Resident Evil: Requiem
Rating: 6 out of 10
Note: Review is based on PlayStation 5 version and 4 hours of play.
You could argue that Requiem, the ninth mainline entry in the iconic Resident Evil franchise, is the first proper sequel since Resident Evil 4, but that’s not inherently a good thing. For the past decade, developer and publisher Capcom has found itself in the same weird space space as Square Enix with Final Fantasy. On one path is a series of remakes that lean hard on the nostalgia gamers have for the golden age of PlayStation 1 and 2 titles while employing modern mechanics the market research says are what gamers expect. On the other, an evolution of an IP with nominally a linear story that is directly competing with both its own remakes and the new generation of games inspired by previous entries in a desperate race for relevance.
Resident Evil: Biohazard and Village managed to stick their landings by returning the series to its survival horror roots (after flirting with becoming Gears of War) and also by leaning into ridiculousness. The superpowered redneck Baker Family of Biohazard was both terrifying and fun to try and survive against. Then, Village came along and gave players Resident Evil vs. the Universal Monsters with an 8-foot vampire mommy, a chainsaw tank, and that genre-defining baby sequence. Sure, it was silly, but it was also a wild ride without abandoning the terror.
Requiem is far less fun. With the Ethan Winters story all wrapped up, Capcom threw everything about the last two original mainline games and the blockbuster remakes into one big pot and produced something that feels deeply unfocused and lacking in artistic vision. It’s still, most definitely, Resident Evil, but it’s neither original enough to be cool or nostalgic enough to be retro. It’s just kind of there, like a collective game memory given form.
FBI Agent Grace Ashcroft (daughter of Resident Evil: Outbreak‘s Alyssa Ashcroft) is sent to investigate the scene of her mother’s murder, which is connected to a grisly new set of killings linked to Umbrella’s bioweapon research. Series mainstay Leon S. Kennedy is also investigating, leading the two to switch chapters back and forth as main character. They both end up trapped in the Rhodes Hill Care Center, an experimental treatment facility run by former Umbrella scientist-turned bioweapon baddie Victor Gideon.
Let’s start with what works. Requiem knows that the most memorable scene of Village was that aforementioned baby hide-and-seek segment, so they drop you right into its successor in the first level after the tutorials. There follows one of the most perfectly crafted scares I have have ever seen in any medium and a moment that led to a literal nightmare so bad I woke up my wife that night. For a series that pioneered the jump scare to subvert it so masterfully was incredible. Not to mention, it’s nice to see a Resident Evil big bad that’s not just a wall of meat, teeth, and eyes.
Even then, though, the magic wore off quickly. The monster uses the same wall burst trick Jack Baker did, and the solution is literally the same fuse puzzle from the Beneviento House where you meet the baby. It doesn’t help that Grace Ashcroft is deeply unfun to play as. We all joked about how Ethan was a milquetoast hero who responded to amputation the same way the rest of us respond to dropping an ice cream cone, but mechanically he was fine.
Grace is neither a weak, Amnesia-style hero or a proper survival horror one. The game encourages you to play as her in first-person to highlight her helplessness, but then immediately throws that out the window every time there’s a cutscene so all immersion is gone. She sprints like she just developed legs yesterday and talks to herself in a constant state of stuttering anxiety, which is fair for the situation but does get annoying. The game gives her guns that are immediately useless, and few other tools besides stealth, which is often simply not feasible for the levels she navigates.
This is exacerbated by looooooong death animations that suck the horror out of the game and leave a big pile of frustration in its place. The key to a great horror game is to balance the difficulty so that you don’t die so much the frightfulness is lost, and Requiem doesn’t have that balance. Grace can’t parry, can’t really dodge, has no base melee attack, and the knives she finds end up permanently lodged in dead zombies. Within a few hours I stopped being scared and started to be bored.
Leon is the polar opposite. He comes equipped with big guns, a hatchet, and that famous roundhouse kick with never stops being a gas. His segments are supposed to be played in third-person, with him getting to act much more like an action hero that kills everything in his path.
The first real test of Leon’s skills is fun as heck. Attacked by a zombie doctor wielding a chainsaw, he fights off a horde of medical personnel in a cramped set of offices. Here was another brilliant moment. I finished off Dr. Leatherface and turned my attention to the less dangerous wave, only to hear the saw again right behind me before it was buried in my shoulder. The zombies will pick up the weapons and come at you! Not going to lie; a little pee came out when I realized what was happening.
Leon’s presence adds some dynamics to the overall experience, but it doesn’t actually reach the near-slapstick of Village or even Resident Evil 4. Rhodes Hill is almost pathetically desperate to be the Spencer Mansion just as Gideon is so close to Oswell Spencer I wasn’t sure they were different characters at first. Everything here feels borrowed and slightly overworn.
The game is good. The story is compelling, the graphics impressive, and the monsters very well done. It’s just that Requiem is so busy trying to be everything to everyone that is doesn’t come together to be its own thing. It’s a remix; a stunning, gorgeous remix, but a remix nonetheless. If you liked any Resident Evil game from the last decade, you will enjoy your time with Grace and Leon. There’s no evolution, though.
Resident Evil: Requiem is out now on PS5, Xbox X/S. Nintendo Switch 2, and PC. $69.99.