I've finished it three times, and Resident Evil Requiem walks a dangerous line between nostalgia and reboot

Content warning: this article discusses graphic violence, disturbing imagery, and mature themes in an 18+ game.

There’s a moment in the opening scene of Resident Evil Requiem when I just stop moving. Rain needles down a bustling American street. Dull shop signs reflect in the puddles and wet pavement. The RE Engine captures every reflected light, yellows and greens of signage, and the flashing blue and red of a nearby police car, trembling across the pooled water, and for a second, it feels less like a horror game and more experiential. It’s one of the most beautiful openings I’ve seen on PS5, and it sets the tone perfectly: this is Resident Evil at its most confident, technically and artistically.

And then it gets properly dark.

In its first 40 minutes or so, Resident Evil Requiem goes places few mainstream horror games dare. While the '95 original played on the camp excess of Romero and straight-to-VHS zombie flicks, RE Requiem draws from modern horror, from It Follows and The Witch, stripping away comfort, leaning into unease, letting scenes linger too long. In particular, playing Grace's sections not only startled me but also unsettled me, even after multiple playthroughs. But then enter Leon, and things return to the kind of faster, safer, gun-and-axe combat of old. Two sides of Resident Evil, in one game.

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A game of contrasts

Visually, too, RE Requiem is a study in opposites. The dusty, cracked stone ruins of Raccoon City feel brittle and exhausted, while the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Centre, all dulled wood veneer and panelled elegance, reflects light in a way that makes every corridor feel time-worn and secretive. Then there’s the stark white gloss of the third act’s secret installation, a pristine ‘90s time capsule buried beneath toppled tower blocks. And that tension between old and new runs throughout RE Requiem as Capcom wrestles its legacy into a new era.

You play as Leon and Grace, and structurally, it’s a deliberate split. Leon’s sections are a muscular callback to Resident Evil 4 – third-person, crowd control, camp bosses, axe throws, and shotgun blasts delivered with swagger. Grace’s chapters shift to first-person: close, intimate, anxious. Playing as Grace, daughter of Resident Evil Outbreak's Alyssa, I crawl and hide rather than charge. I avoid danger rather than dominate. The two approaches shouldn’t work, but it mostly does.

You can adjust the camera setting, choosing to play the game entirely over-the-shoulder or in first-person, but I stick with how Capcom wants RE Requiem to be played, and in that mix I find something more interesting, a balance of old and new.

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Leon feels like a bullet-riddled ballet. A shotgun for tight corridors, the machine gun for a shambling horde, and yes, you can grab axes and makeshift spears mid-fight in a way that suggests someone at Capcom has been studying John Wick a little too closely. Encounters are choreographed chaos, and when you get it right, it’s glorious.

Grace, by contrast, had me genuinely slowing down. I found myself edging along corridors, hiding behind an operating bed, listening for breathing and the chain dragging in the dark, hoarding resources until I could survive a single mistake. Her vulnerability is tangible, making you consider every movement, particularly on the higher difficulty settings.

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Familiar systems, sharper edges

Mechanically, RE Requiem is arguably the safest Resident Evil has been in years. You juggle weapons, earn points for stylish kills, and upgrade between encounters. It’s a stable, familiar design. But it’s executed with such polish that it rarely feels stale.

Grace’s upgrades are the more interesting twist. She extracts blood from the dead, a grim little system used to craft ammo and special injectors. These can, in near silence, swell and explode the evolved Blister Head zombies, invaluable when Lickers are stalking nearby. The injectors can be turned on larger enemies, too. The evolved zombie ‘Chunk’ that squeezes itself into corridors, splintering door frames realistically, can be brought down, and it swells and then bursts in an eye-watering spray of gore when stabbed with multiple injectors.

Director Koshi Nakanishi clearly delights in discomfort, and there's something truly eerie about watching large 'people' squeeze under doorways out of the darkness. Grace’s nemesis, 'The Girl', a towering woman in white with enormous feet and dragging chains, stalks you with relentless menace. The sound design does most of the work: clomping, scraping, a distant scream that never quite tells you how close she is. It’s pure dread.

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Smarter zombies, stranger ideas

One of RE Requiem’s most intriguing ideas is that zombies remember fragments of their former lives. It’s subtle but transformative. Armoured undead soldiers recall how to fire their guns. Shove a zombie doctor into a zombie nurse, and they’ll turn on one another. A chainsaw dropped into a clinical white surgery turns the room into curtains of blood and minced chaos as it spins violently on the floor.

Elsewhere, the art team showcases its design intent with a mix of grim and fun scenarios. Undead diners feast at blood-slick banquet tables. Screeching singers spin beneath chandeliers. Elite shamblers spray machine gun fire in confused muscle memory. The world feels grotesquely alive.

There are more subtle tactical choices to make, too, that give the combat more character. Some zombies hate bright light, and turning on light switches will diminish their aggression, and they'll even avoid these 'safe' areas more often than not. Though left alone and returning to a room, I saw one fumbling to flick the switch, gargling “briiight lightssss”.

In fact, there are plenty of subtle moments that raise a smile, such as the deceased boss of Rhodes Hill mumbling “Your firedddddd” as he eats the brains of his secretary. It’s these little details that elevate RE Requiem, such as the drunk zombies that throw wine bottles as an act of last resort.

There’s ambition here, too. Some of Leon’s best third-act fights are against humans in tense tactical hide-and-seek rooms, scurrying about large data towers in the dark. One mini-boss pits axe against axe in swirling gas mist, lit atmospherically by red emergency lighting, a grounded, brutal glimpse of where the series could head.

But this is still Resident Evil. You’ll battle man-eating plants, shrieking tentacled villains and – because Leon S. Kennedy exists – ride a motorbike up the side of a skyscraper. Capcom, playing to its fanbase, can’t fully excise the nonsense, nor should it.

Resetting the horror

At around 8–10 hours, RE Requiem sits comfortably alongside Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Resident Evil Village, and the same speed-running, collectables approach of Resident Evil returns. Replays unlock weapons, skins and artwork; there’s concept art and behind-the-scenes mocap footage for those who want to linger. It’s modern Resident Evil through and through.

Narratively, it’s attempting something bold: revisiting Leon’s past. Walking the ruined corridors of the Raccoon Police Station hits hard, but bringing Grace’s story into the light, fleshing out the importance of The Connections, and putting a full stop to Umbrella and its decades-old legacy lands hits even harder. By the end, the franchise itself feels reset; old demons are laid to rest, and a dubious organisation gives way to something larger, more insidious.

That’s the real risk. RE Requiem walks a tightrope between nostalgia and reinvention. It blends camera perspectives, tone, systems – camp versus grounded horror – and mostly keeps its balance. There are glimpses of the modern horror Caocom needs to make, held back by the camp excess of its past, and while RE Requiem doesn’t push either strand as far forward as it could, it establishes a compelling new baseline.