Resident Evil Requiem PS5 Preview. Barely five minutes after Leon arrives at the Rhodes Hill clinic to meet Dr. Victor Gideon, and the place is swarming with zombies. Only, these infected are still capable of rudimentary speech, giving them a decidedly creepier vibe as they stagger towards you, baying for blood. One of them comes at me with a chainsaw. Right, I’ve faced this before, in Resident Evil 4 and its remake, albeit they weren’t zombies in those games. A few rounds to the head, and my attacker drops the chainsaw. Upon closer inspection, I’m given an X prompt to pick it up, and swing it around with R2; claret sprays all over the gaff as Leon goes all Leather Face on his undead adversaries. Yes, this is my introduction to three or so hours with Resident Evil Requiem.
Resident Evil Requiem Hands-On Preview
Leon, looking a little rough around the edges in his advancing age (but still recognisable the one-time rookie cop), is packing some serious heat right off the bat in my hands-on session. Aside from a standard pistol, he’s also got a revolver, the Requiem, which fires ultra-rare ammunition that is capable of downing most foes in a single blast. New to his arsenal is the hatchet, and like the knife in Resident Evil 4 Remake, must be sharpened in order to keep it in use; a quick squeeze of R2 will swing it, and you can use it when grabbled by a foe to extricate yourself in bloody fashion. It’s also handy for smashing jars to nab loot, as you’d expect.
The zombies themselves look menacing, and their movement is an amalgamation of The Last of Us’ twitchy infected and the shambling folk of classic survival horror; the fact they are losing their minds to the infection and can form simple words is a great spin on undead lore. It’s creepy stuff.
I won’t spoil what happens next, but the action switches to Grace, whom is gifted the Requiem by Leon as the pair are split up. When Capcom previously compared to Grace’s sections to Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil 2, they weren’t kidding; the horror at atmosphere is significantly amplified (not that it wasn’t there with Leon, mind, it’s just more pronounced here).
Grace’s faint breathing can be heard as I slowly moved through corridors and peered around corners, punctuated by the patter of rain outside and babble of infected. And seriously, some of the encounters I had were utterly brilliant, yet terrifying; a staff member obsessed with turning off lights; a woman in a white dress staggering around in a ballroom, wailing like a banshee; and an imposing cook ranting to himself about preparing dinner as he proceeds to hack away at an unidentified source of meat.
There’s more to the infected clawing at their past lives than simply accentuating the creep factor, though. I was able to take advantage of their meanderings to stealthily slip past; for example, turning a light switch on, which will attract an usher to turn it off, or sneaking past the aforementioned cook as he lumbers about the kitchen ‘preparing’ a meal. It’s tense stuff, and adds a new dimension to enemy encounters.
The next couple of hours spent with Grace was quintessential survival horror: a hair-raising marriage of exploration, infected, puzzle solving and joining narrative threads. To escape the building, our faint-hearted heroine must obtain three key items dotted throughout the Rhodes Hill clinic, which means ample backtracking and classic Resident Evil shenanigans, and it’s here that I felt Requiem really hit the mark.
Grace’s anxiety is palpable throughout, and there’s a sense of uneasiness and vulnerability that accompanies her. After all, supplies are scarce, and she’s not a veteran of combating biohazard outbreaks like Leon; as such, I found myself taking my time, focussing more on stealthily avoiding foes and soaking up the environment than landing headshots. When I did get into a fight, every bullet counted.
One of the biggest additions with Requiem is the crafting system, which now uses the blood of infected foes. Using a blood collector, you scoop up the red stuff to combine with scrap items (unlocking new crafting options by analysing blood with a microscope, opening a small puzzle in the process) to make healing items and ammo.
There’s also a new item known as the hemolytic, which can be used to instant kill zombies in stealth or when they’re staggered, which sees them exploding in a shower of crimson. When used on ‘dead’ enemies, this prevents them from mutating: Yes, Requiem brings back the idea of enemies rising again as more powerful foes similar to Crimson Heads from Resident Evil Remake, making them more aggressive and harder to put down a second time.
This adds a whole new dimension to the bread-and-butter Resident Evil template, as I was constantly aware of corpses that could rise as I crept past; it’s tense stuff, and Requiem is all the better for it. This mechanic also interweaves seamlessly with how you approach situations: do you kill those two zombies to use their blood for crafting? Or do you save your precious ammo for later? Do you use that hemolytic for a quick kill or hold onto it for a more powerful foe?
One other notable distinction between Grace and Leon is inventory space. Grace appears to be working out of a handbag while Leon is rocking a massive attache case, and during my playthrough I ran out of space multiple times with Grace and had to either discard an item or run back to an item box to make space (yep, item boxes are back!). Again, classic Resident Evil stuff, but I wonder if this will have much impact on Leon’s campaign due to the amount of space he has.
Oh, did I mention how gory this game is looking? We’re not just talking about blood and fleshy chunks redecorating the walls: Resident Evil Requiem is an 80s splatter house on steroids. Limbs are blown off, wounds pepper bodies like sprouting red flowers, and eyeballs hang limply on stringy sinew from their sockets. It’s gruesome stuff.
Jumping ahead a bit, I was put back in control of Leon, who, after extricating himself from a bit of a sticky situation (which I won’t spoil), finds himself in the attic. After grabbing a shotgun, I’m attacked by what can only be described as the creepy mutant baby from RE Village on steroids, who wastes no time in announcing what he perceives floppy-haired Kenned as: “food!”
The attic is claustrophobic at the best of times, making for a tense ruck as the lumbering chap attempts to chow down on Leon. There’s some nice use a bit of verticality this encounter as you gain the high ground to give yourself an advantage, making liberal use of both your hatchet and firepower. Once the boss is in the dirt, I’m free to explore previous areas that I traversed with Grace.
It’s interesting retreading the same areas with Leon, as he has sufficient ammo to take down the zombie hordes rather than circumventing enemy encounters. I was able to land some meaty stealth kills with the hatchet all the same, but it was still great fun to let the shotgun do its thing and spray paint the walls in zombie decay red. Plus, the hatchet can also unlock busted doors and cabinets, giving you access to new areas and pickups, respectively.
And that was it. My 3 hours came to an end, and I was utterly blown way by how Requiem is shaping up. It sounds too obvious, but this really is combining the best of both RE7 and RE4 while adding incremental but meaningful improvements to the formula, while bringing back the classic zombies we’ve missed (sorry, but the Moulded were naff) but with a twist. Quite how the full game will pan out is anyone’s guess right now, but from what I played, Resident Evil Requiem is shaping up to be something very special indeed.