Resident Evil Requiem is coming soon, and I had a chance to go hands-on and play an extended 2 hour demo of a work-in-progress build of the game to see what Capcom is cooking up. As we all know, Requiem is a return to form with Leon Kennedy taking center stage once again as an older, rougher version of the character.
In our first moments of gameplay, we take control of Leon to fight through a wave of zombie doctors. Once you take out the one with the chainsaw, you can pick it up and use it to take out the rest, which I found to be incredibly fun and satisfying, though it doesn’t last very long so you’ll quickly find yourself back using your gun and hatchet.
Unlike the knife in previous games, the hatchet is a melee weapon that Leon doesn’t ever part with. You can use it to parry enemies, and while excessive use will bunt the blade, the player can sharpen it on the fly. This means that even when you’re out of ammo, you still have a means of attacking or defending yourself from the zombies unlike in older games.
There’s also a combo mechanic that I found myself falling into rather quickly, where the quickest way of taking out a zombie is by shooting their legs and hitting X when prompted to finish the zombie off with a melee move. The melee moves vary depending on your position, but all are incredibly gruesome but satisfying.
After a few minutes of exploring, we bump into FBI technical analyst Grace Ashcroft, who has just narrowly avoided death from an encounter with an unnamed assailant, saved by Leon who arrives in the nick of time. The two characters exchange a few words before Dr Gideon appears, this games main antagonist, and takes Leon hostage, leaving you to play as Grace.
In similar fashion to previous games, the care center is split into an east wing and west wing, with areas of the map locked to you until you find the correct security access bands up to level 3. Once we take control of Grace, the game opens up and you are free to explore each wing as you please.
The goal of this part of the game is to escape the medical center, but of course the main doors are locked. So it’s your task to find the necessary keys and unlock mechanisms to get those doors open, solving puzzles and finding items along the way to help you.
Right off the bat, this game feels like classic Resident Evil but with a good balance of action and horror. If you enjoyed the Resident Evil 2-4 remakes, you’re going to love Requiem. It’s that same classic formula with some new gameplay mechanics and twists, such as the zombies, some of which no longer just wait around to eat you.
In Requiem, some of the zombies will conduct jobs/hobbies that they did when they were alive. For example, an undead chef remains in the kitchen area, and when you’re not in his sights, you can find him franticly cutting up meat. Another example that stood out to me is in one of the corridors there’s a zombie that’s obsessed with switching the lights off after you turn them on.
It’s an interesting new gameplay mechanic that makes zombie encounters more nuanced than in previous games. Instead of opening fire on every one you see, you can now choose to sneak past several enemies based on whether they’re distracted by their own task. Not all zombies exhibit this behavior, meaning you’ll still encounter zombies whose only goal is to eat your brains.
Some zombies now have special powers that you’ll need to keep in mind when facing them. One zombie type is a woman who sings, who is capable of using the power of sound to unbalance you from a distance.
During the segment with Grace, I found that ammo was incredibly scarce, more so than in previous games. Most of the time, I didn’t have any ammo, forcing me to sneak around many of the enemies you encounter.
There’s a number of different gameplay mechanics between Grace and Leon too. Leon has plenty of ammo and weapons, and is capable of opening wardrobes with his hatchet, along with being able to parry with it. Grace doesn’t have a hatchet or any melee weapons, meaning her only way of attack is with weapons, but ammo is scarce.
Because of this, I found myself playing very differently when in control of Grace vs Leon. This is likely by design, but I felt a little more capable and unstoppable when playing as Leon, choosing to face zombies head, whereas with Grace I found myself choosing to sneak by zombies a lot as I just didn’t have the equipment to take them on.
Another difference between the two characters is that by default, you play as Leon in the third-person, but Grace in the first person to heighten that level of horror you get from a tighter FoV. You can change this in the settings for either character, but I love that attention to detail for the default settings.
After exploring the care center, the demo has you take control of Leon again. Now, he’s in what appears to be an attic, and it’s not long before you encounter a boss battle with a large zombie type that you need to kill to progress. In typical Resident Evil fashion, the zombie has weak points that you should focus your fire on to kill it faster.
I also want to take a minute to appreciate just how good this game looks. Everything from wall and floor textures to people’s faces and the gore is so realistic. The sound design is equal parts fascinating and disgusting, and the whole thing just looks and feels really polished. Leon, who is now significantly older than he was in prior games, looks great, now taking on a slightly rougher appearance with a grittier voice.
Overall, I think Resident Evil Requiem is a true return to form for classic Resident Evil fans. After playing this demo, I went and played the Resident Evil 2 remake again, and the similarities between both are obvious. That’s not bad thing at all, especially for those who really like those older games, as Requiem builds upon that classic formula and improves on it in pretty much every way.
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