Well, now we are into the month of March (or are marching into it (sorry!) its time for yet another post and this is a new one, which will be on a video game I've just recently completed, which is Resident Evil Requiem, the latest in the famous survival horror series.
So, as the Resi series celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, let's see how the latest entry in the series fairs...
And there will be the usual warning...
PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
STORY
So, I won't go into the plot too much but I will give a small part of it, which begins with a young FBI analyst, Grace Ashcroft (voiced by Angela Sant Albano) being sent to investigate a crime scene of a place where Racoon city survivors were found dead from a variant of the T-Virus. The scene in question however is where Grace's mum was murdered 8 years ago, an abandoned place called the Wrenwood hotel.
Grace on investigating inside soon discovers many photos of herself over a bed and has a flashback to the night her mother, Alyssa was killed. Grace on further exploring, soon finds the cop who let her in earlier to the hotel, who has been infected with the T-Virus and soon becomes a zombie and attacks Grace but she manages to subdue him and flee. However, on going upstairs, she enters a room and finds a strange hooded figure, who turns out to be Victor Gideon (voiced by Antony Byrne) a former Umbrella scientist, who renders Grace unconscious and leaves the hotel with her. On leaving the hotel however, Gideon fires several darts at passers-by on the streets, turning them all into zombies. At the same time, DSO agent, Leon Kennedy (voiced by Nick Apostolidos) shows up at the scene but is too late to stop Gideon and he fights off several zombies attacks as her pursues them both.
Leon soon tracks Grace to a care center with the help of fellow DSO agent, Sherry Birkin (voiced by Eden Riegel) where Grace is being held captive, strapped to a stretcher and wired up to an IV drip. Grace comes around and manages to escape by breaking the glass container for the drip and cutting her bonds with it but she soon also encounters a large monster, nicknamed the girl, who she is forced to play hide and seek with as she tries to escape.
After, Grace manages to evade the girl, she soon encounters Leon, who gives her his magnum gun, nicknamed Requiem and she tries to find a way out of the center. On the way, Grace also encounters a blind girl, Emily, who is locked in a cell, who she also frees and tries to take with her and from here Grace must find a way to uncover the truth of what is going on and to stop Gideon...
THOUGHTSAs the latest entry in the series, Requiem is a very solid and entertaining Resi game that successfully amalgamates two previous games in the series, Resi 7, which had a more stealthy, horror survival feel to it and Resi 4, which is more action orientated, with Grace taking on the RE7 approach and Leon RE4. So, without trying to give away spoilers here, most of the first half or so plays out with the stealth horror theme and the second primarily more action based and its a good mix overall of the two styles, as clearly Capcom was trying to find a way to please both types of fans. One thing for sure however is that this game is easily the MOST gory of all the Resi games thus far with plenty of blood and gore on display, so if you are a fan of that, you're bound to love this.
GAMEPLAY
As for the gameplay, I will as usual split this section into subcategories below.
MOVEMENT AND PERSPECTIVE
So, starting with movement and perspective, this game actually offers the player a choice to play in both first or third perspective as Grace, in order to try and stay true to the horror style of RE7 and even RE Village, so its up to the player to decide, whereas Leon's is just purely in third person. I personally played Grace as first person as intended for my first playthrough, which was a pretty intense experience at times but overall not too bad.
STEALTH SURVIVAL
Moving onto the stealth aspect of the game, Grace will often use stealth to try and navigate her way around certain monsters, particularly the bigger ones and she also has limited resources available to her and access to only handguns compared to Leon. Another thing Grace can do however is distract enemies by throwing bottles at them to look the other way, so she can evade them. Grace can also use a cigarette lighter in the earlier stages of the game before using a flashlight a bit later on.
COMBAT
As for the combat, starting with Grace, even though stealth can be essential she can also use her weapons to take down enemies and later can also craft weapons such as acid bottles and molotov cocktails, which definitely come in handy. Grace also has a weaker melee attack, where she can e.g. push zombies on the ground but this can be useful in certain sections to escape from them. Grace can also use a crafted item called a hemolytic injector that allows her to perform a stealth attack on zombies and destroy them and this can also be used on fallen zombies to prevent them from coming back to life in a similar manner to the crimson zombies in the Nintendo Gamecube RE1 remake.
Moving onto Leon, his combat is naturally more involved as he can perform a number of brutal takedown moves against zombies using a hatchet, which he can also sharpen to prevent it from blunting. Leon also has a larger arsenal at his disposal as he can use handguns, shotguns and his own Requiem magnum, assault rifles and sniper rifles. Leon can also gain skill points later for killing enemies, which will allow to buy new weapons and or upgrade his existing ones. Leon similar to Grace can perform melee attacks but can also perform parries against enemies and can also pick up their weapons and throw them at others. What's for sure however is there is plenty of gore on display here with Leon shooting, smashing and crunching zombies and other monsters left, right and centre!
CRAFTING ITEMS
Similar to previous Resi games, crafting is also a key aspect here, as both Leon and Grace can craft certain items. Starting with Grace however, her crafting abilities are more varied as she can use a blood analyzer to collect infected blood and use it to create healing items, ammo as well as acid bottles or molotov cocktails. Grace can also craft injector items that will boost her HP and enhance the damage of her weapons. As for Leon, he can primarily only craft healing items and ammo, similar to the previous Resi games.
WEAPON UPGRADES & SKILL POINTS
Without giving spoilers away, there is another key aspect to the gameplay, which is for Leon only and that is a skill points system, which will allow him to gain points for killing zombies or other enemies, which had transferred into a small bracelet. Leon can then go back to a save point open the item chest and use the points to gain access to new weapons or upgrade existing weapons as well as sharpen and enhance his hatchet.
GRAPHICS
Moving onto the graphics, well can be said about this game's visuals? In short, it looks absolutely stunning thanks again to Capcom's terrific RE game engine, which just gets better and better. So, its no surprise to report here than RE Requiem's visuals are amazing and the details of the environments are rich and detailed, from the building exteriors to the landscapes to dank indoors of the hotel and care center, not to mention the gruesome detail of the violence.
But the character models are also where the game shines, as they are terrific and not quite but almost lifelike with Grace looking great and Leon, looking somewhat more mature and middle aged and they both have lifelike hair thanks to the game's hair strand tech. Additionally its also funny to see Sherry look so grown up and mature here also but she did also appear as a young adult in RE6. The supporting characters also look great in their own ways with the main antagonist, Victor Gideon looking suitably hideous with his grey and scarred skin and Zeno, who looks a lot like Wesker (who I honestly thought it was at first!). The zombies and other monsters are very well displayed here too, especially the girl and giant slob and a few later monsters too.
So, overall, Requiem is a real treat for the eyes on the PS5 standard version I played but the PS5 Pro and PC versions are reportedly even better as they support tracing. All in all though, this undoubtedly one of the best looking games of the year.
VOICE ACTING
Moving onto the voice acting, the cast all do a pretty good job overall, so I will say a quick bit about them but not too much.
Starting with Angela Sant Albando, who is very good in her role as the young FBI agent, Grace, who investigates the deaths of Raccoon city survivors but is soon caught in whole lot of trouble and fighting off zombies and other monsters. Angela does a pretty good job at conveying Grace's outright fear and terror at her situation before slowly becoming more brave and heroic as the game progresses. One thing I would say about her performance is that Grace stutters a bit too much throughout the game and keeps saying "I...I...I...I don't know!" when asked something, which does get a bit grating. That aside though, she does a pretty good job overall here.
Nick Apostolides returns again here as the voice of Leon Kennedy and he does another great job at conveying Leon's cool nature but also retaining Leon's sarcastic quips, which adds a welcome element of humour to the proceedings as well as showing Leon is still a badass in his old age. In fact, I will quote one or two of his lines, such as the one where Gideon captures Leon and has him tied to a chair and Leon asks Gideon "I have one question though, when did you last brush your teeth?!". Another quip worth a mention is when Sherry is on the radio with Leon and Sherry says to him "Don't do anything stupid" and Leon says "Me?! Never!".
Antony Byrne is also very good as the main villain, Victor Gideon, who's unnatural experiments result in creating another T-Virus outbreak but also in kidnapping Grace, he also plans to find the answer to something more sinister. Byrne plays Gideon with a soft and creepy voice, which fits his character very well as a calculating psychopath, who lays a path of destruction behind him.
Craig Burnatowski also is pretty good in his role as the mysterious character, Zino, who I honestly thought at first was supposed to be Albert Wesker, who has enhanced abilities kind of similar to Wesker's mutated abilities in RE5. Burnatowski himself did actually play Wesker briefly at the end of the RE4 remake, so that's certainly why I might have got these two characters mixed up.
Eden Riegel is also good in her role as Sherry Birkin, who was originally a child in the Resi series, coming into the game on RE2 but would later reappear in RE6 as a young adult but by now, Sherry is now in her late 30's and also a DSO agent, who works remotely in and office setting, helping Leon. Eden also voiced Sherry in RE6 too, so her voice will sound quite familiar if you've played both games.
Last of all is Jane Perry, who is also very good in her role as Alyssa Ashcroft, Grace's mother, who is killed by a mysterious figure as she was trying to protect Grace from Umbrella. Perry herself might actually be better known as the voice of Rogue in Cyberpunk 2077, which I wasn't initially aware at first until I looked her up.
MUSIC
Moving onto the music, the score was composed by not one but four composers, Nao Sato, Masahiro Ohki, Shigeyuki Kameda and Joseph Holiday and overall its a pretty solid one, which does its job at conveying the terror of the situation very well. The contrasting styles are evident between Grace and Leon's sequences for the stealth and the overt action scenes. So, while its not a great score per se, its still very befitting for the tone of the game.
FLAWS (Warning: this section may contain some spoiler references!)
As for flaws...yeah OK, Resi Requiem isn't quite perfect.
For starters, I think there are some sections of the game, which can be a bit tedious and these are mostly in Grace's gameplay. The first one, I will mention is Grace trying to evade the girl monster in the care center, which will result in Grace being the girl's dinner if she is caught. However, this section despite the suspense of it, can become tedious, as you constantly have to duck out of sight and try and sneak through before the girl suddenly smashes through a door and spots you again. Plus the whole objective is to get a fuse to open the gate to escape, so once you get the fuse, you have to do the whole hide and seek BS once again! So, yeah this section is a bit of a chore.
There is also another flashback sequence later on, which is also a bit tedious involving a young girl, who is surrounded by some similar evil girls, who she tries to escape from but I won't say more than that on it. However, this section again feels a bit tedious, plus its also not that obvious at one point how you progress through it.
I also found Grace's character to be OK for the most part but also a bit annoying with her constant stuttering in fear as already mentioned as she keeps saying "I..I..I..I don't know!" or variants of this but she does eventually calm down toward the end a bit. Its also a bit bizarre that her superior would send her to investigate such as a scene given her job is an FBI analyst and not a field agent, so given the horrors she is about to face, to say she's inexperienced would be an understatement!
There is also a bizarre contrast in the size of Grace and Leon's inventory, as she gets a typical hip pouch upgrade whereas Leon gets a massive suitcase that can carry loads of items and weapons instead. But again this highlights the difference in the style of gameplay for both characters I guess however the differences are a bit startling with Grace's puny hip pouches vs Leon's TARDIS like suitcase!
Another big issue I had with the game was to do with just how exactly did Leon and Sherry contract the T-Virus in the first place? I mean this as far as I am aware was NEVER explained in the game at all (but I could be wrong and might have missed it but kind of doubt!). Also, as I was playing the game, I was waiting to hear the explanation from Leon or Sherry but you never really get one, you do see Sherry take medication to suppress the symptoms at one point but that's about it. But to get to the end of the game NO real explanation whatsoever, I have to say was a bit mystifying.
So, that's it for the flaws.
SUM UP
So, to sum up, Resident Evil Requiem is a very enjoyable and solid entry in the Resi franchise that successfully marries two different gameplay styles of stealth and action well together as it copies the style of RE4 and RE7. The game also has fantastic visuals as the environments and character models are stunning and the RE engine remains impressive as ever and the voice acting is also very good with the actors for Grace and Leon doing a fine job as well as the supporting actors for Gideon, Zino and Sherry.
There are some issues with the gameplay and the story but they aren't enough to really spoil things here and if you liked the previous Resi games, you will be bound to like this as it caters well enough for both fans of action and stealth alike.
So, with that I will rate Requiem:
8.5 out of 10
So, that's it for now and I will be back with another post sometime soon.
Until then, its bye for now!
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