A Requiem Worth Hearing
Capcom’s latest horror opus knows exactly when to whisper and when to scream.
I’ve been with Resident Evil since the original game, and that first one is still my favourite. Not because it was the biggest or the slickest, but because it understood something this series has never been better at than in its purest form: anticipation. The original game knew how to make a hallway feel dangerous, a door feel suspicious, and silence feel like a trap. That’s the lens I brought into Resident Evil Requiem, and I’m happy to say it gets a lot right. It understands that fear in Resident Evil is not just about monsters jumping out of walls. It’s about the slow tightening of your nerves while you wait for the game to make its move. Requiem remembers that.
What I liked most is how confidently it balances the two sides of modern Resident Evil. On one hand, there’s the slower, more oppressive survival-horror texture I always want from this series. On the other hand, there’s the more muscular, action-forward pacing that Capcom has become very good at when it wants to hit harder and faster. Requiem doesn’t feel confused about that split. It feels deliberate. The game knows when to tighten the screws and when to let things explode. That rhythm works for me because it keeps the campaign feeling alive. It never gets too buried in one mode for too long.
And yes, the jump scares are excellent.
I’m one of those people who genuinely enjoys trying to predict them. I love seeing the setup, reading the room, spotting the suspiciously quiet corridor or the too-obvious visual cue, and quietly telling myself, “Yep, this is where they’re going to try something.” The joy is in the game, still getting you anyway. Requiem nails that feeling. The scares don’t just come from nowhere for the sake of it. They feel staged, paced, and earned. Even when I saw one coming, I still enjoyed the impact because the game understands that a good scare is as much about timing as it is about surprise. That’s a very Resident Evil skill, and this game uses it well.
The other thing I always want from Resident Evil is puzzles. Real puzzles. Not just “find the keycard and move on,” but proper stop-and-think progression. I like weird mechanisms. I like symbols. I like backtracking with purpose. I like that moment where a room finally makes sense because one item clicks or one environmental detail suddenly unlocks the logic of the whole space. Requiem does not go as hard on puzzle-box design as the original Resident Evil, and for me, nothing in the series has ever truly topped that mansion-era magic. But it does enough to keep that part of my brain happy. The puzzles are present, useful, and woven into the game’s atmosphere instead of feeling like filler. I would have happily taken even more of them, but I never felt starved for that classic Resident Evil texture.
Visually, the game is superb. Capcom is so comfortable with RE ENGINE now that it can make horror environments feel rich, filthy, oppressive, and weirdly beautiful all at once. Requiem looks like a premium horror production from top to bottom. The lighting is nasty in the best way, creature work is grotesque and detailed, and the environments have that heavy, tactile quality that makes exploration feel tense before anything has even attacked you. That matters. In horror, atmosphere is not decoration. It is the system running underneath everything else. Requiem gets a huge amount of mileage out of how convincingly unpleasant it makes its spaces feel.
I also appreciate that the game seems comfortable being unapologetically Resident Evil. It’s not embarrassed by the series’ identity. It embraces the horror, the pulp, the grotesque spectacle, the occasional absurdity, and the feeling that this world always sits just a little to the left of sanity. That matters more than people think. A lot of long-running franchises eventually become afraid of their own personality. Requiem doesn’t feel afraid. It feels like a game made by people who know exactly what this series is supposed to taste like.
Is it perfect? No.
There are moments where I wanted the horror side to hold the wheel a bit longer, and I do think the game is strongest when it is making you feel uneasy rather than simply powerful. A few late-game stretches lean more into scale and momentum than dread, and while that still makes for a very entertaining ride, the sections I’ll remember most are the ones that made me hesitate before opening the next door. That’s just who I am as a Resident Evil fan. I will almost always choose tension over spectacle. I want the game to make me nervous, make me think, and then make me regret being overconfident. Requiem does that enough that I was fully on board, even if I would never complain about a little more slow-burning horror and a few more intricate puzzles.
Still, the big picture is very easy to sum up: the game is great.
We say: Requiem feels polished, confident, scary when it needs to be, exciting when it wants to be, and smart enough to remember that Resident Evil works best when it keeps shifting between fear, release, and problem-solving.
Rating: 4.5/5
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch 2
www.residentevil.com/requiem
