Inside the hallways of the sinister sanatorium the place Resident Evil Requiem’s opening hours happen lies a number of the most horrifying encounters I’ve skilled within the collection so far. With my headphones on and the lights off, the ninth mainline journey in Capcom’s longrunning survival horror saga compelled me to endure moments so palpably tense and extended I found muscle tissue to clench that I didn’t beforehand know I had. But hours later I used to be not holding my breath, however holding my fist within the air as a substitute, as I gleefully mowed down plenty of undead meatsacks prefer it was D-Day in World Struggle Z. In an effort to please each survival horror stalwarts and action-horror advocates, Resident Evil Requiem runs the gore-soaked gamut from anxiety-inducing chills to trigger-happy thrills. The result’s one more supremely hair-raising horror story, regardless of the very fact its most potent scares have all been delivered by the point it arrives at its extra gloriously gung-ho second half.
Not in contrast to 2023’s Alan Wake II, Resident Evil Requiem initially focuses on a younger FBI agent, on this case collection newcomer Grace Ashcroft (Angela Sant’Albano), a fresh-faced analyst who’s despatched to research a collection of mysterious deaths among the many survivors of Raccoon Metropolis, a number of many years after the 1998 outbreak. Grace’s flashlight-lit forensic search by means of the dirty insides of a shuttered resort is finally short-lived, nonetheless, since she’s quickly ensnared by Victor Gideon (Antony Byrne), Requiem’s predominant antagonist whose menacing air, disgustingly disfigured face, and greasy goggles make him appear to be some form of steampunk Emperor Palpatine. Victor traps Grace within the Rhodes Hill Power Care Middle, a Spencer Mansion-style labyrinth of locked doorways crawling with all method of flesh-eating freaks, however fortunately assistance is on the way in which within the type of uber trendy collection veteran, Leon S. Kennedy (Nick Apostolides).
Survival horror’s preeminent himbo has clearly seen higher days – the unusual bruising on his pores and skin suggests he’s battling some form of affliction doubtlessly associated to T-Virus publicity, whereas the shiny new Porsche he’s driving implies he’s additionally not proof against a midlife disaster. However it’s Grace who’s the standout right here. Resident Evil characters have traditionally exhibited an exaggeratedly campy high quality that’s injected a big dose of goofiness amidst the gore, however for my cash this inexperienced FBI agent is by far probably the most relatably human heroine the collection has ever had. Her evolution from being perpetually getting ready to a panic assault to changing into confident sufficient to struggle again made for a journey that I discovered as fascinating because it was persistently creepy.
Saving Grace
Requiem permits us to alternate management between Grace and Leon at particular story junctions over the course of its roughly 10-hour marketing campaign, nevertheless it’s the previous whose predominately stealth-based sections are undoubtedly probably the most fear-inducing. Underpowered and underneath fixed menace from twisted stalker ghouls which can be liable to descend from the rafters at any second, Grace’s efforts to flee from the terrors of Victor’s hospital is a splendidly traumatic slab of unrelenting survival horror. There’s valuable little ammo to search out, a miserly variety of stock slots to handle, and Grace strikes at such a gradual velocity that it makes timing your cautious crouch-walk to keep away from a prowling pack of zombies an train in pinpoint pathmaking, particularly in the event you don’t have a uncommon breakable bottle to toss as a way to create a distraction. All of the whereas you must puzzle by means of a stimulating collection of physique part-based riddles and elaborately locked doorways, by no means actually figuring out whenever you’re going to show a nook and are available face to flabby face with a grotesquely girthy golem that’s urgently squeezing its manner down the hallway in direction of you.
I spent a lot time attempting to keep away from the quite a few appreciable threats, that on the events Grace was compelled right into a confrontation the outcomes actually rattled me. When performed within the default, claustrophobic first-person perspective, her weapons really feel genuinely startling to fireplace and the affect of each valuable pistol shot is immense. Bullets tear the festering flesh off zombie faces leaving eyeballs to dangle from their stems, and blood spatter paints the partitions and persists even whenever you backtrack by means of the world in a while.
The gallons of gore that covers the ground isn’t simply there for spectacle, thoughts you, since Grace is provided with a useful blood collector that enables her to syringe up the contaminated plasma pooling round zombie corpses, and mix it with different items of scrap to craft invaluable objects like medkits and single-use hemolytic injectors. The latter may be jammed into the backbone of an undead monster caught unaware, inflicting their total physique to swell up and explode in probably the most gloriously blood-soaked method of stealth-kill doable, however you may also use it to successfully eliminate a physique you’ve downed beforehand. I discovered that to be a sensible transfer in areas that I knew I’d be revisiting, since Requiem’s zombies even have a terrifying tendency to reanimate and mutate whenever you least count on them to. (Severely, these guys reform and are available again extra usually than The Eagles.)
Grace’s quest solely grows extra intense because it takes her by means of the suffocating shadows of the hospital’s basement and past, however transferring by means of Requiem’s danger-filled environment at a snail’s tempo didn’t simply preserve my nerves on edge, it allowed me to look at and admire the efforts that Capcom has put into enhancing the eerie behaviour of its undead military. These are not the groaning, foot-dragging mouth-breathers encountered throughout the authentic Raccoon Metropolis outbreak, as a substitute they keep traces of humanity that in some way makes them appear way more unsettling than the extra animalistic werewolves in Resident Evil Village. Like those that idly flick mild switches on and off like bored toddlers, or the others that wander round muttering and laughing to themselves earlier than all of a sudden collapsing to their knees to hungrily feast on the corpse of considered one of their former associates.
Leon: The Skilled
Whereas Grace’s plight is a determined and deliberate crawl that had me second-guessing each shadow, the ominous sounds of silence are shattered by the roar of ferocious ultraviolence whenever you swap management to Leon for what are initially temporary, tension-breaking bursts, as everybody’s favorite ex-RCPD recruit makes an attempt a not-so-subtle rescue mission. These ranges default to a third-person view to actually exhibit the slaughter, and inside minutes of his arrival I’d slipped comfortably again into Resident Evil 4 mode, nailing headshots and ending the undead with easy execution strikes. To my shock, nonetheless, Requiem shortly pushed the madness meter past Resident Evil 4 into Lifeless Rising ranges of delirium by permitting Leon to really wield a chainsaw to carve by means of the zombie crowds. Leon’s sections are up-tempo and grotesque to a level that left me giddy, and virtually each main zombie Leon dispatches is met with a delightfully deadpanned dad joke.
The place Grace should use the scarce quantities of scrap in her environment to make her personal quickly destructible knives, Leon is toting a strong hatchet that may be simply maintained with an eternal flint. Whereas Grace has to fastidiously rely every spherical in her small handful of handguns, Leon enjoys an in depth bevy of teeth-rattling boomsticks from beefy shotguns to head-splitting sniper rifles. Plus, if Leon will get bored of his personal weapons he can use another person’s – after killing a zombie who drops a fireplace axe or lead pipe, he has the choice to easily scoop it up and launch it at one other enemy close by, which is each bit as slick and satisfying as the same sword-flinging function of final yr’s Ghost of Yotei. That’s to not point out that as a substitute of getting to painstakingly harvest blood samples to craft with, Leon is rewarded with a particular foreign money for each kill that may be conveniently cashed in at a de facto ATM for artillery to purchase helpful weapon upgrades, further ammo, and even physique armour.
Merely put, there isn’t any off place on Leon’s arse-kicking swap – his gunplay is John Wick-slick and bloodier than ever earlier than – and along with his surging slaughter of zombie hordes it’s additionally inside Leon’s ranges that the majority of Requiem’s appropriately epic boss encounters happen. There are many colossal clashes to be discovered right here, from model new behemoths to brilliantly reimagined threats from earlier Resident Evil tales, and there isn’t a single Del Lago-sized dud amongst them. I notably cherished how the hulking nasty confronted inside a cramped chapel halfway by means of the story subverted my expectations of how a Resident Evil boss struggle ought to play out. Certain, being tasked with blasting the glowing weak factors that cowl a marauding monster’s torso is nothing new. That’s, till you realise that whereas piercing every swollen blister does inflict injury to the beast, it additionally spews streams of an infection onto the zombie underlings round him, immediately mutating them into brawnier types of backup so that you can deal with. Leon could also be armed to the tooth, however that doesn’t imply Requiem doesn’t nonetheless discover artistic methods to ramp up the problem.
Shorn of the Dread
As a lot as I really like Leon, although, I do surprise if maybe his sections develop into a bit too dominant as soon as Requiem settles right into a extra action-oriented groove in its second half, because the story strikes past the grounds of Rhodes Hill and deep into what stays of Raccoon Metropolis. Let me be clear, Resident Evil 4 is my private favorite instalment within the collection, so it definitely gave me a substantial amount of pleasure to as soon as once more wield a navy grade arsenal and pull-off skull-shattering ending strikes because the collection’ hunkiest mutant assassin. There’s additionally loads of selection within the violence, from a full-throttle freeway chase sequence to heavy artillery strikes that appear straight out of a Name of Responsibility marketing campaign. However after enjoying virtually completely as Leon by means of a roughly five-hour stretch in direction of Requiem’s conclusion, I did discover myself craving for just a few extra tastes of Grace’s fantastically nerve-shredding stealth sections as a extra common change-up from Leon’s comparatively scare-free carnage.
That need was finally gratified to some extent by a terrifyingly taut late-game tip-toe by means of a facility crawling with some really menacing monsters coming back from the collection’ previous, however provided that the story ended quickly afterwards my overriding impression of Requiem was that it was very a lot a recreation of two halves. The previous predominately a gradual and regular scare-a-thon, and the latter largely a run-and-gun splatterfest. I very a lot loved each flavours in their very own proper; I simply want for the sake of its pacing that they’d been blended collectively a contact extra over the total course of the journey. As an alternative, Requiem is a bit like ordering a whiskey and Coke and having it served in two separate glasses as a substitute of being combined into one.
To be truthful, Grace’s absence from a big stretch of Requiem is justified inside the context of its story, and total it’s a story that gripped me more durable than a zombie nurse gnawing on my neck. There are a variety of blindsiding twists that forged new mild on the origins of the Umbrella Company and the ambitions of its founder, together with a superb mixture of zombie-riddled places each recent and acquainted to puzzle and pummel your manner by means of, and loads of very important notes to gather alongside the way in which. A few of these memos are essential to understanding the intriguing thriller behind Grace’s abduction and the reality about her previous, whereas others are simply genuinely humorous gags to assist ease the stress. After encountering a selected zombie sort in a single medical wing that was obnoxiously singing on the high of her lungs, I bought a very good chuckle out of uncovering a physician’s report that had recognized her with ‘Important Character Syndrome’, for instance.
There’s additionally one notably iconic location that Leon explores that I’m reluctant to spoil right here (though it has been teased in pre-release trailers), which is jam-packed with enjoyable Easter Eggs that made it an actual deal with to revisit as somebody who’s been having fun with Resident Evil adventures ever because the T-Virus made its first outbreak on a black-bottomed CD for the unique PlayStation.