The last time Capcom tried to please every Resident Evil fan, we ended up with Resident Evil 6, a mishmash action game with poor pacing and an identity crisis. With Resident Evil Requiem, which blends the survival horror scares of Resident Evil 2 Remake, the claustrophobic, stalker-based horror of the first-person Resident Evil 7 and the action-horror of Resident Evil 4, the Japanese developer is having another go at it. Fortunately, this time it works.
You begin the game as FBI agent Grace, who's assigned -- we can only assume by a boss who hates her -- to investigate a homicide in the abandoned hotel where her mother was killed. By default, Grace's sections play out from a first-person perspective, forcing you to take your time and have the horrors scream directly into your face. She's a bag of nerves, and in your first playthrough you'll mirror her disposition, jumping at every noise and flicking your flashlight to scan the shadows.
After that introductory section, the action switches to series favorite Leon Kennedy, a grizzled former cop who's been through hell and knows how to roundhouse kick zombies in the head. You're plonked into the middle of an outbreak in the city center, as the infected mingle with civilians and you carefully pick your shots (and your roundhouse kicks), working your way through a maze of crashing cars and sheer panic. He tucks his torch into his chin and reloads, flicking the magazine to the side like John Wick, every movement carefully considered and slick.
Then it switches back to Grace, who stumbles and falls as she's chased through the dark. When she prepares a weapon, her hands shake. She's inexperienced, he's a quipping action hero who blurts out "'scuse me," after slamming a zombie's head into the tarmac. Grace almost takes her own arm off when she fires a magnum, while Leon does gun-fu.
This is how the structure goes -- sequences of almost unbearable tension bookended and broken up by some of the most thrilling survival action scenes to grace video games. Both characters and sequences complement each other, giving the game a specific pacing that keeps you invested even beyond the end credits -- because, like most good Resident Evil games, it comes into its own when you replay it again and again to unlock new toys and get better times.
Some of Grace's sections are closer to Resident Evil 2 Remake. You explore secret facilities, solve puzzles and find keycards and items to proceed. She's at her most vulnerable in these. Zombies take much longer to kill when playing as Grace, and she's much more limited on ammunition and other supplies so you're often teetering on a knife edge, barely scraping through with your last bullet. In a smart twist, some sections see you pass through as both characters, meaning you can have an impact on Leon's run depending on how many zombies you leave shambling around as Grace. Then there's the fact that some you do kill can return as the much more dangerous "blister head" infected, if you leave their heads intact.
Grace also has to deal with stalkers. If you thought the mutated hillbillies of Resident Evil 4 were scary, wait until you meet The Girl. This seven-foot creature is a malformed girl in a nightgown, her legs bent into canine shape, her few remaining strands of hair dangling limply over her face like a crone from a fairy tale, framing her bulbous eyes searching the dark. She can't be killed. The Girl hides in the ceiling and you can hear her scuttling around as you creep through the facility. If you make a noise, she appears, slithering out of a hole like a lizard. She can only be deterred by light, so you have to sprint back to a safe haven, any lit room, to force her away. When you're walking through a pitch-black corridor, your only light source the flickering flame of a zippo lighter, and her huge eyes appear out of the darkness, it's uniquely terrifying.
Just as the tension and fear threatens to boil over, Resident Evil Requiem switches things up again. Beyond the early moments mentioned above, this review won't delve into spoiler territory, but there are big, open-ended sections reminiscent of the best of Resident Evil 4, there's the looping level design and mastery over spaces people play the classic Resident Evil games for, there are big boss fights, and plenty of one-off set pieces that stick in the mind long after you put the controller down. Requiem could have easily felt like a retread but it has plenty of ideas of its own and still manages to mix that with fan service that'll have your mouth agape without going all Ready Player One about it.
Some small cracks do show when you replay the game to hunt down the last few secrets, unfortunately. There are a couple of short sections that are completely linear which become a chore when you revisit them. But once you get your playtime down to a couple of hours, we're talking about a few minutes of tedium for the entire run. Not exactly a deal breaker. Resident Evil Requiem does everything else so right that you forget about these minor annoyances as soon as you're roundhouse kicking another zombie in the head.