With Resident Evil's ninth mainline entry, Capcom finds itself at something of a crossroads. In recent years, Resident Evil games have flitted between nail-biting horror and enjoyably explosive thrills, leaving fans split between wanting the all-out action of Resident Evil 4 and VII's more unsettling brand of survival horror.
When I played Requiem last year, it seemed pretty clear to me which spooky path players were being led down. As junior FBI agent Grace Ashcroft was relentlessly pursued, scrambling to survive while defenseless and alone in a dark asylum, I assumed that Requiem would merely be re-treading the same PT-esque ground it did with Resident Evil VII. After spending another three engrossing hours with Requiem more recently, however, it turns out that I couldn't have been more wrong. Capcom's long-awaited sequel manages to channel both the action-packed thrills of Resident Evil 4 and the raw, disquieting tension that made Resident Evil VII so captivating. Where Resident Evil Village felt like an uneven compromise between action and horror, Capcom does not seem worried about Resident Evil Requiem being either too scary or too trigger-happy--it's just giving players the best of both.
Requiem's final preview kicks off by putting me in the dust-coated boots of the internet's favourite Unc', Leon Kennedy. After pulling into Rhodes Hill hospital in the dead of night, he's met by a nurse who wearily answers the door before showing Leon around the dimly lit facility. As we roam the deathly quiet corridors, she explains that Rhodes Hill is a chronic pain treatment center under the control of one Dr. Gideon, a renowned surgeon who administers "experimental therapies" to patients. We can all guess where this is going. Sure enough, as I'm led up the eerily silent and half-illuminated halls moments later, I come face-to-face with a staff doctor--but he's wielding a blood-soaked chainsaw.
As the doctor turns to reveal his rotting face, he cleaves the poor nurse in half. Once her blood splatters all over Leon's trademark jacket, good ol' Uncle Spin-kick springs into action. With a full chamber of pistol rounds at my disposal, three swift shots to the head drop the snarling physician, his blood-soaked weapon falling to the floor. "I want a second opinion," Leon quips, Schwarzenegger style--and as the doc's still-revving chainsaw clatters to the ground, much to my delight, a button prompt beckons me to pick it up.
A door opens, and the undead spill through, and I almost feel pity as I carve a slew of zombies into tiny pieces. Yet before I can admire my handiwork, another horde of bloodthirsty patients arrives. I'm kicked to the ground by a zombie draped in bandages, and he nabs my shiny new chainsaw--with hilarious results. Not able to hold the roaring tool in his weakly swinging arms, the chainsaw sends the zombie's limbs flailing around wildly, the blade sparking off walls and even slicing his shuffling brethren. It sets the scene for just how interactive and personality-filled zombies are in Requiem, and after I lay waste to him and a further eight undead, I reclaim the chainsaw and slice off a lock that allows me to reach the next floor.
In my previous Requiem demo, a terrified Grace Ashcrosft awoke to find herself strapped to a table in this asylum. Pursued by a horrifying 20-foot monster, the first demo ended with Grace being grabbed by the mutated monstrosity just as she was about to escape.
As Leon arrives on the next floor, the two separate demos collide. A cutscene triggers where Leon sees a screaming Grace Ashcroft just as she's being dragged under a security door, and a spin kick makes short work of her captor, sending it hissing into the darkness with three shots to the head for good measure. It's a smooth transition that somehow doesn't feel tonally jarring, the action-packed catharsis of Kennedy's blasting meshing seamlessly with Grace's tense survival horror story. Handing her a ridiculously oversized hand cannon, Leon departs to do action hero stuff (presumably practicing his spin kicks while workshopping one-liners) and control swaps over to a slightly shaken Grace Ashcroft.
After Leon's straight-to-VHS action intro, my next hour and forty-five minutes with Grace sees a welcome return to Resident Evil's classic metroidvania-esque gameloop. Standing alone in the shiny, marble-floored lobby, Rhodes Hill hospital feels immediately familiar: part Racoon City police station, part Lady Dimitrescu's castle. While the action starts in a dimly-lit, haunted asylum, the sprawling live-in medical facility sees me quietly traipsing through everything from lounge bars, casino rooms, warehouses, and administration offices. Exploring in search of everything from keys to wrenches and statues, it's all your classic backtracking Resident Evil fare, but this time the undead that lurk within are just as unpredictable as their surroundings.
As I roam Rhodes, I soon discover that no two enemies are the same. Thanks to Dr. Gideon's "treatments," zombies here aren't entirely mindless--they still retain imprints of their former lives. A lady in a blood-soaked dress warbles in tune when you find her beside a piano. A maid in the bathroom shrieks, "Why the mess?" as she smears blood all over the porcelain tiles. One patient with a bandage wrapped around his skull murmurs, "Quiet, quiet, my head, my head...," lashing out wildly at the air if you accidentally break any of the fragile pots that are nearby. A zombie in a tux clutches a beer bottle tightly before hurling it at you in rage. Each new, beautifully animated zombie is pleasingly distinct, making discovering new enemies a constant delight throughout my demo.
The soundtrack is great, too. Where Leon's section was all rip-roaring guitar solos, pounding percussion, and discordant saxophone notes that build up tension during the Grace sections, a creepy icing on top of Requiem's stunningly detailed world. The gameplay mirrors the soundtrack. Unlike in the rest of the series, using stealth throughout Grace's sections is a surprisingly viable option in Requiem. The odds are still stacked against her--and I quickly combined herbs and desperately searched for handgun ammo to be ready for emergencies--but you can often sneak past the horrors that lurk within the asylum. You're not just being forced to madly sprint through enemy hotspots like in some previous games.
It will likely surprise no one to learn that, visually, Requiem is an absolute stunner, too. The RE Engine's impressive lighting brings ominous corridors and grimy kitchens to sickening new life, and immersive horror reaches new heights on PlayStation 5 Pro. Even the once pedestrian-looking green herbs are now wonderfully detailed. Hidden in random locations across the hospital, initially I mistook them for decorative house plants, before happily chomping one down like a human-aphid hybrid.
Continuing, I sneak past a hulking brute that's roaming the kitchen halls, before returning an hour later with a mountain of bullets and a plan to take down the machete-clutching chef. Much to my horror, I unload 20 rounds into him, and he doesn't even flinch, sending me fleeing back to the safe room, ammo-free and alone. It turns out, there is a way to kill this chef eventually--and it's suitably gory.
Much like in VII, Requiem is filled with blood and gore, but this time around, it's not just grimy set dressing--zombie blood is an actual resource. Thanks to a handy laser microscope that I discovered while exploring a lab, Grace learns how to fill up syringes of infected blood to craft ammo--I must have missed that lesson in science class. While pretty silly, it's a brilliant gameplay mechanic. Buckets of blood and guts filled by that hulking chef were once just gruesome decor, but have now become precious resources. A blood-soaked bathtub I pass at the start of my demo goes from a gross-out reveal to a much-needed lifesaver.
Using the blood to make deadly syringes allows you to sneak up and kill an enemy in one hit. Crafting one, I stalk the once-unkillable chef, stabbing him in the neck and watching him explode in a fountain of blood, giving me access to a kitchen parlour filled with precious upgrades.
As my demo continues, certain zombies I assumed were dead reanimate with tentacles sprouting from their heads, Resident Evil 4-style. These enemies need to be stabbed with the syringes, and their revival ensures that backtracking through areas never feels completely safe. As I make it further and further through the cursed facility, a horrendous, screen-filling mutant baby squeezes its way through an office corridor, lunging at me with its horrible, dripping teeth and saggy, gangrenous arms. It pursues me through the building, and I realize that, once again, I'll need to put myself at the risk of death and find a way to stalk it to give myself a chance at sneaking behind it to stab it with a syringe.
After a tense few hours pursued by horrors and only surviving by the skin of my teeth, my demo ends just how it started--with a Leon-tastic, bullet-ridden piece of catharsis. The gigantic, corridor-filling baby that tormented Grace through corridors just moments ago suddenly makes the mistake of trying the same shit with Leon. Not today, Mr. Mega Baby. Now armed with a pump-action shotgun, this section makes me relinquish my role as prey and go full-on predator. Unloading shotgun shell after shotgun shell into its fat little face, I make short work of the macabre monstrosity, which screams as its horrible, swelling cranium eventually collapses in on itself, deflating like a murderous 20-foot zit.
Finding Leon in the same hospital halls that I'd carefully advanced through as Grace, counting bullets and solving puzzles, I now charge through them clutching the shotgun, with Leon making short work of the foes who tormented me for hours in the previous chapter.
Requiem, then, is redoing Resident Evil 6, in some respects, with its intense emotional and tonal shifts. However, where Capcom's widely-panned 2012 outing dropped scares for action, Requiem seems to meld Resident Evil's best flavours into one irresistible mixed herb. This time around, the game is half-Resident Evil 4 Leon, half-Resident Evil 7-esque scares, courtesy of the more relatable human Grace. With one half of the game pitting you as a vulnerable FBI agent-in-training, and the other a pun-spouting, zombie-slaying veteran, Requiem looks to be a game of enjoyably intense and cathartic contrasts.
Based on its longest demo yet, Requiem is shaping up to be a greatest hits compilation of the most recent Resident Evil releases and remakes--with a sprinkling of extra scares and polish. Where Village aimlessly blurred action and horror with mixed results, this time around the divide feels far more clear-cut--and I can't wait to see what other delightful horrors the full game has lurking in the dark.
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When I played Requiem last year, it seemed pretty clear to me which spooky path players were being led down. As junior FBI agent Grace Ashcroft was relentlessly pursued, scrambling to survive while defenseless and alone in a dark asylum, I assumed that Requiem would merely be re-treading the same PT-esque ground it did with Resident Evil VII. After spending another three engrossing hours with Requiem more recently, however, it turns out that I couldn't have been more wrong. Capcom's long-awaited sequel manages to channel both the action-packed thrills of Resident Evil 4 and the raw, disquieting tension that made Resident Evil VII so captivating. Where Resident Evil Village felt like an uneven compromise between action and horror, Capcom does not seem worried about Resident Evil Requiem being either too scary or too trigger-happy--it's just giving players the best of both.
Requiem's final preview kicks off by putting me in the dust-coated boots of the internet's favourite Unc', Leon Kennedy. After pulling into Rhodes Hill hospital in the dead of night, he's met by a nurse who wearily answers the door before showing Leon around the dimly lit facility. As we roam the deathly quiet corridors, she explains that Rhodes Hill is a chronic pain treatment center under the control of one Dr. Gideon, a renowned surgeon who administers "experimental therapies" to patients. We can all guess where this is going. Sure enough, as I'm led up the eerily silent and half-illuminated halls moments later, I come face-to-face with a staff doctor--but he's wielding a blood-soaked chainsaw.
As the doctor turns to reveal his rotting face, he cleaves the poor nurse in half. Once her blood splatters all over Leon's trademark jacket, good ol' Uncle Spin-kick springs into action. With a full chamber of pistol rounds at my disposal, three swift shots to the head drop the snarling physician, his blood-soaked weapon falling to the floor. "I want a second opinion," Leon quips, Schwarzenegger style--and as the doc's still-revving chainsaw clatters to the ground, much to my delight, a button prompt beckons me to pick it up.
Teaching an old Unc' new tricks
A door opens, and the undead spill through, and I almost feel pity as I carve a slew of zombies into tiny pieces. Yet before I can admire my handiwork, another horde of bloodthirsty patients arrives. I'm kicked to the ground by a zombie draped in bandages, and he nabs my shiny new chainsaw--with hilarious results. Not able to hold the roaring tool in his weakly swinging arms, the chainsaw sends the zombie's limbs flailing around wildly, the blade sparking off walls and even slicing his shuffling brethren. It sets the scene for just how interactive and personality-filled zombies are in Requiem, and after I lay waste to him and a further eight undead, I reclaim the chainsaw and slice off a lock that allows me to reach the next floor.
In my previous Requiem demo, a terrified Grace Ashcrosft awoke to find herself strapped to a table in this asylum. Pursued by a horrifying 20-foot monster, the first demo ended with Grace being grabbed by the mutated monstrosity just as she was about to escape.
As Leon arrives on the next floor, the two separate demos collide. A cutscene triggers where Leon sees a screaming Grace Ashcroft just as she's being dragged under a security door, and a spin kick makes short work of her captor, sending it hissing into the darkness with three shots to the head for good measure. It's a smooth transition that somehow doesn't feel tonally jarring, the action-packed catharsis of Kennedy's blasting meshing seamlessly with Grace's tense survival horror story. Handing her a ridiculously oversized hand cannon, Leon departs to do action hero stuff (presumably practicing his spin kicks while workshopping one-liners) and control swaps over to a slightly shaken Grace Ashcroft.
A nice change of pace
After Leon's straight-to-VHS action intro, my next hour and forty-five minutes with Grace sees a welcome return to Resident Evil's classic metroidvania-esque gameloop. Standing alone in the shiny, marble-floored lobby, Rhodes Hill hospital feels immediately familiar: part Racoon City police station, part Lady Dimitrescu's castle. While the action starts in a dimly-lit, haunted asylum, the sprawling live-in medical facility sees me quietly traipsing through everything from lounge bars, casino rooms, warehouses, and administration offices. Exploring in search of everything from keys to wrenches and statues, it's all your classic backtracking Resident Evil fare, but this time the undead that lurk within are just as unpredictable as their surroundings.
As I roam Rhodes, I soon discover that no two enemies are the same. Thanks to Dr. Gideon's "treatments," zombies here aren't entirely mindless--they still retain imprints of their former lives. A lady in a blood-soaked dress warbles in tune when you find her beside a piano. A maid in the bathroom shrieks, "Why the mess?" as she smears blood all over the porcelain tiles. One patient with a bandage wrapped around his skull murmurs, "Quiet, quiet, my head, my head...," lashing out wildly at the air if you accidentally break any of the fragile pots that are nearby. A zombie in a tux clutches a beer bottle tightly before hurling it at you in rage. Each new, beautifully animated zombie is pleasingly distinct, making discovering new enemies a constant delight throughout my demo.
The soundtrack is great, too. Where Leon's section was all rip-roaring guitar solos, pounding percussion, and discordant saxophone notes that build up tension during the Grace sections, a creepy icing on top of Requiem's stunningly detailed world. The gameplay mirrors the soundtrack. Unlike in the rest of the series, using stealth throughout Grace's sections is a surprisingly viable option in Requiem. The odds are still stacked against her--and I quickly combined herbs and desperately searched for handgun ammo to be ready for emergencies--but you can often sneak past the horrors that lurk within the asylum. You're not just being forced to madly sprint through enemy hotspots like in some previous games.
It will likely surprise no one to learn that, visually, Requiem is an absolute stunner, too. The RE Engine's impressive lighting brings ominous corridors and grimy kitchens to sickening new life, and immersive horror reaches new heights on PlayStation 5 Pro. Even the once pedestrian-looking green herbs are now wonderfully detailed. Hidden in random locations across the hospital, initially I mistook them for decorative house plants, before happily chomping one down like a human-aphid hybrid.
Continuing, I sneak past a hulking brute that's roaming the kitchen halls, before returning an hour later with a mountain of bullets and a plan to take down the machete-clutching chef. Much to my horror, I unload 20 rounds into him, and he doesn't even flinch, sending me fleeing back to the safe room, ammo-free and alone. It turns out, there is a way to kill this chef eventually--and it's suitably gory.
Much like in VII, Requiem is filled with blood and gore, but this time around, it's not just grimy set dressing--zombie blood is an actual resource. Thanks to a handy laser microscope that I discovered while exploring a lab, Grace learns how to fill up syringes of infected blood to craft ammo--I must have missed that lesson in science class. While pretty silly, it's a brilliant gameplay mechanic. Buckets of blood and guts filled by that hulking chef were once just gruesome decor, but have now become precious resources. A blood-soaked bathtub I pass at the start of my demo goes from a gross-out reveal to a much-needed lifesaver.
Using the blood to make deadly syringes allows you to sneak up and kill an enemy in one hit. Crafting one, I stalk the once-unkillable chef, stabbing him in the neck and watching him explode in a fountain of blood, giving me access to a kitchen parlour filled with precious upgrades.
As my demo continues, certain zombies I assumed were dead reanimate with tentacles sprouting from their heads, Resident Evil 4-style. These enemies need to be stabbed with the syringes, and their revival ensures that backtracking through areas never feels completely safe. As I make it further and further through the cursed facility, a horrendous, screen-filling mutant baby squeezes its way through an office corridor, lunging at me with its horrible, dripping teeth and saggy, gangrenous arms. It pursues me through the building, and I realize that, once again, I'll need to put myself at the risk of death and find a way to stalk it to give myself a chance at sneaking behind it to stab it with a syringe.
Leon, the professional
After a tense few hours pursued by horrors and only surviving by the skin of my teeth, my demo ends just how it started--with a Leon-tastic, bullet-ridden piece of catharsis. The gigantic, corridor-filling baby that tormented Grace through corridors just moments ago suddenly makes the mistake of trying the same shit with Leon. Not today, Mr. Mega Baby. Now armed with a pump-action shotgun, this section makes me relinquish my role as prey and go full-on predator. Unloading shotgun shell after shotgun shell into its fat little face, I make short work of the macabre monstrosity, which screams as its horrible, swelling cranium eventually collapses in on itself, deflating like a murderous 20-foot zit.
Finding Leon in the same hospital halls that I'd carefully advanced through as Grace, counting bullets and solving puzzles, I now charge through them clutching the shotgun, with Leon making short work of the foes who tormented me for hours in the previous chapter.
Requiem, then, is redoing Resident Evil 6, in some respects, with its intense emotional and tonal shifts. However, where Capcom's widely-panned 2012 outing dropped scares for action, Requiem seems to meld Resident Evil's best flavours into one irresistible mixed herb. This time around, the game is half-Resident Evil 4 Leon, half-Resident Evil 7-esque scares, courtesy of the more relatable human Grace. With one half of the game pitting you as a vulnerable FBI agent-in-training, and the other a pun-spouting, zombie-slaying veteran, Requiem looks to be a game of enjoyably intense and cathartic contrasts.
Based on its longest demo yet, Requiem is shaping up to be a greatest hits compilation of the most recent Resident Evil releases and remakes--with a sprinkling of extra scares and polish. Where Village aimlessly blurred action and horror with mixed results, this time around the divide feels far more clear-cut--and I can't wait to see what other delightful horrors the full game has lurking in the dark.
Source