysterious deaths with a viral link, Grace winds up kidnapped and locked down within the walls of a former chronic care centre – which just so happens to be full of former staff and patients infected by the T-Virus.
This is Resident Evil Requiem at its most classical take on survival horror. Grace is small, and inexperienced, and so her ability to fight back against the increasingly freaky inhabitants of the care facility is limited. Played in first-person by default (though player perspective can be changed at any point for both characters), this first act of the game is tense, quiet, methodical. It’s the series’ quintessential stalk around a convoluted, ornate mansion where light puzzle-solving and trinket retrieval open up new paths and encourage doubling back on old ones. And the further you go, the more these infected nurses, doctors, kitchen staff, patients and things stand in your way.
You’ll be armed, but ammunition is scarce, and there’s no guarantee that a downed zombie will stay that way unless you’re willing to spend rare, crafted resources on making them burst for good. So they stick around, uniquely tragic in their shuffling throughout this final resting place, muttering about the last things they can remember with whatever small spark of humanity still occupies them. This is my favourite version of Resident Evil. Afraid to turn any corner for fear of some abject horror running at me, trying to scrounge up whatever meagre resources I can and then fighting for space in my limited inventory, turning on every light switch I find and then audibly gasping when I’m being stalked through a sewer by a giant, unkillable mutant girl and all the lights go out.
And then there’s Leon. Showing up at crucial points during Grace’s attempt to escape Rhodes Hill Chronic Care, the game’s second major act sees his turn as the playable protagonist, and as you might expect it’s a vastly different experience. Resi 4 sickos, this is your time. Though older and less well, Leon’s trademark physicality is present in full force as he explores the dusty and devastated ruins of Raccoon City, some 28 years after it was destroyed by missiles in a supposed attempt to stop the spread of T-Virus.
Here, where guns, resources and inventory space are plentiful, and in the hands of someone who can literally roundhouse kick a zombie’s head clean off, the average infected is no real threat. What’ll get you is the big groups, or the ones wielding shovels and spears, or the ex-BSAA ones with machine guns, or the ones three times the size, or the- well, let’s leave it there. Controlling Leon (by default in third-person) is piloting a statuesque, barreling force of nature in the shape of a hot, old guy, and the action ramps up considerably to match. This is Resident Evil’s other side, the action horror vibe that’s championed the loudest, often goofiest moments of the series, and somehow it’s all turned up even higher in Requiem.
For every set-piece event during Grace’s sections that had me immobile, sweat beading and heart pounding in horrified disbelief, Leon delivered one so outlandish, so ridiculous, so bombastically fucking cool that I could barely believe I was playing the same game. It’s complete catharsis, a just reward for making it to the other side of what came before, and against all odds and good sense it genuinely works.
You’d equally expect things to feel messy or disjointed when both Grace and Leon’s journeys merge and they share scenes, but once again Capcom’s mastery of direction not only means these work but they’re some of the most impactful moments in the game. There’s one bit in particular, about a third of the way through, where the shift between Grace and Leon is used as an exquisite button on the disturbing and harrowing events unfolding in front of you. By the game’s final act, as things escalate to a boiling point, there are enough feats of design and direction as you go between the two that it starts to feel like the studio showing off.
Showing off is probably a good way to describe a lot of what’s gone into Resident Evil Requiem, a game that feels so relentlessly authored that it might just renew some faith in the art of video game development in this age of genAI slop. It’s an audiovisual feast at all angles, with gorgeous character models, impossibly intricate and contextual animations and the wettest blood and guts in the business. For every triumph in sound design and score, the real hero of the audio treatment here is Angela Sant’Albano’s turn as Grace Ashcroft, a performance that will no doubt earn her many an accolade at the year’s end.
After rolling credits on the game, witnessing its belter of an ending and then immediately diving back in for another playthrough, I can pretty confidently call Resident Evil Requiem my pick as the best entry in the series to date.
Reviewed on PlayStation 5 Pro | Review copy supplied by publisher
Great
- Grace's segments exemplify the tense, spooky side of Resident Evil
- While Leon's exemplify the Leon side of Resident Evil
- A visual and audible treat for the senses
- Satisfying ending that permeates the whole series' canon
- Some stellar set-piece sequences that'll have you hollering (complimentary) or hollering (scary)
Not great
- Neither of the main "bad guys" will go down as particularly memorable