Resident Evil: Requiem
Wow, a tumblr post, how 2014. So, Resident Evil Requiem is an easy contender for the best game of 2026. It's incredibly successful at blending so many different kinds of game — stealth, survival horror, action horror, light puzzle gameplay — and also so many different variations on the Resident Evil oeuvre (lol). At times it also feels much narrower than I thought it would.
I'll start with the last part first, because might as well get the vegetables finished: Resident Evil Requiem is not an open world game. It only plays with that idea for one section of the game really, and in that way, it actually feels like it takes a step back from the hub structure of Resident Evil Village. Once you leave an area in Requiem, you're gone for good, and I didn't realize that until it was a little too late.
However. I think Requiem is the single most successful exercise in multiple characters the franchise has ever managed. It takes so many of the fun ideas from Resident Evil 2 and really runs with them. Rather than making a hard choice between Leon or Grace, you'll play as both in different sections that often chronologically overlap, and often on paths that overlap just ahead or just after the other. In turn, the things you do as Grace in the first third of the game are left behind for Leon to see and sometimes deal with. So sneaking around more powerful enemies (which you'll probably do as Grace, since she has far fewer resources and far less training) will leave them for Leon to deal with later, and then, I was pleased to find, the tree of consequence stretches just a bit beyond. I won't get into how, to avoid spoilers, but I felt like this system only went as far as it needed to, and avoided feeling like a burden. Instead, it was just present enough to remind me that these characters exist at the same time, in mostly the same place, and just keep missing each other, which was really the whole conceit of RE2.
I was also struck by the constant shifts in gameplay loop in Requiem, which went a long way to keep it from feeling repetitive or exhausting. That felt like a real favor to me as a player, especially in Grace's sections, where the very present possibility of death is around almost every corner. Requiem sat for me in the sweet spot between a manageable amount of stress and an oppressive amount of "are you fucking kidding right now," all of which speaks to the artfulness with which it was assembled.
Meanwhile, Leon's sections move between hyper-linear action (not that different from RE5, really) and an open zone section that allows for a lot of optional experimentation and one extended sequence where I wondered out loud how the hell they had decided to push a specific idea as far as they did. I'll just say it involves glass, and that won't make sense until you get to the part in question.
It helps that the game is generally extremely good looking (though on PS5 Pro i noticed some very real artifacting in the raytracing and upscaling), and it also plays really well. The shooting and movement feel as tight as they need to, and when playing as Grace, I didn't really ever die in a way that felt inflicted by muddled controls or inputs. I also appreciated the ability to switch to a full third person view for Grace's sections, because I ultimately didn't find the first person perspective more tense or scary. Maybe if Requiem had been designed for first person explicitly, that would be different, and it's really the only somewhat compromised-feeling part of the game.
My feelings toward the game are clearly positive, even gushing, and I'm almost certainly going to play through it again (on PC this time), but there is that nagging feeling in the back of my head about what the setting and story could have allowed for, and what some of the trailers almost felt like they were suggesting. I wonder a little bit what a more open exploration of a bigger chunk of Raccoon City would have felt like. And in some ways Grace's extended section and Leon's longer bit in the first two thirds of the game make the last act feel a little constricted, even if, once again, Requiem reinvents itself just a bit.
I don't know how the most passionate Resident Evil fans will feel about Requiem. But as someone who played the originals back in high school, it was a surreal, satisfying, and disconcerting experience seeing a real-time aged Leon try to survive one more encounter with the horrors of the Umbrella Corporation. It was surprisingly existential feeling. And that's kind of the most interesting thing about it. Resident Evil Requiem is the series continuing to accept its history, lean into it, and to continue challenging itself.
