By: Weston Halgunseth

Warning: This review contains spoilers

‘Resident Evil Requiem’ is a crazy new game. It manages to mix scary moments with the kind of fighting that you would find in games like ‘Doom’. What makes it special is how it uses 2 different characters to tell its story. This keeps the game feeling new and exciting from the beginning to the end. If you love good jumpscares, epic boss fights and crazy lore this game is exactly what you need to try.

The feel of the game

The coolest part of Requiem for me is that you actually get 2 games in one basically because of the 2 main characters Grace and Leon.

When you are playing as Grace most people choose to play in first person POV. Grace isn’t trained at all and is only an FBI blood analyst that was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her parts are all about just survival, walking through shadows, hiding from monsters, and solving puzzles. It was always super intense for me because every time an enemy showed up it was a jumpscare. Also, the flashlight would be very dim and most of the time unusable. Pair that with the low ammo and the low supplies for crafting and it makes a good mix for a survival horror game.

Then with Leon’s POV most people choose a third person POV. Leon is experienced in bioweapons and knows how to deal with them with 20+ years of experience. Leon is strong, fast, and smart even though he’s infected carrying heavy weapons such as a shotgun, rifle, sub machine gun, etc. Leon also shows his strength when he’s fighting things 2-3x his size with only basic weapons and an axe, and he also shows his strength with his ability to parry almost anything to a simple punch to a car. All these things together makes his parts feel like a perfect fighter game with a hint of horror.

These two POVs make a perfect mix for a game showing experience, skill, and aging; giving the game a rocky feeling.

Aspects of the game: A world that looks and sounds real

The game looks beautiful in a dark, creepy way. It takes place in the ruins of Raccoon City after its bombing 20+ years ago and its details in the atmosphere are impressive. You’ll walk through streets with vines growing up broken buildings, and rain puddles reflecting showing the details and thought put into the game.

But the sound is what actually kept me up at night. You can hear the wind whistling through broken glass, heavy thuds of footprints on the floor above you giving you a smooth gameplay. An enemy called “the girl” stalks Grace through a hospital. She doesn’t scream or anything loud she just whispers and mumbles when chasing you. Hearing her sounds coming down a hallway is terrifying. 

Why it’s worth your time

The story lasts about 15 to 18 hours which feels just right because most games like this are short but this game ran on for so long it made me feel like this was multiple games. While you do repeat a lot of the same areas a lot, there are a lot of moments where new enemies show up so the player isn’t bored of the same area while keeping them on their toes.

‘Resident Evil Requiem’ is a gem. It’s rare to find a game that is a terrifying experience and a fun action game at the same time without feeling boring, but this game nailed it. Other games that have done this are ‘Doom’, some Roblox games and that’s about it because it’s just so rare and hard to make a game like this. 

My personal review

If I had to rate this game on a scale of 1-10 I would simply give it a 9/10 just because the fact the game looks and feel are something I have never seen in any other game from things like simple decay on furniture to the entire city. The look of ruins being portrayed perfectly makes the game perfect, also the lore makes fans of ‘Resident Evil’ happy because there is so many Easter eggs from earlier games such as ‘Resident Biohazard’, ‘RE3’, etc with things like the collectibles to Mr. X and Mr. Tofu which is a playable character in ‘Resident Evil’. 

My favorite character 

My favorite character is Grace even though it was fun to play Leon it was fun to have a game so good at showing the horror side of a game so well. 

Scariest part

I think the scariest moment of the game was with the beginning of the hospital with “the girl” stalking or chasing you and you’d have to run into the light to be safe, and all around just a horrifying part of the game. 

Least favorite thing

My least favorite part of the game is at the end when Zeno, a look alike of Whesker was about to fight Leon, but lost his powers and then getting taken out by Victor Gideon. I didn’t like how we didn’t get to fight Zeno. I wish I could but I understand why they choose to do that to show the new anti-virus to us.