I’ve been playing Resident Evil since the PS1 days (1997’s Director’s Cut was my first) and honestly, the RE Engine era has been my favorite. This remains the case after finishing Requiem, another banger in a decade full of them.
Spoilers below.
A common critique I’ve heard about Requiem is that it tries to be everything to everyone. Fair; but I don’t necessarily believe that’s a bad thing. The game combines new characters with three decades of lore and goes from tense horror sequences to ridiculous action set pieces. Resident Evil is a long-running series with many identities, experiments, and evolutionary dead ends. Personal preferences don’t make other aspects of the series less valid, or less “Resident Evil.”
OK, with that out of the way, here’s why I absolutely loved Requiem.
First of all, the game looks and runs amazing on my PC (32 GB RAM, AMD Ryzen 7800X3D 8-Core Processor, GeForce RTX 4080 Super 16 GB). It was a little dodgy at launch (I actually tabled the game for a week or so to focus on the new WoW expansion while NVIDIA got their life together), but once updates and drivers were working, the RE Engine impressed once again. I was averaging 180-220 fps on max settings at 1440p with ray tracing on high, and a bit over 120 fps with path tracing on (which I eventually turned off because it made the fan on my GPU absolutely scream). Regardless, the game looks incredible, with great art and environment design throughout (well, mostly- we’ll get to that later).
After experimenting with the different perspective and control methods, I settled on first-person with keyboard and mouse. This made Grace’s sections feel a bit like Outlast and Leon’s a bit like Doom 3 (but both still very Resident Evil).
I thought the pacing was near-perfect throughout; just as I would start to get a bit exhausted with one style of gameplay, it would be time to switch. This may be the best the series has ever been at balancing horror and action.
One area where I feel like the game is definitely front-loaded are the environments. The Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center is a gorgeous locale that reveals layer after layer in a way that’s among the series’ best. On the other end of the spectrum, the ruins of Raccoon City are visually dull and at times tedious to traverse. Easily my least favorite section of the game (despite some fun combat scenarios).
I generally enjoy the overall Resident Evil story and lore, as messy as it is. I think Resident Evil storytelling is at its best when it’s mysterious and ambiguous, and at its worst when it goes too far in explaining things or becomes too referential. Requiem’s story is a bit of all of this. It was eventually satisfying, but came dangerously close to the problem Star Wars often has, which is a tendency to return to well-trodden territory again and again, whether out of fear or appeasement. Skywalkers and Spencers, Tatooine and RPD. Thankfully, Requiem does enough in the last hour or so to make it feel like the story is actually moving forward, while honoring what came before.
I can’t confidently say where exactly Requiem falls in my RE-rankings (I’ll need a couple of replays first), but I definitely enjoyed it. Yeah, Requiem may try to be everything to everyone, but unlike the disastrous Resident Evil 6 (which I still kinda like), the quality remains consistently high throughout. Bring on the updates and DLC (but please do not make me go back to the Raccoon City Police Department building again).
All screenshots captured by me via Steam.
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