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Let me open with this \u2013 Resident Evil Requiem<\/em> will allow you to play in first and third person. For most games, this would be a neat feature; but for a new, mainline Resident Evil entry, it feels closer to a philosophical statement.<\/p>\nThe early third-person classics in the series set the standard for survival horror \u2013 tense, knotty frighteners that combined action, resource management, and byzantine puzzling. The more recent first-person games have been more visceral affairs, hovering somewhere between a video nasty and gung-ho action cinema. And appropriately, Requiem<\/em> aims to do both.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\tPlaced in a pitch-black room at the heart of Summer Game Fest, I was shown exactly how in a 30-minute demo that proved one thing above all others \u2013 Resident Evil Requiem <\/em>wants to scare you as much as it possibly can.<\/p>\nAt the heart of all this is Requiem<\/em>\u2019s new main character, Grace Ashcroft. As we saw in the game\u2019s reveal trailer, Grace is a technical analyst for the FBI sent to a ruined Raccoon City to investigate a mysterious disease outbreak \u2013 and unlike most other heroes in the series, she\u2019s simply not equipped to deal with what she finds there. Grace has the energy of a classic horror Final Girl \u2013 she\u2019s not a fighter, simply someone stuck in the absolute worst place, at the absolute worst time, and that colors everything about the game around her.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\tMy demo begins with Grace strapped, upside-down, to a medical gurney, having her blood drained by someone unknown for reasons unknown. Getting herself unstrapped less than gracefully, she finds herself in an abandoned medical ward \u2013 the game offers no objective markers, no stated aim, but the goal is abundantly clear. Find a way out.<\/p>\n
What followed was 30 minutes of pure tension I\u2019ve rarely felt from a game demo. Requiem<\/em>\u2019s hyper-realistic looks \u2013 this is a next step for Capcom\u2019s already-beautiful RE Engine \u2013 play with light and darkness throughout. I creep around the ward, searching everything I can for clues. A classic Resident Evil puzzle quickly reveals itself \u2013 a locked gate, a broken fuse box, an ornate door hiding secrets both mechanical and narrative.<\/p>\nIt draws on well-established ideas from across the series, but places them in a new context \u2013 I\u2019m absolutely dreading every new hallway, and finding out what\u2019s behind every new door. It\u2019s almost funny quite how far this section of the game pushes that familiar feeling of waiting for a jump scare to happen. Grace herself is a part of this \u2013 she reacts with audible fear to each new location, and gasps when she hears something<\/em> walking around the hallways, unseen. It puts you in a state of near-constant tension. Where previous games broke that tension with ambushes, or small-scale fights, Requiem <\/em>simply lets you stew in the fear.<\/p>\nYour choice to play in first or third person (and you can switch at any time) might alter how you view all this, but the results are the same. Capcom\u2019s clearly put a huge amount of work into making neither choice feel like the \u201ctrue\u201d way to play. Animations have been tweaked for both perspectives to help it feel natural, never breaking the fearful spell it casts as you quietly pick your way through this truly ominous place.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\tAnd when that tension finally, finally breaks, things only get more unpleasant. After finding a lighter, I use it to creep down an inky black hallway to a nurse\u2019s station, and get my first, full jump-out-your-skin moment \u2013 a diseased body tumbles out of the next door I open. Grace screams \u2013 and then something<\/em> else appears to feast. We saw a glimpse of the Requiem<\/em> demo\u2019s main threat at the end of the reveal trailer, but I got a full look. It\u2019s a monstrous, bug-eyed creature that might have once been one of the nurses working in this ward \u2013 so tall that it needs to stoop through doorways to get around.<\/p>\nAnd from here, the demo switches vibe. The closest analogue in the series is clearly Mr. X \u2013 a stalking threat that can\u2019t be killed, only survived. You\u2019ll need to use every location you\u2019ve found to hide and confuse the creature, picking your way carefully around it to reach your next goal. But there are ideas being drawn from further afield, too. The ward\u2019s looping, terrifyingly humdrum presentation calls to mind Hideo Kojima\u2019s traumatizing P.T.<\/em>, and there\u2019s a hint of Alien: Isolation<\/em> in the way you\u2019re never quite sure how much this creature knows<\/em>. It sniffs the air while searching for you, smashes cover you might have used to hide before, and can yank itself into holes in the ceiling, leaving you terrified that it might appear somewhere else entirely as you explore.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\tThere\u2019s a sense of malevolent intelligence behind it \u2013 at one point, I flee into a side room, closing the door behind me, fully expecting the creature to smash through. Instead, it does something to the lights and disappears, leaving one of the ward\u2019s few safe spaces suddenly as frightening as everywhere else. \u201cSeriously?\u201d, Grace says, summing up my feelings perfectly.<\/p>\n
My demo ends as I finally find the fuse I need to get out \u2013 I manage to scare the creature by smashing a bottle against a wall (another personality trait the game seemingly lets you find out all on your own), and bolt up the hallway to the gate I need to open. It\u2019s a moment of rare gaming triumph \u2013 or at least it would have been if the creature didn\u2019t grab Grace, and drag her back into the darkness. What happens next is anyone\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\tCapcom won\u2019t be drawn on how this section ties into the wider game. Is this a one-off segment in the vein of Resident Evil Village<\/em>\u2019s House Beneviento, or does it represent an overarching gameplay idea; that this is more about powerlessness, and finding ways to avoid danger rather than confront it? That\u2019s a question we\u2019ll have to answer later, but it\u2019s quite the first impression. It might be combining ideas from the past and present of Resident Evil, all wrapped in that choice of perspective, but the outcome is something that feels like a new future for the series.<\/p>\nResident Evil: Requiem comes to Xbox Series X|S on February 27, 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[ad_1] Let me open with this \u2013 Resident Evil Requiem will allow you to play in first and third person. For most games, this would<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":278234,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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