'Resident Evil: Requiem' might actually get to have its cake and eat it too

Resident Evil is a series that, I'll admit, I appreciate more than I like. It has nothing to do with the quality of the games, mind you, but more to do with the fact that they're usually some combination of scary and anxiety-inducing. It's a compliment, really. They work a little too well on me.

So, when I sat down for a beefy three-hour demo of the next mainline game in the series, Resident Evil Requiem, I wasn't sure what I would get out of the experience. Requiem has an interesting two-pronged approach that tries to reconcile the more classic horror elements of the earlier games in the series with the balls-to-the-wall action vibes of games like Resident Evil 4, to the point where that game's protagonist, Leon S. Kennedy, is back as one of the two playable characters in this game. I figured I would like playing as Leon, at least, but I wasn't sure about Grace Ashcroft, the other character who represents the more exploratory, stealthy, and puzzle-solving-focused side.

Despite my worries that I wouldn't quite gel with what was going on in Requiem due to my own personal weaknesses, it turns out Capcom is really good at making video games, and I had nothing to fear. Except for all the horrible zombies who wanted to murder me, anyway. Resident Evil Requiem's dual-protagonist structure made a heck of a first impression in the demo I played and left me feeling pretty confident in Capcom's ability to make a game that satisfies both ends of the Resident Evil spectrum.

Two characters, two play styles

Leon finally gets to use a chainsaw this time. Credit: Capcom

Capcom has politely requested that I keep story details to a minimum in this preview, which is honestly fine because I didn't see that much to begin with, and what I did see didn't really speak to me as someone without much investment in RE lore. All you need to know for now is that, at least in the portion of Requiem that I played, Leon and Grace are both trapped in the same messed-up medical institution full of zombified mutants and other grotesqueries for different reasons, and their stories seem to overlap only sparingly.

I found the basic structure of what I played to be pretty fascinating, especially in contrast to Resident Evil 6, Capcom's last attempt to fit multiple campaigns with different play styles into a single RE game. In that one, you chose a campaign from a menu, played through the whole thing as whatever character it was centered around, then did the same thing three more times. In Requiem, it seems that whoever you're playing as is dictated by where you are in the overall plot; in the demo I played, I started as Leon, then transitioned to Grace for a while, then went back to Leon to finish things off, all in a way that felt smooth and well-paced.

Leon's bits were shorter and more linear, as his whole deal these days is being a cool guy who kicks zombie ass. These parts felt like a very satisfying third-person shooter, with enemies who respond dynamically depending on where on the body you hit them and a litany of stylish melee finishing moves that Leon can perform on stunned enemies. This will feel very familiar to fans of the RE4 design philosophy.

I hope you like inventory management, because there's a lot of it here. Credit: Capcom

Grace could not be more different. Her portion of the demo was significantly longer and focused on exploration, resource management, and finding creative ways to just get from one point of the facility to another without getting eaten alive. I was pretty impressed by how relatively non-linear this section was. There were entire cutscenes or setpiece moments that I did in a different order from the other people playing around me, and while there's almost certainly an ideal speedrun route to doing everything in Grace's area, I found that there was a decent amount of freedom to it. Every player will eventually solve all these puzzles, but they won't necessarily do so in the same order, or at least that's the impression I got.

Speaking of puzzles, that part felt very Resident Evil to me in a good way. I spent most of Grace's section feverishly reading notes left by others to figure out how to unlock a variety of figurative and literal puzzle boxes. There's also a puzzle element to just navigating with Grace, as she doesn't have Leon's arsenal of weapons and attacks. She can still shoot enemies, but ammo is scarce, and her melee attacks are more in the vein of shoving enemies to the ground so you can run past them, in contrast to the Leon method of roundhouse kicking someone's head until it explodes.

Enemy placement in this game feels extremely intentional, and getting into the designers' heads as I played was part of the fun. If there's a big guy with a meat cleaver at the end of a hallway, that means I'm probably not supposed to go that way right now. That said, you do have the option of sneaking or sprinting past, if you feel bold.

It's all a matter of perspective

First-person. Credit: Capcom

And third-person. Credit: Capcom

The real magic of the demo occurred after I shifted back to Leon at the end of Grace's section. At that point, I was able to freely explore the same level from the perspective of someone with nothing to be afraid of. Leon is not only better equipped to fight whatever monstrosities Grace left behind, but he can actually open certain doors that Grace can't, thanks to the hand-axe he carries around. Yes, you can also use it to split open zombie heads.

Giving players a chance to run through areas a second time in a way that is dramatically less scary provides a refreshing bit of catharsis that I appreciated. I really enjoy it when games manipulate player perspective in that way, and Requiem seems built around that idea. Speaking of perspective, the entire game is playable in both first- and third-person, after Capcom spent the last two games forcing players into first-person before eventually patching in a somewhat janky third-person mode in Village. By default, Leon is in third-person, and Grace is in first-person, but I chose to play the whole demo in third-person because I felt it reduced the tension by a small (but definitely noteworthy) degree.

The best thing I can say about that is that I eventually forgot that what I was playing was designed to be played in first-person. It works remarkably well either way.

While a three-hour demo is not insubstantial, it still felt like a pretty small and enticing taste of what Resident Evil Requiem has to offer. I went into the session worried I wouldn't be able to finish the demo at all due to my weak constitution, but smart game design and just enough player empowerment through Leon's gameplay made it a really enjoyable experience. If the rest of Requiem is as good as what I played, we could have another Resident Evil banger on our hands, this time in a form that satisfies fans of different eras of the storied series.

Resident Evil Requiem launches on Feb. 27 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series S/X, and Nintendo Switch 2.