One Avocadoan’s journey delving into the realm of survival horror.

** Due to the newness and high profile of this game, I have tried to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible. While spoilers are okay in the comments, please make sure to tag them as such. **

Looking at it from one perspective, Signalis and Crow Country were the main inspirations for this column series. They were the first two games I covered, the first survival horror games I ever played, and the games that got me hooked on the genre. And while this is all definitely true, ‘Afraid and Alone’ would never have gotten off the ground were it not for the Resident Evil series. It all started last August, when I happened to notice that most of the Resident Evil games were on sale on Steam. This isn’t a particularly unusual occurrence – they seem to be on sale practically all the time – but things were different for me this time. The year before I had spent all of October solely playing horror games (including Crow Country), and I had such a blast with that project that I was itching to repeat the experience in 2025. And, with October quickly approaching again, it seemed to me that there was no better way to do that than with one of the most famous and influential series in horror gaming history.

I broached the subject of dipping my toes into the Resident Evil waters in one of the Weekly Games Threads, and I received plenty of great advice on where to start and which games to focus on. (A particular shout-out to Brakeman for that!) In the process of figuring all this out, the idea came to me of writing a series of columns focused on a newbie’s first time playing each Resident Evil game. I loved the idea and, given the series’ apparent popularity on The Avocado, I figured at least some people might find it interesting. It was only upon watching some footage of the Resident Evil 1 Remake for the first time and noticing the similarities to Crow Country and Signalis, though, that I realized there might be some merit in expanding the project beyond the Resident Evil series to the survival horror genre as a whole. That is, clearly, the direction I ended up taking, but the Resident Evil games were to remain a central, load-bearing component. The first four Resident Evil games were to be the first games that I would play specifically for the project. If I didn’t react favorably to them, the whole thing could have been scuttled. Luckily that was not the case. While the more action-oriented Resident Evil 4 wasn’t my cup of tea, I fell deeply in love with Resident Evil 1 Remake, Resident Evil 2 Remake, and the original Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. Although there were still games I meant to play but hadn’t gotten around to yet (Resident Evil 0, Resident Evil Biohazard, and Resident Evil Village), I had already developed a strong fondness for the series.

Despite that fondness, I was only dimly aware of an upcoming milestone – the 30^th anniversary of the original game’s 1996 release. As part of the planned celebration, series developer Capcom intended to release the ninth mainline game, Resident Evil Requiem. I knew of the game’s existence, I’d seen the initial teasers a few times, but for a variety of reasons I wasn’t particularly interested. I hadn’t played the seventh or eighth entries yet, which I had assumed would be connected, the teasers didn’t really seem to show much, and I figured the game would be too much for my midrange gaming laptop to handle. My thoughts on Requiem began to shift as the February 2026 release date drew closer. First there was the new trailer shown off at The Game Awards, giving more plot details as well as revealing the presence of Leon and the game’s intriguing dual focus on survival and action horror. Then as critics and sites started to get their hands on it there was much discussion of how well optimized the game was, even on lower end computers. And the final nail in the coffin was Requiem’s fantastic review scores, hovering in the 88 to 92 range on Metacritic in the final lead-up to release. The hype was too powerful; I was hopelessly hooked, and I just had to play it.

And I’m glad I did, because Resident Evil Requiem is a triumph.

Taking place 30 years after the destruction of Raccoon City at the end of RE3, Requiem consists of two intersecting storylines. (Unlike games like RE1 or RE2, where you select a character at the start and play as them the entire game, in Requiem you alternate between the two characters over the course of the game’s run time.) One storyline follows Grace Ashcroft, an FBI analyst investigating a series of deaths where the bodies were found with symptoms of an unusual illness. When a new body is found in an abandoned hotel – the hotel where Grace’s mother was mysteriously killed years earlier – she is sent to look into it and uncovers more than she bargained for. Meanwhile, the other storyline is focused on agent Leon Kennedy, star of RE2 and RE4, who is also interested in the same set of deaths. In his case, the situation is personal in another way as he has started to show the same strange symptoms himself.

One of the biggest elements featured in the marketing of Requiem has been the different gameplay styles of Grace and Leon, and that was honestly one of the things I ended up loving most about the game. Grace’s sections are pure, old-school survival horror and I am so here for it. The biggest touchstone for the level design of these sections is definitely RE2make, but there are clear elements of REmake there as well. (Same with RE7, from what I’ve heard, but I haven’t played that one yet.) The Rhodes Hill Care Center, a hospital that acts as the first big area of the game, is much like the Spencer Mansion or RPD in terms of gameplay and scope. Puzzles are aplenty, with numerous series staples that require running back and forth from room to room. I mean, what would a Resident Evil game be without a fuse puzzle or three? And while not as strict as, say, Cronos: The New Dawn or even RE3, Grace’s inventory space is limited and does require some intensive juggling to make progress and stay alive. These elements are my bread and butter, the things that hooked me on the genre, and they are well-executed here. 

Another thing I love is what’s been done with the zombies in this game, which is most noticeable in Grace’s segments. The zombies in the care center appear to have retained some of their memories, leaving them stuck in a loop of their final actions as they loudly mumble to themselves. You might come across, for example, a zombie maid ineffectually scrubbing at blood on the walls or floor with their hands while exclaiming, “Clean!…Clean!” Or maybe you’ll find a nicely dressed zombie wandering the hall while singing at the top of her deteriorating lungs. Interrupting these actions, of course, invokes their ire. This change to how they function gives the zombies of Requiem a surprising amount of personality and, when combined with the scarcity of ammo, creates some great puzzle opportunities. One of my favorite was a zombie obsessed with turning the hallway lights off, who you have to bait around by turning lights on so you can avoid combat with him. I swear I could almost hear the exasperation in his voice every time I did it. These elements almost feel Little Nightmares-esque at times (especially in a section where you have to sneak past a hulking zombie chef).

The greater complexity of the enemies also highlights another important part of Grace’s portions of the game – her sections can be downright terrifying. I might even consider Requiem the scariest game I’ve played in a while alongside the Silent Hill 2 remake. Having to constantly attempt to sneak past agitated zombies and determine their patterns can be  incredibly nerve-wracking on its own, but combine that with a marvelously developed dark and brooding atmosphere and multiple stalkers that are hard (or impossible) to kill, and you’ve got a truly sweat-inducing experience. Grace’s gameplay defaults to first-person perspective, and while this can be changed to third-person I found that it and the resulting limited field of view effectively enhanced the feelings of terror. Grace’s voice acting even plays a role in creating the game’s atmosphere. While she is an FBI agent, she is mostly a desk-bound analyst who has never been in a situation even close to this before. The developers drive this home through her stuttered exclamations, her constant heavy breathing and occasional whimpering, all of which helps to immerse the player in the terrors she’s encountering to an extent not seen with the series’ more stoic protagonists.

Leon’s parts of the game are on the opposite end of the spectrum, by contrast, belonging right in the RE4-style action horror space. In fact, he plays very much like he did in RE4, even down to the UI – his health bar is circular (compared to Grace’s traditional cardiograph health meter) and his inventory is an attaché case. I’ve said before that RE4 is my least favorite Resident Evil game that I’ve played, but I actually wasn’t too worried beforehand about these parts of Requiem; I’ve liked Leon himself since RE2make, and most of my issues with RE4 – the horrible QTEs, the comparative lack of scary elements, the bland environmental and enemy design, and the lack of connection to the previous games – didn’t seem like it would be a problem here. Especially with the game already giving us actual survival horror with Grace. And this was mostly borne out over the course of Requiem. The crazy action sequences, mowing down rooms full of zombies with an axe and various firearms, frequently felt very cathartic after spending a chunk of time struggling to survive as Grace. (Helped along by a switch to third-person perspective, at least when using the default settings.) Plus, I found there to be multiple Leon sections that had a much creepier atmosphere than most of RE4; one that particularly stood out to me was a flooded parking garage that required you to wade through a dark maze of rusted trucks while the growls and groans of the undead echo off the walls around you. And to top off the sheer fun of roundhouse kicking your way through the game as Leon once again, I really enjoyed his usual mix of snarky one liners crossed with a new “I’m too old for this”-style world-weariness.

Most of the big spectacle moments and boss fights naturally occur with Leon, to somewhat mixed success. The huge set pieces can be a lot of fun, but can at times feel like they are a little ‘on-rails’, outside of the player’s control. And while a lot of the boss fights were cool and grand, I did find (with a few exceptions) that they tended toward the underwhelmingly easier and quicker side. Resident Evil as a whole has tended to struggle with its boss fights since the beginning, though, so this didn’t really bother me much.

In terms of structure, the game consists largely of three main acts or areas to explore, much like RE2make. (The first is the aforementioned care center, but I will refrain from discussing the identity of the other two in specific detail to avoid spoilers.) I actually found that my enjoyment of the three acts paralleled my feelings on the main areas of RE2make. The care center, as discussed previously, is pretty much destined to go down as a beloved and iconic Resident Evil location alongside the likes of the Spencer Mansion from RE1 and REmake and the RPD from RE2 and RE2make. It was, without a doubt, one of the main highlights of the game. The second act was fine, but a definite step down from the care center in my view. It was action-packed and full of fun callbacks, but I felt like it began to drag before the end and it was the least visually interesting of the areas, with a brown and gray color scheme that felt right out of RE4. The final area is somewhere in between for me, with better pacing and a more interesting look compared to the second area. It didn’t manage to meet the highs of the care center, but it was still creepy and well-executed in its own right.

Requiem’s story is okay overall. It wasn’t groundbreaking or anything, but I was fine with what we got and it seemed to do a good enough job tying up some loose ends from past games while setting things up for the future. There are some twists and apparent retcons here and there that have caused some controversy, but none of them really bothered me. Really, the element of the game I was more interested in was the characters, and the game delivered on that front. Grace is a great addition to the franchise, feeling like a more realistic and relatable protagonist than in a lot of Resident Evil games. Requiem does a great job of showing her progress over the course of the game, becoming more capable and overcoming some of her terror. Leon, of course, is a lot of fun with all his one-liners and crazy stunts, but the game is also able to wring some surprisingly good pathos out of brushes with his past. And on the antagonist side of things, Dr. Victor Gideon (who is introduced quite early on and in the marketing) might just be my favorite villain out of the Resident Evil games I’ve played; I love his visual design and he walks the thin line between imposing and typical-Resident Evil cheesy/hammy quite well. On top of that, his voice acting (and, really, all the voice acting in the game) is spot on.

As can probably be guessed based on the emphasis placed on the anniversary timing and the return of Leon, there are plenty of callbacks to past games peppered throughout Requiem. Some are hidden or easily evade notice at first glance, but most of the time the game isn’t very subtle about it. With returning side characters, returning bosses, returning locations, returning puzzles, new enemies clearly inspired by old ones, and obvious homages to past action sequences, the game is stuffed to the gills with direct references. This is something that could easily drag down a lesser game, but Requiem manages to remix all these callbacks with enough new material and mechanics that it largely avoids that fate, at least in my opinion. It all manages to come across enough as a celebration of the series’ history that it doesn’t feel like pure nostalgia-bait – although admittedly it does come close to teetering over the edge a few times.

I do feel that I need to mention that this is an incredibly bloody game. I know that seems like a strange thing to have to say about a game where you are fighting zombies and other horrific monsters, but this might just be the bloodiest game I’ve ever played. Whether you’ve got Leon smashing a zombie’s head with his heel or Grace straight up blowing one up by injecting it with a corrupting solution, there ends up being blood splatters on practically every wall and floor. Now, there are actually gameplay elements to this, as Grace can collect blood from downed enemies and combine it with other materials to craft ammo, so it’s not just an aesthetic choice. As someone who used to be very squeamish when it came to blood, though, I just thought it best to mention this before someone who might have an issue with that considers getting the game.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Resident Evil Requiem and found that it lives up to its enormous hype. It didn’t quite manage to topple REmake as my favorite Resident Evil game – it does drag a bit in the middle, and it could do with some better boss fights – but its ability to almost seamlessly integrate two very different styles of gameplay into one exciting and terrifying package is extraordinary and enough to give it a spot near the top of the my survival horror ranking. This game is everything I love about Resident Evil all rolled up together, and if RE10 materializes in the coming years (a near certainty, given that Requiem sold over 5 million units in just the first five days¹) you can bet that I will be eagerly waiting in line.

Survival horror and adjacent games I hope to cover (in no particular order) – Resident Evil 0, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Resident Evil: Village, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Amnesia: Rebirth, Amnesia: The Bunker, Tormented Souls, Alien Isolation, Yomawari: Midnight Shadows, The Evil Within, The Evil Within 2, Alisa, Dead Space (2008), Alone in the Dark 2, Alone in the Dark 3, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, Curse: Eye of Isis, Dino Crisis, Darkwood, ObsCure, Cold Fear, Lempo, Stasis, Stasis Bone Totem, System Shock 1 and 2, Metro 2033, Look Outside, Fear the Spotlight, Heartworm, Little Goody Two-Shoes, SOMA, Empty Shell, Bendy and the Ink Machine, Clock Tower: Rewind, White Day: A Labyrinth Called School, Condemned: Criminal Origins, Sorry We’re Closed, Fragile Reflection, Bioshock 1, Bioshock 2, You Will Die Here Tonight, My Friendly Neighborhood, Conscript, The Callisto Protocol

My Current Survival Horror Ranking:

1. Resident Evil (HD Remaster) (9.5/10)
2. Silent Hill 2 Remake (9.5/10)
3. Signalis (9/10)
4. Resident Evil Requiem (9/10)
5. Cronos: The New Dawn (9/10)
6. Resident Evil 2 Remake (9/10)
7. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (8.5/10)
8. Crow Country (8.5/10)
9. Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (8/10)
10. Silent Hill 4: The Room (8/10)
11. Silent Hill f (8/10)
12. Resident Evil 4 (7/10)
13. Alone in the Dark (1992) (7/10)

Up Next: Amnesia: The Dark Descent, then Darkwood

Header image courtesy of PC Gamer.

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1. IGN ↩︎