Resident Evil: Requiem, the latest instalment in the beloved survival horror video game series, brings things full circle in gameplay and plot, weaving the series ‘best attributes’ with new and returning characters, locations and scares.
The Resident Evil game series is often cited as one of gaming’s most influential when it comes to survival horror, with its first instalment pretty much being the foundation for the genre. The term “survival horror” simply means that the game combines creepy imagery with challenging gameplay mechanics, such as limited resources, punishing enemies, and puzzles, forcing players to experience the real tension of survival. The series’s 13 main entries have refined, developed, and occasionally ditched horror for action altogether. This means lots of fans of the series have their preferred taste of Resident Evil – whether it’s Evil Dead style B-movie action, or blood-curdling psychological terror.
With Resident Evil: Requiem, Capcom attempts to blend both the action and horror elements of the series. It really feels like a culmination of everything Capcom has been doing with the series since the soft reboot of RE7 in 2017. It features the back-to-basics atmospheric dread of both RE7 and RE8, which used a first-person perspective to deliver a more in-your-face horror experience. Requiem also gives you the option of switching to a third-person perspective synonymous with their earlier titles – and along with it, the badass action-adventure gameplay. Requiem manages to pull this off by utilising two distinctly different characters, series newcomer Grace Ashcroft and fan favourite Leon Kennedy.
Grace’s portions of the game are well in the survival-horror territory, featuring the game’s scariest sections by far. The settings that she finds herself in are dingy, dark and alien to her. The enemies she encounters are pure nightmare fuel, and the weapons she has are fragile and low on ammunition. The game does a great job of making the player feel as inexperienced and vulnerable as Grace is, and doesn’t hold your hand at all during her sections. She makes for a fantastic new type of RE protagonist – she’s an easily scared, nervous wreck with no survival skills – a far cry from Requiem’s other protagonist, Leon. Being one of the series ’regular protagonists, he’s battled his fair share of zombies and abominations, which the gameplay mirrors in what it offers compared to Grace’s sections. Leon has access to more weapons, featuring a whole customisation and upgrade system, and his signature spin-kicks are back.
After introducing both characters and firmly establishing the two distinct atmospheres being offered, Requiem flips between the two across the game’s runtime. This dichotomy is something the developers had hyped across the game’s press run before release, and I was naturally sceptical. Was it going to be a jack of all trades and master of none? About an hour in, I was pretty convinced Capcom had knocked it out of the park on both fronts.
I found Grace’s portions of the game my personal favourite, and some of the scariest the series has had to offer. The settings were perfectly designed to complement her journey into despair – an abandoned hotel, desolate orphanage, decaying prison block – they were all perfectly executed classic horror tropes. One of my favourite elements of all RE games is Capcom’s dedication to uniquely distressing enemies. Requiem does not hold back in this regard, as it throws some of the most obscene monsters in your direction, one of which is an entity simply known as ‘The Girl’. This enemy joins the ranks of RE’s best ‘stalker ’type enemy – an invincible character that stalks the player continuously, leaving the player no choice but to run when encountering them. There were portions of the game where I had to put the controller down and take breaks, as encountering her was genuinely too stressful to handle.
Leon’s portions of the game are like if you walked out of a cinema screening of The Exorcist and walked into Terminator 2. There are still tense moments, but tense in a more action-oriented way, allowing the player to flex their skills as a veteran zombie-slayer. It was a great way to pace the game – had it been entirely Grace I might’ve found it too overwhelming, and not scary enough if it was all Leon. Leon’s sections also allowed the game to harken back to previous games. A big element of the plot involves a return to Racoon City, where the traumatising events of RE2 occur – Leon’s first entry in the series as a baby-faced cop. This offered great fan service while still delivering a new experience, not relying on nostalgia but using it to enhance the themes of facing the past – a requiem, if you will!
Performance-wise, Capcom kill it here – this wasn’t too much of a surprise considering the quality of their other titles, but I was still taken aback at times at the beauty (if you could call it that) of the environments. Every new setting has a distinct atmosphere that has a realistic enough quality to immerse you, but stylistic enough to be unsettling. Capcom have a particular knack for character models that I always find impressive, in both cutscenes and gameplay. Other than one portion of the game that stayed in a washed brown and grey colour palette for a little too long, it felt like another success for their game engine. As expected, the game spends a lot of time in dark environments – I’d highly recommend an OLED monitor or TV for this game – the excellent control of black levels will allow you to be immersed in the darkness, but not lost.
Overall, I’d consider Resident Evil: Requiem a magnum opus of sorts – it combines the incredible atmospheres and gameplay of their newer entries, and meshes them with the tone and story of their older titles. The result is a game that feels like a feast of horror, which will likely please both completely new and old fans. Even though the game features returning characters and settings, it’s honestly not a bad place to start if you’re new to the franchise, due to its diverse offerings of gameplay and atmospheres – it’s a Resident Evil buffet. My only tiny disappointment was that the game doesn’t offer too much that feels ‘new ’to the series – the gameplay is very classic Resident Evil throughout. However, the quality of what was delivered was certainly enough to both terrify and thrill me, so much so that I’d quite easily put this entry amongst my personal top 3 of the franchise. If you’re at all a fan of horror, or you just like yelling expletives at your TV screen out of sheer thrill, this is one of the most well-rounded experiences gaming can offer.
Author: Elliot, Holborn Store
