Resident Evil Requiem Review

Have you ever had “all-dressed” chips? They’ve been around in Canada for a while and they just kind of toss every flavor onto one chip. It’s BBQ, sour cream & onion, ketchup, garlic, and whatever else was sitting around the chip factory that day. They’re good! 

Would you like a similar approach to a new Resident Evil? If so, I’ve got just the game for you.

Resident Evil Requiem (there’s a 9 hiding in that title, trust me) very deliberately crams so much of the franchise’s 30-year history into one package, and for the most part, it works splendidly. It trades perspectives (literally and figuratively) between new protagonist Grace Ashcroft and series mainstay Leon S. Kennedy, with its most obvious influences being RE4 and RE7. First-person horror takes the stage during Grace’s tense hours, while Leon is presented with the over-the-shoulder camera and heavier action focus popularized in 4 and 5. I’d say 6 as well, but I don’t want to associate the word “popularized” with anything involving RE6.

When mysterious deaths start popping up across the United States, the FBI sends Grace to the Wrenwood Hotel to investigate the latest incident. Nevermind the fact that she’s young and inexperienced, she seems extremely afraid of everything, and – oh yeah! – please forget that her mother was murdered before her eyes at that very hotel during her childhood. She’s the perfect fit for the job!

I was initially annoyed at how comically terrified this FBI agent perpetually is (there’s a lot of “wha-wha-what do I do??” dialogue), but it eventually works considering the stark contrast between the two protagonists’ gameplay styles. Playing as Grace can be terrifying in an Amnesia: The Dark Descent kind of way. She has a handgun and can fashion basic knives, but much of your time as her will be spent creeping slowly with a flashlight, hiding from enemies as they shuffle down hallways, and doing your damndest to stay away from more than one large foe that presents a dire threat. If Mr. X or Lady Dimitrescu had you holding your breath in fear, you’ve got more to worry about this time around.

These early hours as Grace were the highlight of Requiem for me. Much of the game presents itself as a bit of a “greatest hits” of ideas from Resident Evil’s past, but this section was the one that felt the most like an evolution of the series rather than an homage. While the perspective and general sense of dread can be compared most to RE7, it makes numerous improvements to the experience. 

Previous games had no lack of variety when it came to enemy types – you had your Hunters, Lickers, Ganados, run-of-the-mill zombies, and plenty more. But there wasn’t a ton of variety within those archetypes. Maybe one Ganado had an axe and the other had a pitchfork, but you can bet that they’re just gonna kinda yell and throw some shit when it comes down to it.

In these early hours set in Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center (a very shady medical facility run by very shady people), I was surprised to witness a wide variety of behavior from the zombies. Some are just dudes in scrubs or hospital gowns and all they want is to shuffle towards you for a nice bite of neck. But then you’ve got more bespoke enemies that maintain some semblance of their pre-zombie behavior. Staffers will mindlessly roam the halls turning off lights. A chef will wander near the pantry as he prepares his meal for the evening. If you happen to make a bloody mess in one of the rooms, a zombified maid might stumble upon the scene and go into a berserk rage at the sight of the splatter. The variety in zombies isn’t just for aesthetics. You’ll learn to recognize what behavior to expect from them and strategize accordingly based on who they are (or were).

More than in any previous Resident Evil game, I found myself putting a lot of thought into my strategy when it came to dealing with these enemies. Grace isn’t heavily armed but she does have access to something called the hemolytic injector. It’s a syringe that essentially turns most enemies into a disgusting explosion of blood and viscera. Crafting these requires finite resources, so I felt the need to really consider when I was using them. A standard zombie in an out-of-the-way room might be easier to sneak around or pump some handgun bullets into, allowing me to save the injector for that pesky chef that’s always causing trouble for me near the kitchen hallways.

If you choose to gun down a zombie, it might only be a temporary solution thanks to the Blister Head variants that can result from their corpses. Similar to the Crimson Heads from the RE1 remake, bodies that are not destroyed or decapitated can suddenly spring back to life and become more dangerous than ever. There were rooms full of dead bodies that I dreaded going back into because I just knew it’d be an even worse situation the second time around. That’s part of the reason those hemolytic injectors are so valuable. They’re saving you the fight during the initial encounter, plus they ensure you won’t be seeing any Blister Heads rising up from that puddle of goo the next time you wander in.

You’ll spend about two to three hours as Grace during this stretch at the medical facility. It mixes classic Resident Evil exploration and puzzle-solving with a more modern approach to enemy behavior and the need to strategically clear rooms of threats. Its limited inventory, health system, and item boxes harken back to the series’ earliest entries, and if you really want to get nostalgic you can choose the difficulty that forces you to save with the original ink ribbon system.

When it comes time to shift from the tense Grace segments to the absurdity of Leon, the change in tone is so drastic that it was clearly a deliberate choice. You go from relatively straight-faced, tense horror straight into Goofy Town. Leon shows up and he’s immediately quipping and roundhouse-kicking chainsaws into zombie doctors. The tone of the violence swerves hard from Hereditary to Itchy & Scratchy. It’s pure stupid power fantasy, but it really works because of what you’ve spent the past few hours doing. No longer are you tiptoeing around with a flashlight to the soundtrack of Grace whimpering. You’re now exploring that same area as a guy who just raided the gun shop from Commando. Suddenly that scary room with three zombies in it doesn’t seem quite as scary when you’re a jacked dude with 100 guns and a huge hatchet rather than a rookie FBI analyst that makes Shaggy from Scooby Doo seem unflappable by comparison.

Leon’s presentation does not shy away from the obvious Resident Evil 4 influence. The camera perspective, the design of the health meter, the “inventory Tetris” attaché case, the prevalence of chainsaw-wielding enemies, they’re all straight from 4. And forget sneaking around – Leon’s segments are so action-forward that you get a wristband that rewards enemy kills with points that you can use to upgrade your arsenal of guns.

Playing as Leon is certainly fun, but I didn’t feel the same sense of franchise evolution that Grace’s area gave me. It’s a blast to blow a bunch of zombies’ heads off with a sniper rifle or toss a grenade into the center of a cluster of enemies, but it’s not a wholly different experience than I had in 2005. Even the setting and what you’re doing doesn’t feel quite as inspired. Sneaking around a care facility as Grace and watching zombies wrestle with the memories of their former behavior is far more interesting than running around the ashes of Raccoon City so Leon can put together an electronic doohickey. If Grace’s gameplay is the subtle terror of the dog jumping through the window, Leon’s is the rocket that you shoot into Wesker’s head as he drowns in a volcano.

For most of the game, its “kitchen sink” approach works. It’s undeniably cathartic to go from survival mode to Schwarzenegger mode, and it serves to shake up the gameplay in fairly regular intervals. But I couldn’t help but feel like I was getting a little less of what I wanted from everything. I loved upgrading weapons in Resident Evil 4 over the course of the game, turning pea shooters into formidable death dealers by the end. You can still upgrade your guns as Leon, but it all feels like it’s on an abbreviated and rushed schedule. Before you know it, you’ve bought all the upgrades for your guns and fully upgraded your attaché case. You don’t have that same sense of reward after saving up for a long time, or the relief of suddenly having more space after hours of making hard inventory choices.

This feeling was more pronounced with Grace. Those hours in the care center are some of my favorite in franchise history, and before you know it, it’s over and you never really go back to an area as large and interconnected as that one. I can’t help but think about how I thoroughly enjoyed Requiem even with (and partially because of) its perspective shifts, but there’s a part of me that wants to play a whole game that feels like that Grace section. As it stands, I feel like I got about 30% of a truly fresh Resident Evil game and 70% of a very fun Greatest Hits homage. A fully-fleshed out Grace campaign could be an evolution of the series’ horror roots, and a full Leon campaign of this caliber could be the successor to RE4 that 5 and 6 weren’t. Both types of gameplay in Requiem are tremendous, but they simultaneously feel like glimpses of a bigger and better game.

I may have been left pining for more of what I saw from each approach, but there’s no denying that I had an excellent time with Requiem. It’s the most I’ve enjoyed a mainline Resident Evil game in 20 years. As good as 7 and Village were, I have to admit it was nice to go back to some series mainstays rather than continuing along with the narrative detour of the Moldman Chronicles. Grace’s chapters had me holding my breath and running for my life during late night sessions with the game, and the bombast and doofiness of Leon had me laughing out loud. Resident Evil Requiem is an excellent culmination of everything Capcom has learned during 30 years of making this franchise, and it serves as a tantalizing glimpse of what its future may hold.