Resident Evil Requiem leans too much on the series’ past | The Verge

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Resident Evil Requiem leans too much on the series’ past

Leon gets more of the spotlight when Grace should be the real star.

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Resident Evil turns 30 this year. The series is full of history — the new Resident Evil Requiem is technically the ninth mainline game, but there are a bunch of spinoffs, remakes, movies, and even a TV show — which can make it fun to follow for fans. But it’s also intimidating for people like me who haven’t played everything. The latest release, Resident Evil Requiem, tries to appeal to both sides by starring a new character, the cowering FBI agent Grace Ashcroft, and a series favorite, action hero Leon Kennedy.

Initially, it really works: the first half of Resident Evil Requiem is one of the freshest horror games I’ve ever played. But as the game goes on, it gets bogged down by Resident Evil’s past.

For much of the first half of Requiem, the balance between the two is close to perfect. Most of the time, you’re playing as Grace, and her limited arsenal means you have to be thoughtful about every step and bullet. I was constantly on edge as I crept through the hallways of a medical care facility, narrowly creeping past horrors like a monster known only as “the girl” and a huge zombie wielding a butcher knife. And despite some connections to past games, Grace’s story stands on its own, meaning I wasn’t worried about lore I had missed while I was also trying to survive.

When the game would switch to brief sections in Leon’s perspective, I could take out enemies that I felt powerless against as Grace with relative ease. Leon is more capable in battle than the inexperienced Grace — he’s been through the Resident Evil wringer a few times already — and I felt an immense sense of relief when I was able to kill that butcher knife zombie in a few blasts from my shotgun. But soon enough, I’d be back in Grace’s shoes, experiencing pure terror again and counting the seconds until the game would let me play as Leon for a break from the tension.

The game goes back and forth like this until, after an extremely satisfying confrontation with the girl, Grace just leaves with a mysterious new villain character who basically comes out of nowhere, and you’re forced to play as Leon as he tries to track down Grace in Raccoon City. Longtime fans will recognize Raccoon City as one of the main settings in the series; Leon stars as a rookie cop for the city in Resident Evil 2, and it was eventually destroyed by a nuclear bomb to contain a zombie virus.

In Requiem, you spend an extensive amount of time exploring the drab wasteland that Raccoon City has become, including the ruins of the police station where Leon got his start. But without the push-pull of switching between Grace and Leon, the game starts to drag like an overly long action movie. There were also some nods to previous games, like Leon commenting on a puzzle he once solved, and while they might work for those who know the Resident Evil series inside and out, they were less effective on me. Besides Requiem, I’ve played 7, Village, and both the original Resident Evil 4 and its remake, so none of this nostalgia hit. It just felt like more stuff to get through on my way to finding Grace again for some actual horror.

Requiem’s last main area, a high-tech lab, was a bit more interesting to explore, especially when the game switches between Grace and Leon again. But for a game that sets up Grace as the primary protagonist, I found it disappointing that Leon basically takes over as the main lead, even being the one to fight the final boss. (Which, itself, is a disappointment: a giant plant-like zombie thing with obvious red boils to mindlessly shoot.)

It was all a letdown of a back half to what was shaping up to be one of my favorite horror games. Maybe I’d feel differently about Requiem if I had played Resident Evil 2. But because of Requiem’s reliance on Leon nostalgia, the game’s dual-character perspective, which started out as its biggest strength, became a weakness by the end.

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