There’s often an undercurrent of existential fatigue in games that look back at their legacy. Dark Souls III’s dying kingdom, Metal Gear Solid 4’s decrepit Snake. So when Capcom showed us an ageing Leon Kennedy entering the ruins of the police station that marked the start of his journey from rookie cop to hardened veteran, it felt tinged with ennui as much as nostalgia. That self-reflective swansong for this 30-year series may still happen one day, but Requiem isn’t it. Even at its dourest and most pensive, this is less a song for the dead, more a knees-up in honour of the rocket launchers and typewriters that came before. Leon may be getting on a bit, but this is Capcom as energised, devious and goofy as ever.
Leon’s old scars will have to wait, anyway. Requiem’s new blood is FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft. Equal parts tenacious and nervous, she’s a fitting lens on the horror portion of Requiem’s split focus between disempowered terror and cathartic action. The story opens with Grace – more acquainted with desk work than field ops – tasked to go over a crime scene at a gutted hotel. She knows the place well, since it holds some horrific memories for her. Still, she heads off with little more than a flashlight and a pistol you’ll never find quite enough ammunition for to feel safe.
Not so Leon, a man whose skill for finding fresh shotgun shells is only matched by his capacity to drop vintage stilton one-liners on felled foes before the smoke from his barrel clears. Leon trades Grace’s first person camera for third person, although you can choose either for each. Grace plays well in both, though Leon’s default is far more suited to, say, severing a zombie’s fingers with his hatchet, or spearing a rebar through a bloodshot eye.
Leon feels comically overpowered initially, his hardened hotshotitude underscored by the hordes of weak zombies Requiem sends to their deaths in service of making him look as cool as possible. But the game soon manages to put its absurdly capable star in convincing danger. A slew of frantic, back-against-the-wall firefights mean that, plentiful or not, you’ll need every shell.
Leon’s never in so much danger as Grace, though, who soon finds herself stalked by terrifying creatures across a sprawling, stately care facility that boasts all the labyrinthine design of the series’ best locales. Requiem is ingeniously successful at instilling its forebears’ sense of trying to survive and escape from a living puzzle box. As Grace, you’ll sweat over whether to burn through precious bullets to clear a corridor of threats or risk sprinting through unharmed. Creatures sniff the air for your presence and let out shrill wails meant to goad you into panicking. Sometimes, it’s worth spending those bullets just to give your nerves a rest.
Yes, Requiem is scary. Occasionally, it even expects you to take the whole thing seriously. Grace and Leon’s voice actors do some heroic heavy lifting in bringing emotional weight to scenes that fall apart if you stop to think. And, for all its Evil Dead camp (that’s a compliment), this is still a tale with heart. Yet, after so many years expanding the same story with mostly the same core players, Resident Evil’s larger plot strains its hamstrings trying to find a patch of solid ground that’s not been well trodden.
Perhaps that’s why real self-reflection feels out of reach – because if the series truly slowed down for even a moment, the floor would collapse. As it is, a few shameless plot contrivances feel about on par with the game’s product placement (there have been brand deals with Porsche and Hamilton watches). More deflating is a run of damp squib boss fights toward the finale. But Requiem has had so many clever set-pieces, tense chases, and joyfully gruesome encounters by that point that it’s easy to forgive it simply running out of ideas. Capcom has been on a hot streak for a while now, so it’s no shock that Requiem delivers. But it’s a very pleasant surprise that Resident Evil still feels this vital.
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