Resident Evil Requiem (PC) Review

When it comes to Resident Evil, I’ve always more enjoyed the survival horror side of the series; RE2 Remake RE7, and of course the original trilogy are my favourite games, whereas the more action style games (RE4 excluded) always felt a bit off to me. I enjoyed them (mostly), but I longed for more frights than action set pieces. With Resident Evil Requiem, Capcom have – in my opinion – balanced the best of both worlds, mixing tense horror sections as Grace Ashcroft with some of the best action in the series in the returning Leon S. Kennedy’s parts. As a whole, I’d have to say Requiem is going to rank high on my personal list, and I can see the same being true for many others.

I won’t go into many spoilers, but a large part of what works for me in Requiem is the story. With Leon returning and playing counter to the fresh faced Grace, we get to see the world of RE from both a new and old perspective. I can’t tell you exactly why for obvious spoiler reasons, but I think it’s safe to say that long term fans will get a lot out of the story of Requiem. More than once I became that Leonardo Di Caprio meme, and I can’t wait to discuss it in detail with others.

Moving swiftly on so as not to accidently say more than I should, the gameplay is equally as enjoyable here. Starting with Grace, we get to see the more spooky, terrifying side of RE. She may be an FBI investigator, but she’s also incredibly nervous and shy, partly due to the trauma surrounding her mothers death at the start of the game.

As we move about the locales, we’re treated to a very classically-styled RE mansion type area in Rhodes Hill medical clinic. Locked doors, hidden pathways, and bizarre puzzles all line up to have us slowly unravelling Rhodes Hill room by room. I love that it invokes the original RE in this manner, with us plotting a route, managing our inventory, and fighting to survive even just a handful of zombies.

Speaking of which, they are incredibly tough even early on, with multiple headshots required to take them down. Should one grab us we soon find our health dropping rapidly, and while healing items are more generous than we expected, the increased difficulty more than makes up for the abundance.

Bigger stalker foes also rear their (often very) ugly heads. Since we got the likes of Jack Baker in RE7, Resident Evil has been fond of including these, and the creature shown in the Gamescom demo is only the tip of the iceberg in this regard. Grace is able to use stealth to a degree, but if one of these things sees her the only option is to leg it.

Early on we get options for crafting ammo, health packs, and the like, but also the hemolytic injector. These are single use and require Grace to collect blood from around the area, and can be stabbed into a zombie to make them explode into a proper mess, coating the walls in viscera. While these are limited in use by how many we can craft, it is worth using them as the zombies take after the Crimson Heads in Resident Evil Remake from the GameCube. After death, the bodies will remain in place (unless the head was removed) and they can randomly revive as more powerful bastards. Using the injector will prevent this, but there are far more zombies than we can permanently kill so we need to be tactical with our use.

All of this makes Grace’s portions of Requiem very traditionally tense as we navigate the halls looking for keys and trying to avoid being munched on. While some of the jump scares can be seen coming, I definitely got caught out a few times, especially when one of the bigger foes dropped on to the scene. I stuck with the recommended first person view point too as it helped up the tension, though the entire game can be played in first or third person perspective. I really enjoyed Grace’s sections of the game, with Capcom bringing lessons learned from the Beneviento house in RE Village being especially evident.

But this is a game of two halves, and Leon’s parts bring the best of RE4 and improve on his move set in fantastic ways. An old hand at dealing with the zombie threat, Leon is not just a better, more confident shot, but has a myriad of other changes that make for a faster, more chaotic game experience.

For one, he doesn’t really need to worry about item management as he brings his large attaché case with him. I don’t think I ran out of space once, but much like RE4 we can manually lay out the items in the case to fit everything in if needed. He also brings better firepower like shotguns and grenades, and has upped his CQC skills with roundhouses, punches, and making use of the environment to pop heads under his boot. And he can finally enact some revenge Dr. Salvador-style as Leon can pick up enemy weapons to use – yes, even the mighty chainsaw. These can be unwieldy at times, but do massive damage. He can also pick up and throw spears or spiked weapons to insta-kill some enemies, and even though we get a generous auto aim assist here it never fails to feel awesome to pull off all the same.

He’s also able to take on the bigger threats head on, with an early boss fight in a tightly packed room full of corridors being a great introduction to his skills and move sets. Later examples up the scale and action, but crucially this never gets to RE5 or RE6 levels of over the top that went a bit too far. I mean, they are over the top, but in a great way.

I was initially a bit disappointed that Capcom revealed he was in the game before launch (it would have made a great surprise) but I think it was done so because he is introduced in Requiem very early on, and throughout it is pretty evenly split between the two characters. I found this provided some relief to the tension by giving us Leon to go haywire with, but the action was also not given time to get too much before we’re back to the slower gameplay of Grace. This back and forth is paced perfectly and made it easier to appreciate each parts offering and kept things fresh throughout.

Trailers and showcases have made mention of Raccoon City once again being a focus for the story, and we do indeed find ourselves there for part of the game. While I won’t reveal details of why, I will say that I enjoyed this part of the ride immensely, and as a fan of RE since day one, it was really cool to see the remnants of what kicked off this whole series. Again, I can’t wait to discuss details with people soon enough.

It should go without saying that RE Requiem is a stunning title technically too. The RE Engine is yet again showing why it is considered one of the best out there, with excellent detail and modelling that doesn’t shy away from showing us the gruesome as well as the intricate detail of the locales. I played on PC for this review, both on desktop and on the ROG Xbox Ally X, and it was flawless on both systems.

There’s a lot more I want to discuss on Requiem, but I can’t/don’t want to spoil anything other than to say that this may be the best Resident Evil game in years. I still have a soft spot for Resident Evil 2 Remake as my favourite, and it’s hard to argue Resident Evil 4 isn’t top tier gaming too, but Requiem takes lessons from both of those masterpieces, remixes and refines them, and kicks out a game that is utterly excellent from start to finish. If you’re a long time fan there’ll be a lot here that will give you a kick of nostalgia, but I’d say even new players will find a lot to love in the two distinct gameplay styles and variety on offer.

Conclusion

Easily the best Resident Evil game in many years, with inspirations from both RE2’s survival horror and RE4’s more action horror. Paced perfectly, and with plenty of surprises to discover, I can’t recommend Resident Evil Requiem highly enough.

This game was tested and reviewed on PC (via Steam). All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by the publisher.