Resident Evil Requiem Review – 28 Slays Later

The wind blows, rain falls, and Resident Evil games continue to trick your fitness watch into thinking you just ran a marathon, thanks to a spike in your heart rate. Ever since the franchise started a new golden age in 2017, Resident Evil has continued to thrive, never being afraid to experiment a little along the way. Enter Resident Evil Requiem, a game best described as Capcom playing its greatest hits with a blend of survival horror and survival action. Requiem is a highlight reel of what makes the series shine at its grisly best.

Requiem kicks off with some slow-burn horror as players are introduced to Grace Ashcroft, an FBI analyst tasked with discovering the link between a series of gruesome murders with ties to her own traumatic past. It’s not long before things take a turn for the worse, and she finds herself trapped inside the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Centre, a clinic full of secrets, labyrinthine mazes, and hordes of flesh-eating monsters who won’t waste the chance to grab a bite if they spot her.

This is where Requiem taps into the old-school horror of classic Resident Evil, as the game’s co-protagonist is as human as they come. Grace is in over her head, and throughout her journey, you feel that anguish and terror. Small touches like quivering hands and whimpers help sell you on her fear, and the gameplay emphasises a fright-and-flight response at all times, as you constantly weigh your options. Do you stand and fight, or do you hightail it to safety in case you attract the attention of nigh-unstoppable monsters lurking in the hallways—creatures that no amount of bullets from a peashooter handgun can stop?

What makes this part of Requiem even more effective are the zombies you’ll come across, as Capcom has injected them with some T-virus and personality. Still holding onto the remnants of their uninfected lives, these zombies roam the hallways carrying out their final tasks, whether it’s a maid obsessed with cleaning a blood-soaked room or a chef menacingly chopping away at meat in his kitchen. Those quirks can be manipulated to your advantage, but Capcom has another trick up its sleeve that strikes when you least expect it: secondary mutations.

As if UV-sensitive monsters looking to mangle you or a mountain of man-eating flesh wasn’t enough to moisten your armpits when you encounter them, some zombies might resurrect into feral mutants that require you to change your tactics. They aren’t unstoppable—especially after you pick up a few tricks of your own, like a craftable vial that makes them explode into giblets—but with the threat of any “dead” zombie mutating into a crazed brawler, you’re kept constantly on your toes as you work your way through Requiem’s locations.

In contrast, the campaign of Leon S. Kennedy, as the game’s other protagonist, is a thrilling palate cleanser to the Grace-under-fire missions. With decades of in-the-field experience, Kennedy mixes polished combat with the odd quip, switching between bullets, axes, and roundhouse kicks to clear the room of any bioweapons. The catch here is that Kennedy’s gameplay makes you feel like you’re dancing on a knife’s edge, as the increased number of infected, tight spaces, and tougher variants keep you moving at all times so that you can deftly balance survival with action.

If Grace’s missions are a masterclass in tension, then Leon’s missions in Requiem represent the unrestrained thrill of the series. Able to carry more and always loaded thanks to the many weapon options available to him, Leon is a dab hand at preventing another Raccoon City Incident from unfolding. He’s a one-man army who can split skulls like a psychopathic lumberjack once you master his gameplay.

Resident Evil Requiem is a chimera, as this new mainline entry in the series successfully splices together its signature halves to create a lean-and-mean experience. While some post-launch content, like a Mercenaries mode, feels sorely lacking from this release, there’s still plenty of replay value if you decide to tackle the game’s various challenges in new playthroughs.

Requiem fluctuates between moments of horror that’ll make your sphincter clench tight enough to turn coal into diamonds and bursts of all-out action, but this gruesomely gorgeous adventure will keep you absorbed from start to finish. The result is the best of both worlds: a blood-soaked journey through dread that permeates every pixel of the experience to create one of the finest Resident Evil games of the modern era.

Resident Evil Requiem released on 27 February for PC and all consoles, including Nintendo Switch 2.