The nature of Resident Evil is ever-changing, which makes sense given how long it’s been around. Through the past 30 years, we’ve seen the series shift away from its horror roots, reinvent itself as a genre-defining shooter, jump the shark, and even play the live service field.
Then, in 2017, Capcom hit the reset button with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. Horror was back in vogue, but history has largely repeated itself since. RE7 and the remake of Resident Evil 2 owe a lot to early RE games, but it would only be a few years later that Resident Evil Villageand the remake of Resident Evil 4 would try channeling the action-focused thrills first brought on by the original Resident Evil 4.
Speaking in the broadest possible terms, one might say that there are at least two categories of mainline RE games: Atmospheric survival horror with an emphasis on resource management and high-adrenaline action with a horror angle.
This brings us to the newest mainline entry, Resident Evil Requiem, which could be considered a marriage of the series’ twin legacies. On one end, as we have known since its reveal, it’s a continuation of the series’ horror lineage as told through the eyes of a new protagonist, Grace Ashcroft. On the other, as was made known just a few months ago, it’s another high-octane horror shooter starring Leon S. Kennedy. It’s an ambitious project for certain, but it comes with an appropriate level of execution to match. With grotesque scares as potent as its pulse-pounding action and puzzle-box level design as engaging as any given combat scenario, Resident Evil Requiem is an engrossing thrill ride that hooked me from the start, and in true Resident Evil fashion, has kept me on that hook long after the credits rolled the first, second, and even third time.
Dual destinies
Requiem opens on Grace Ashcroft, an FBI analyst who is also the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft, an investigative reporter who previously starred in both Resident Evil Outbreak titles. On the trail of a series of mysterious murders, Grace is dispatched to the Wrenhood Hotel, the site of the latest murder, but also the very same spot where Alyssa was murdered under mysterious circumstances eight years prior. The young analyst is quickly thrust into a new, yet familiar, world of survival horror at the Rhodes Hills Chronic Care Center. The center is overseen by a mad scientist and populated by horrific manifestations of science gone too far–most notable of which is a towering, grotesque, mutated monster who takes a special interest in our new protagonist.
Grace’s sections should be familiar fare to RE veterans. You step nervously into a labyrinthian building armed with laughably little. You set about looting its contents and pulling back the curtains on its secrets one room, puzzle, and combat encounter at a time. By the time you’re done, you know the place like it was the neighborhood you grew up in. As the adage goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; it was fun 30 years ago and it still works today.
What distinguishes Grace from not just Leon, but most of the series’ protagonists at large (with the notable exception of Ethan Winters) is her lack of combat experience. As an FBI analyst, she’s a lot less combat-ready than the majority of the leads who typically boast police and/or military experience. This is reflected in Requiem’s gameplay. She’s not the steadiest shot to start, nor is she capable of any fantastic athletic feats. When an enemy is stunned, she can perform a melee attack, but this amounts to either a small kick or a two-handed shove. Direct combat is an option for her, but it’s far from her forte. Gunning down foes can even work against her at times. You might spend five to 10 bullets putting a zombie down, only for them to rise up once more as a Blister Head — a faster, deadlier, sturdier adversary.
Rather, it is Grace’s smarts that set her apart. By far the most useful tools in her arsenal are a handful of makeshift weapons that make getting around Rhode Hills a lot easier. Hemolytic Injectors will permanently kill any zombies you use them on, so no need to worry about Blister Heads. And I’m sure I don’t need to explain the utility of a Molotov cocktail. But they don’t come free. You’ll surely come across a few in your adventure, but you’ll typically need to salvage for scrap and other materials, then craft such items yourself if you want a steady supply throughout.
Grace is armed through the bulk of the game, but it is these items, or the means to craft them, that can make or break the tension in Requiem. With them, Grace feels capable of defending herself; without them, she feels helpless and vulnerable, enough to make you take every step, round every corner, and ascend every staircase just a little more cautiously.
But there’s a lot of ground to cover in Rhodes Hill, and it would take forever if you tiptoe through the place all the time. Plus if the zombies spot you, you’re kind of forced to run. Requiem’s zombies are interesting because they somewhat defy the trope of the zombie being a separate entity from the infected person. Some even have dialogue indicative of who they were before being infected. It’s an unsettling, humanizing touch that adds just a small bit of depth to the most common enemy in the game, and all without coming off as preachy or emotionally manipulative.
There are also subtle stories to be gleaned from the positioning of these foes. Doctors in the examination rooms, a singer presumably entertaining folks in the lounge, intensive care patients locked away in their rooms, and a chef in the kitchen. Walking through Rhodes Hill feels like visiting a museum, but if the exhibits were preserved in a meat locker with a failed cooling system. It’s a grimy, tragic, and beautiful setting that you can spend hours in while you’re feeling out all of its quirks and secrets.
While Rhodes Hill seems like a normal medical center at first, there is obviously more going on under the hood. But even on the surface, it’s a fascinating structure thanks to its contradictory elements. Why does a medical center have a fully stocked bar area? And a casino parlor? Like the odd rooms and structures of RE2’s police station and the inappropriate architecture of RE7’s Baker house (no one has a basement in flood-prone Louisiana), these incompatible elements feel like deliberate mismatches that work to sell this unusual setting — itself a small part of a very unusual world.
So the capable yet vulnerable Grace journeys through her strange surroundings to get to the bottom of a murderous plot, but she is not the only one seeking answers on this fateful night.
Leon S. Kennedy is back at the ripe age of 51, still rocking the same haircut he’s had since his unfortunate first day as an RCPD officer. As a member of the Division of Security Operations (DSO), Leon’s looking into the deaths of some survivors of the Racoon City Incident. Coincidentally, his investigation leads him to Rhodes Hill, and the center’s head, Victor Gideon, is his person of interest. But this is far from a purely professional journey for Mr. Kennedy. He’s infected with a mysterious virus, and it’s clear from the start that it’s pretty far along. Running on borrowed time, the truth he seeks can only wait for so long.
Legshot, maybe two or three with his trusty sidearm. The zombie stumbles. Leon runs up and kicks it back, and the corpse goes flying into a couple others. They’re now off-center. Leon takes aim and tags one of the staggered ones in the head — it explodes, a lucky critical hit. The one he kicked over lies face-up on the ground, writhing and struggling to get up. The agent dashes over and buries his hatchet deep in its brain, destroying its head on withdrawal. He takes aim at the last remaining zombie. But it’s right there, swinging away. He parries the blow with his hatchet and aims the killing shot. The camera pulls to the side, Leon puts his gun under the zombie’s chin, and fires away.
The echoes of Resident Evil 4, both the original and its remake, are clear and present, but Requiem pushes the envelope a fair bit further by presenting a version of Leon who’s not just more skilled and capable than he was in Resident Evil 4, but also a great deal more confident and comfortable. When it comes to combat, he’s at least twice as flashy as he was in RE4, to perhaps a showboatish degree. But hey, if there’s a Resident Evil character that deserves to act like that, it’s him. The resident cool guy also arrives loaded with almost as many quips ready to fire off as he does bullets.
For the first half of the game, you’ll switch between Grace and Leon pretty regularly. I personally found the pacing established by this recurring switcheroo pretty satisfying. As Grace, you’ll poke carefully around the open area you’ve been dropped into, all the while managing your resources and trying not to get into too much trouble. Then, you’ll switch to Leon for a bit, whose early sections function as mostly linear, cathartic setpieces for you to channel any fear or frustration you might have felt as Grace into dishing out stylish death.
There is even some interesting interplay that can be had depending on your actions in each section. For example, while playing as Grace, you can opt to leave as many zombies as possible alive inside Rhodes Hill. Then, once you take control of Leon, you can clear every room if you so wish. Later, when you get back control of Grace, the halls will be empty, ripe for exploration. Now, let’s entertain an alternate version of this scenario: Eliminating the bulk of the zombies utilizing Grace’s resourceful tactics means that Leon can conserve more ammo for the next major encounter. It kind of reminded me of Resident Evil Zero, but with a much narrower scope and on a much smaller scale. But nevertheless, the latest RE game, whether intentionally or not, reminding me of that oft-forgotten entry brought a small smile to my face.
If you’re concerned to this point that Leon has been relegated to linear setpieces in Requiem, worry not. As the game goes on, Leon’s role and gameplay depth expands greatly. The first half is more Grace-heavy, while Leon takes the reins for the back half. Without getting too much into spoiler territory, the latter half of the game almost functions as a quasi-sequel, in the gameplay sense, to Resident Evil 4. Seriously, it feels like you’ve booted up a whole other game when it hits. Equipment shops, arsenal upgrades, weapon attachments, and currency to farm.
With no prior knowledge that this was coming, it was kind of overwhelming and disorienting, but in the best, most exciting way possible. All of a sudden, Leon is no longer overpowered; the weapons and upgrades you equip him with matter, and part of your job is making sure he’s constantly stocked with enough firepower to, at best, overcome, and at minimum, survive each encounter. And what’s the best way to get enough points to upgrade Leon’s arsenal? By throwing him into the heart of danger.
Requiem runs a balancing act throughout, not just of gameplay, but of tone and style as well. The same environments that Grace cautiously steps her way through also have to work as sets for Leon’s high-octane thrill rides. Grace freaks out as any normal person would at the sight of forbidden, manmade horrors; Leon cracks jokes and blows them away like cannon fodder. Maybe it’s because Resident Evil has always had an over the top, B-Movie-adjacent tone to go along with its genuine thrills, but Requiem, miraculously, pulls all of this off in a single game without ever skipping a beat. Each character is an acknowledgement of what the series is, and their sections complement each other perfectly.
In light of my praise for this title, Requiem does have a few minor drawbacks. There are a couple of story-focused gameplay segments that are functionally cutscenes, some with no possible failure states that amount to you holding a direction on the analog stick while the story plays out. In a vacuum isolated to one’s first playthrough, these are perfectly fine. But Resident Evil is a series that begs for at least a few replays. And on these replays, where you’ll be skipping most of the story content anyway, is where these segments tend to stick out like a sore thumb. Both Leon and Grace have gameplay that is technically and mentally stimulating, and to be met with such an unengaging stretch of “cinematic gameplay” while trying to speedily strut your stuff in a second or third playthrough feels like running into a brick wall.
That said, the pain never really lingers too much. I’ve just started my fourth playthrough at the time of writing this review, and I honestly forget these sections exist at the start of every run. It’s only when I’m confronted with them in the moment that the cracks feel truly visible. But then I usually forget about them by the end anyway.
A short and sweet spectacle
On the topics of length and replay value, it took me about 12 hours to do a pretty thorough initial run of the game. This included a lot of scouring of the map to try and see everything I could, experimentation with enemy types, and a healthy amount of both backtracking trips to save points and brutal deaths. I played on the Standard (Classic) difficulty, which I would recommend as the definitive way to experience Requiem for the first time. It’s not terribly difficult, but it is the highest available difficulty on a fresh file, and I think it’s where Grace’s sections shine the most. Autosaves are limited, and you need to expend resources (the iconic Ink Ribbons) to save your game. Can’t find any? You can create some at the cost of your precious crafting resources. Like previous RE games that utilize the Ink Ribbon save system, it does a great job of making you think of everything, right down to your ability to record your progress, in terms of resource management. Heightened risk of losing hard-earned progress, a proportionate feeling of reward when you can finally save.
My second run, which I decided would emphasize speed above all else, was a smidge over four hours, just shy of an in-game challenge that tasks you with completing the game under that timeframe. My third run, done without utilizing any healing items, took about seven hours. In the absence of restoratives, I spent a ton of time trying to deck out Leon with as much gear as I could get, and even turned Grace into something of a MacGyver-esque tank herself. I haven’t really decided what challenge, whether game- or self-imposed, I’m striving for on my fourth, but I am very much looking forward to figuring that out.
Suffice it to say, Replayability has always been a big part of Resident Evil’s bag, and Requiem is no exception. While it’s worth it to replay just for the sake of one’s own personal satisfaction, there are also a variety of unlockable bonuses that can provide a more overt motivation to venture once more into the world of survival horror, or perhaps provide a goal to strive for.
For now, replays are going to be the only way to get more out of Requiem once you’ve finished the main story. At the time of writing, there aren’t any extra modes a la Mercenaries or RE7’s handful of extra scenarios. Given the heightened scale of this game’s combat compared to the remake of RE4, it is a tad disappointing that not a single bonus mode is available on launch. I hope that Requiem follows the path that RE4 did, and that by this time, a few weeks from now, it receives Mercenaries or some other extra mode in the form of a free update. But for now, that is not the case. Thankfully, the game at least offers a lot of variety in how you can approach replays, affording you some pretty unique gameplay opportunities.
Resident Evil Requiem is a reconciliation of the series’ roots with what it grew into, and the end result is the series as it exists today. Sometimes it’s a pure horror game, sometimes it’s a horror-themed action shooter. It never tries to be both at once, and I think that is for the better. I don’t know a person alive who can wear two hats at once and make it look good, but I do know plenty of people who can make any hat they wear look pretty damn great.
With grotesque scares as potent as its pulse-pounding action and puzzle-box level design as engaging as any given combat scenario, Resident Evil Requiem is an engrossing thrill ride throughout that hooked me from the start, and in true Resident Evil fashion, has kept me on that hook long after the credits rolled the first, second, and even third time.
The nature of Resident Evil is ever-changing, which makes sense given how long it’s been around. Through the past 30 years, we’ve seen the series shift away from its horror roots, reinvent itself as a genre-defining shooter, jump the shark, and even play the live service field.
Then, in 2017, Capcom hit the reset button with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. Horror was back in vogue, but history has largely repeated itself since. RE7 and the remake of Resident Evil 2 owe a lot to early RE games, but it would only be a few years later that Resident Evil Villageand the remake of Resident Evil 4 would try channeling the action-focused thrills first brought on by the original Resident Evil 4.
Speaking in the broadest possible terms, one might say that there are at least two categories of mainline RE games: Atmospheric survival horror with an emphasis on resource management and high-adrenaline action with a horror angle.
This brings us to the newest mainline entry, Resident Evil Requiem, which could be considered a marriage of the series’ twin legacies. On one end, as we have known since its reveal, it’s a continuation of the series’ horror lineage as told through the eyes of a new protagonist, Grace Ashcroft. On the other, as was made known just a few months ago, it’s another high-octane horror shooter starring Leon S. Kennedy. It’s an ambitious project for certain, but it comes with an appropriate level of execution to match. With grotesque scares as potent as its pulse-pounding action and puzzle-box level design as engaging as any given combat scenario, Resident Evil Requiem is an engrossing thrill ride that hooked me from the start, and in true Resident Evil fashion, has kept me on that hook long after the credits rolled the first, second, and even third time.
Dual destinies
Requiem opens on Grace Ashcroft, an FBI analyst who is also the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft, an investigative reporter who previously starred in both Resident Evil Outbreak titles. On the trail of a series of mysterious murders, Grace is dispatched to the Wrenhood Hotel, the site of the latest murder, but also the very same spot where Alyssa was murdered under mysterious circumstances eight years prior. The young analyst is quickly thrust into a new, yet familiar, world of survival horror at the Rhodes Hills Chronic Care Center. The center is overseen by a mad scientist and populated by horrific manifestations of science gone too far–most notable of which is a towering, grotesque, mutated monster who takes a special interest in our new protagonist.
Grace’s sections should be familiar fare to RE veterans. You step nervously into a labyrinthian building armed with laughably little. You set about looting its contents and pulling back the curtains on its secrets one room, puzzle, and combat encounter at a time. By the time you’re done, you know the place like it was the neighborhood you grew up in. As the adage goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; it was fun 30 years ago and it still works today.
What distinguishes Grace from not just Leon, but most of the series’ protagonists at large (with the notable exception of Ethan Winters) is her lack of combat experience. As an FBI analyst, she’s a lot less combat-ready than the majority of the leads who typically boast police and/or military experience. This is reflected in Requiem’s gameplay. She’s not the steadiest shot to start, nor is she capable of any fantastic athletic feats. When an enemy is stunned, she can perform a melee attack, but this amounts to either a small kick or a two-handed shove. Direct combat is an option for her, but it’s far from her forte. Gunning down foes can even work against her at times. You might spend five to 10 bullets putting a zombie down, only for them to rise up once more as a Blister Head — a faster, deadlier, sturdier adversary.
Rather, it is Grace’s smarts that set her apart. By far the most useful tools in her arsenal are a handful of makeshift weapons that make getting around Rhode Hills a lot easier. Hemolytic Injectors will permanently kill any zombies you use them on, so no need to worry about Blister Heads. And I’m sure I don’t need to explain the utility of a Molotov cocktail. But they don’t come free. You’ll surely come across a few in your adventure, but you’ll typically need to salvage for scrap and other materials, then craft such items yourself if you want a steady supply throughout.
Grace is armed through the bulk of the game, but it is these items, or the means to craft them, that can make or break the tension in Requiem. With them, Grace feels capable of defending herself; without them, she feels helpless and vulnerable, enough to make you take every step, round every corner, and ascend every staircase just a little more cautiously.
But there’s a lot of ground to cover in Rhodes Hill, and it would take forever if you tiptoe through the place all the time. Plus if the zombies spot you, you’re kind of forced to run. Requiem’s zombies are interesting because they somewhat defy the trope of the zombie being a separate entity from the infected person. Some even have dialogue indicative of who they were before being infected. It’s an unsettling, humanizing touch that adds just a small bit of depth to the most common enemy in the game, and all without coming off as preachy or emotionally manipulative.
There are also subtle stories to be gleaned from the positioning of these foes. Doctors in the examination rooms, a singer presumably entertaining folks in the lounge, intensive care patients locked away in their rooms, and a chef in the kitchen. Walking through Rhodes Hill feels like visiting a museum, but if the exhibits were preserved in a meat locker with a failed cooling system. It’s a grimy, tragic, and beautiful setting that you can spend hours in while you’re feeling out all of its quirks and secrets.
While Rhodes Hill seems like a normal medical center at first, there is obviously more going on under the hood. But even on the surface, it’s a fascinating structure thanks to its contradictory elements. Why does a medical center have a fully stocked bar area? And a casino parlor? Like the odd rooms and structures of RE2’s police station and the inappropriate architecture of RE7’s Baker house (no one has a basement in flood-prone Louisiana), these incompatible elements feel like deliberate mismatches that work to sell this unusual setting — itself a small part of a very unusual world.
So the capable yet vulnerable Grace journeys through her strange surroundings to get to the bottom of a murderous plot, but she is not the only one seeking answers on this fateful night.
Leon S. Kennedy is back at the ripe age of 51, still rocking the same haircut he’s had since his unfortunate first day as an RCPD officer. As a member of the Division of Security Operations (DSO), Leon’s looking into the deaths of some survivors of the Racoon City Incident. Coincidentally, his investigation leads him to Rhodes Hill, and the center’s head, Victor Gideon, is his person of interest. But this is far from a purely professional journey for Mr. Kennedy. He’s infected with a mysterious virus, and it’s clear from the start that it’s pretty far along. Running on borrowed time, the truth he seeks can only wait for so long.
Legshot, maybe two or three with his trusty sidearm. The zombie stumbles. Leon runs up and kicks it back, and the corpse goes flying into a couple others. They’re now off-center. Leon takes aim and tags one of the staggered ones in the head — it explodes, a lucky critical hit. The one he kicked over lies face-up on the ground, writhing and struggling to get up. The agent dashes over and buries his hatchet deep in its brain, destroying its head on withdrawal. He takes aim at the last remaining zombie. But it’s right there, swinging away. He parries the blow with his hatchet and aims the killing shot. The camera pulls to the side, Leon puts his gun under the zombie’s chin, and fires away.
The echoes of Resident Evil 4, both the original and its remake, are clear and present, but Requiem pushes the envelope a fair bit further by presenting a version of Leon who’s not just more skilled and capable than he was in Resident Evil 4, but also a great deal more confident and comfortable. When it comes to combat, he’s at least twice as flashy as he was in RE4, to perhaps a showboatish degree. But hey, if there’s a Resident Evil character that deserves to act like that, it’s him. The resident cool guy also arrives loaded with almost as many quips ready to fire off as he does bullets.
For the first half of the game, you’ll switch between Grace and Leon pretty regularly. I personally found the pacing established by this recurring switcheroo pretty satisfying. As Grace, you’ll poke carefully around the open area you’ve been dropped into, all the while managing your resources and trying not to get into too much trouble. Then, you’ll switch to Leon for a bit, whose early sections function as mostly linear, cathartic setpieces for you to channel any fear or frustration you might have felt as Grace into dishing out stylish death.
There is even some interesting interplay that can be had depending on your actions in each section. For example, while playing as Grace, you can opt to leave as many zombies as possible alive inside Rhodes Hill. Then, once you take control of Leon, you can clear every room if you so wish. Later, when you get back control of Grace, the halls will be empty, ripe for exploration. Now, let’s entertain an alternate version of this scenario: Eliminating the bulk of the zombies utilizing Grace’s resourceful tactics means that Leon can conserve more ammo for the next major encounter. It kind of reminded me of Resident Evil Zero, but with a much narrower scope and on a much smaller scale. But nevertheless, the latest RE game, whether intentionally or not, reminding me of that oft-forgotten entry brought a small smile to my face.
If you’re concerned to this point that Leon has been relegated to linear setpieces in Requiem, worry not. As the game goes on, Leon’s role and gameplay depth expands greatly. The first half is more Grace-heavy, while Leon takes the reins for the back half. Without getting too much into spoiler territory, the latter half of the game almost functions as a quasi-sequel, in the gameplay sense, to Resident Evil 4. Seriously, it feels like you’ve booted up a whole other game when it hits. Equipment shops, arsenal upgrades, weapon attachments, and currency to farm.
With no prior knowledge that this was coming, it was kind of overwhelming and disorienting, but in the best, most exciting way possible. All of a sudden, Leon is no longer overpowered; the weapons and upgrades you equip him with matter, and part of your job is making sure he’s constantly stocked with enough firepower to, at best, overcome, and at minimum, survive each encounter. And what’s the best way to get enough points to upgrade Leon’s arsenal? By throwing him into the heart of danger.
Requiem runs a balancing act throughout, not just of gameplay, but of tone and style as well. The same environments that Grace cautiously steps her way through also have to work as sets for Leon’s high-octane thrill rides. Grace freaks out as any normal person would at the sight of forbidden, manmade horrors; Leon cracks jokes and blows them away like cannon fodder. Maybe it’s because Resident Evil has always had an over the top, B-Movie-adjacent tone to go along with its genuine thrills, but Requiem, miraculously, pulls all of this off in a single game without ever skipping a beat. Each character is an acknowledgement of what the series is, and their sections complement each other perfectly.
In light of my praise for this title, Requiem does have a few minor drawbacks. There are a couple of story-focused gameplay segments that are functionally cutscenes, some with no possible failure states that amount to you holding a direction on the analog stick while the story plays out. In a vacuum isolated to one’s first playthrough, these are perfectly fine. But Resident Evil is a series that begs for at least a few replays. And on these replays, where you’ll be skipping most of the story content anyway, is where these segments tend to stick out like a sore thumb. Both Leon and Grace have gameplay that is technically and mentally stimulating, and to be met with such an unengaging stretch of “cinematic gameplay” while trying to speedily strut your stuff in a second or third playthrough feels like running into a brick wall.
That said, the pain never really lingers too much. I’ve just started my fourth playthrough at the time of writing this review, and I honestly forget these sections exist at the start of every run. It’s only when I’m confronted with them in the moment that the cracks feel truly visible. But then I usually forget about them by the end anyway.
A short and sweet spectacle
On the topics of length and replay value, it took me about 12 hours to do a pretty thorough initial run of the game. This included a lot of scouring of the map to try and see everything I could, experimentation with enemy types, and a healthy amount of both backtracking trips to save points and brutal deaths. I played on the Standard (Classic) difficulty, which I would recommend as the definitive way to experience Requiem for the first time. It’s not terribly difficult, but it is the highest available difficulty on a fresh file, and I think it’s where Grace’s sections shine the most. Autosaves are limited, and you need to expend resources (the iconic Ink Ribbons) to save your game. Can’t find any? You can create some at the cost of your precious crafting resources. Like previous RE games that utilize the Ink Ribbon save system, it does a great job of making you think of everything, right down to your ability to record your progress, in terms of resource management. Heightened risk of losing hard-earned progress, a proportionate feeling of reward when you can finally save.
My second run, which I decided would emphasize speed above all else, was a smidge over four hours, just shy of an in-game challenge that tasks you with completing the game under that timeframe. My third run, done without utilizing any healing items, took about seven hours. In the absence of restoratives, I spent a ton of time trying to deck out Leon with as much gear as I could get, and even turned Grace into something of a MacGyver-esque tank herself. I haven’t really decided what challenge, whether game- or self-imposed, I’m striving for on my fourth, but I am very much looking forward to figuring that out.
Suffice it to say, Replayability has always been a big part of Resident Evil’s bag, and Requiem is no exception. While it’s worth it to replay just for the sake of one’s own personal satisfaction, there are also a variety of unlockable bonuses that can provide a more overt motivation to venture once more into the world of survival horror, or perhaps provide a goal to strive for.
For now, replays are going to be the only way to get more out of Requiem once you’ve finished the main story. At the time of writing, there aren’t any extra modes a la Mercenaries or RE7’s handful of extra scenarios. Given the heightened scale of this game’s combat compared to the remake of RE4, it is a tad disappointing that not a single bonus mode is available on launch. I hope that Requiem follows the path that RE4 did, and that by this time, a few weeks from now, it receives Mercenaries or some other extra mode in the form of a free update. But for now, that is not the case. Thankfully, the game at least offers a lot of variety in how you can approach replays, affording you some pretty unique gameplay opportunities.
Resident Evil Requiem is a reconciliation of the series’ roots with what it grew into, and the end result is the series as it exists today. Sometimes it’s a pure horror game, sometimes it’s a horror-themed action shooter. It never tries to be both at once, and I think that is for the better. I don’t know a person alive who can wear two hats at once and make it look good, but I do know plenty of people who can make any hat they wear look pretty damn great.
by Jon Yelenic
