- Code provided by Capcom.
- Steam says: Main adventure completed in 17 hours taking all its time.
- Not counting the failures, the adventure would have lasted around 9 hours after the traditional end-of-game screen.
- First run in traditional max difficulty with limited ink ribbons.
- The author of his lines played a milking on an unforgettable long white night.
- Graphic parameters pushed to maximum with RTX 5070 TI, Pathtracing and DLS included to turn at 60 fps (quasi) constant.
- Projection using a 4K HDR projector on an ALR technical canvas.
- Screenshots home.
- Minimal disclosure.
Inherited traits refer to the salient characteristics that are drawn from our parents. The legacy itself is un heritage, a legacy that is said to be natural and should be preserved for one or abolished for another. « Heritage », a word that is also readily stamped on cheap wine bottles, which have no other qualities other than those intended to rely on references of the past. After all, what is merit when it is based only on the success of our forefathers? It's this duality that goes through Resident Evil Requiem. Do we have to see the swan song of a saga that does not end up turning at the nana or the return of blue fear? We have experienced this ninth episode with the intensity it requires on a twilight journey. A game session almost a milking, a white night devoted to horror and that has plunged us back into all the opus until dawn. Back on a saga prisoner of his master stallions like the last judgment of his fans, for better and for worse.
Saga Umbrella
That it seems far and yet so close the time of the first fears of the Spencer mansion and of wandering in the lowlands of Racoon City. In three decades, the saga has been able to redefine the genre(s) more than once, even if it often destabilizes its audience. Capcom's reputation probably owes much to the influence of an illustrious director, a man of shadow whose legacy is certainly underestimated today. With the first and fourth opus, Shinji Mikami the contours of the survival horror in 1996, followed by the GST nine years later with the compressor roller Resident Evil 4 (2005) which will impose as a reference the following decade. A game originally released on Gamecube in the higher version and that players played Playstation until its porting years later. Many of us, thirty well packed, still remember to have made the DVD player run to see a single trailer, in the feverish expectation of the release of the title. A late time that seems to be right out of another planet twenty years later at the hour of the overabundance of images.
Before this turn towards what communicators will gladly call « Horror action »many remember the sacrosanct trilogy. Designed as a variation of the first part, each episode brought its touch of freshness without reinventing the original recipe. Under the influence ofHideki Kamiya, the rising star of Capcom, Resident Evil 2 (1998) was entitled to a shaky development after a return to the starting box imposed by Shinji Mikami himself. From director to producer between the first and his legendary sequel, the founding father of the genre is in radical divergence with his disciple. Mikami is more adept at psychological horror than the great spectacle, so that different artists shook the project. Despite its tumultuous development and extreme pressure, Resident Evil 2 is certainly one of the most glaucous opus thanks to its implication about humanity and its deviances as soon as the state collapses. Certainly, under its B-series airs and its intro FMV kitschissime, Resident Evil 1 (1996) was already hiding a not very optimistic subtext on human goodness, as his eugenic intrigues, born from the hybris of decadent scientists and other demiurges whose series raffles.
With the remake released on Gamecube, it's true that horror will climb again by an extra step with adding the character Torture of the Lisa Trevor, one of the many aberrations and guinea pigs that the firm will operate under umbrella. As regards Resident Evil 2, He introduced more complexity into human nature with forced survivors, if not deviant as the taxidermist commissioner whose documents gleaned here and there guessed his dirty work. The third opus would push the concept of tracking to its climax, while Veronica Code (2000) on the lands of Psychosis. Despite some narrative malfeasances that one hopes to see corrected for his remake pressenti for 2027, the title directed by Hiroki Katō and produced by Shinji Mikami keeps a singular soul and an antagonist to say the least atypical.
The weight of the masters
Mikami and Kamiya are two personalities whose different sensitivities are guessed at each public appearance. On one side Mikami, with a more reserved profile; on the other Kamiya, the exuberant... Two signatures that will never really leave the saga. Anecdote obliges, note that we had met the Kamiya truble in Cologne, on an unlikely one night cruise on the Rhine where we had invited ourselves with Benedict. We can confirm to you that his reputation as a joyful loustic is not a legend. A watered evening at Microsoft's expense that still thought it could win the console war with dollars and curry wursts. Let's go back to our two Capcom line men who sacrificed part of their health to exceed their goals. Two artistic trajectories on the opposite sides for two video game geniuses. The first will conclude his vision of horror with The Evil Within (2014), the second will become the singer of beat them all with the advent of his successful studio Platinum Games which will sign titles as baroque as Bayonetta (2009) and The Wonderful 101 (2013).
This difference of balance and approach between action and horror, fear and delusions great guignolesque will irrigate all the next games until the tip, or rather, the gag of the fifth episode. A decomplex action game that some like Itokiry Would rehabilitate for its primary playful qualities despite its arm of honour addressed to its origins (and its fans); For others it was mainly the swan song of a series ankylosed by its own heritage. Some will recognize that this was the beginning of the catastrophic shipwreck of the Resident Evil 6 (2012) which will plant the last nail in the coffin of horror.
In 2019 and 2020, will follow oscillating remakes between excellence and mediocrity, respectively for the second and third episode. The latter was sadly sloppy and did not respect the followers of good old Nemesis, much less « glues to the Basques » that in Playstation games. This is the time of the remakes when Capcom became aware of the heap of gold on which his empire still rests. And because of this, this nostalgic appetite should return more beautiful with the announcement of the likely recasts of Veronica Code and Resident Evil 0 (2002), the two naughty little ducks of the saga.
Resident Evil Dead
In 2017 and 2021, Capcom takes everyone from class with the very successful doublet of episodes seven and eight. Exit the glubi-boulga from family life, with its burlesque turn assumed, the two titles moved us away (almost totally) from the paths of Umbrella. It was a beautiful parenthesis, a tribute to the deranged and other psychopaths, like a curious three-way house Jack Torrance and the slashers of Tobe Hooper and dEvil Dead. MaG will soon come back to this unexpected burlesque carnival in a dedicated article. Resident Evil 7 and its direct aftermath, Village, were like an unhopeful epiphany after the field of ruins left by a sixth episode that many would still want to forget. Ummagumma is always haunted by Wesker's son and the spider-zombie yakuzas who ducked everything that moves to the Uzi! There are cults that it would be better to profane...
A dynasty affair
You will have understood, out of opportunism, the family has always crossed the saga, even sometimes turning to the big anything when, for the umpteenth mission, the old breakers of the series pile up to save the world from a new epidemic. Long before the conspiracy, Epstein and the reptilians, there was Umbrella and her sbires pulling the ever more stupid script strings from Resident Evil. Following our first contact with the game This summer, in a horrific presentation (in the common sense of the word), we were pretty sure that Requiem I'd be back with the gross horror. Naïve as we were, we had certainly flaired that we would get away from the burlesque parenthesis of Ethan, however successful it may be and we were especially pleased that the series took (finally) its flight in front of the heavy legacy of Mikami and Kamiya. Despite her distant kinship with Resident Evil Outbreak (2003) and Louisiana's house of toques Resident Evil 7 (2017), by letting us embody Grace Ashcroft, Requiem seemed to emancipate these cumbersome characters. After exhausting the hen with golden eggs of remakes and countless portages, was Capcom finally going to mourn his heroes with frascs and adventures hard to match with the return to primary fear?
The sum of all fears?
If there is a golden rule for surival horrators, it is to blind ourselves to any editorial communication so as not to spoil the surprise before playing the title itself. A challenge that is not a small deal when we see the advertising baton that accompanied the release of Requiem. An effort rewarded to believe the more than five million copies sold around the world in just five days, erecting the title as absolute record for the franchise and certainly one of the most popular games of the coming year. If it was impossible not to know that Léon S.Kennedy would be one of the playable characters, we still escaped the rest. In RequiemWe alternate between sequences with Grace Ashcroft, FBI agent in charge of investigating a series of sordid murders at the Wrenwood Hotel, abandoned for years, and Leon, who also came to the site after strange deaths and disappearances. This is where Grace's mother was murdered eight years earlier. First shock for the player, from the very first moment, one feels the desire to propose a dynamic montage, very close to that of a thriller. In massive printing capitals, the letters flood the screen: « FBI office ». The transitions are modern and we are now projected into the tumult of this gloomy and frightful Midwest city, which is a reminder of New York's effervescence in autumn.
Requiem Already succeeds a bet and not least, it exceeds and by far all the openings of the saga so far. The title is bathed in cinematographic influences: the discovery of the Wrenwood hotel so summons the cult Seven (1995) that the game Condemned : Criminal Origins (2005) of the late Monolith Production. The attention to detail forces respect, especially on the bikes equipped with the RTX 5000 graphic card range. All parameters in ultra, the pathtracing and the DLSS activated, the combo flies with absolutely dazzling lights of realism. On a projection canvas and in spite of the 92 inches diagonal, no unpleasant artifact is distinguished, which is a technical feat rising Requiem among the most beautiful games of the genre. The white curtains of a window leave out in the air, suddenly the storm floods the room of light with a frantic thunder: everything is done to hold the player on the quiver. No music to condition jump scare, we're alone with Grace and slide into the character's skin with a confusing natural. The staging shows a particular modernity.
Stoic antagonist of Requiem seems to have much to do with the Joker, camped by Heath Ledger in the trilogy of Christopher Nolan, as well as the serial killer swollen by Longlegs, Incarnate by Nicolas Cage. The mysterious scientist who takes us hostage shows an implacable charism while releasing a quiet force: that of the one who does not grant himself any second of uncertainty. The gesture is measured, the soft words and the performance of the actor make us forget these piles of pixel that overflow with life! The same goes for Grace, where her stuttering and her panic impulses betray the unfavorable trauma. The horror experienced by the character precedes that of the player, contaminated by this initial state of stress. The horror is deaf, carpeted in the shadow. No jokes, no decompression zones; Like an in camera, everything is done to make the player feel trapped in the narrative.
When it is said, these sequences with Grace, naturally proposed in view of FPS are the best of the title. Where the passages with Leon are in the third person and follow the architecture of the gamedesigns of RE4, 5 and even of 6, those of Grace bring us back to situations of stress unmatched in the saga. Far from being completely fragile, Grace does not have the same arsenal as Leon. Certainly, the latter will entrust him with the powerful magnum Requiem but with only one bullet in the barrel, enough to deprive the player of all hope. With Grace, we count the bullets in the dropper and it is impossible to eliminate the many threats we face. Leaking becomes the sine qua non of any survival attempt worthy of this name. Capcom shows a crazy generosity during the first half of the game and allows itself to multiply the original icy creatures, like the monster that hunts us all the time. The beast recalls Lisa Trevor as much as Goya's black paintings, more precisely Saturn eating her children. To escape him, we will have to take refuge in the light. Clinically effective, these bold passages are not the only ones to grasp the player at the guts. Like a certain Alien Isolation, the player integrates his vulnerability by constraint and scarcity of resources.
Racoon's Ghost
Locked in a hospital that takes over the configuration of the mansion and the precinct of the previous games of the 90s, one must think about the least displacement. Each initiative is a risk taking and the ideal opportunity cost will have to be calculated by integrating the few munitions we have left in the barrel of our charger before any intrepid adventure. Like the Crimson Heads the remake of the first Resident Evil, Requiem resumes the idea of living dead who return (again) to life after remaining on the ground for a while. Without achieving the same degree of tension in classical difficulty, the idea remains excellent. In demential mode, this is a completely different story and this mechanics promises nerve attacks, while some enemies rise almost instantly! More robust and speedier, monsters then remind the infected of The Last of Us and they can quickly overflow the player. Before unlocking the demented mode, you are advised to play in traditional difficulty. During sequences with Grace, this obliges you to save to the old by means of ribbons that you will have to find beforehand. Each backup is counted and, only then, exploration becomes rewarding.
Newness obliges this episode, the dead-living are more evolved. Here, one of them marmons with his broom that it must be clean, there an infected woman sings a gloomy serenade. It's like the returners are alienated. Each passage from one room to another gives the impression of slipping into a new atmosphere. The title leaves little respite between interconnected rooms and, often, it feels like you're running away to jump into the wolf's mouth. Requiem unconsciously refers to the imagination of the lobotomized slaves of cotton fields that gave birth to the word « zombie ». Rattled by their old existence, they remain prostrate, haunted by their old activity. This is not just a cosmetic concern and the range of attacks of enemies will also depend on their past lives. Same for the objects they leave on the ground. Other big mastocs such as the butcher in the canteen pose a serious threat and some enemy attacks add a lubricated and perverse side to the attacks. We feel that sadism of The Sadness It's been there.
Where Leon picks up money foolishly on the bodies, Grace's characteristic is much more coherent and organic with the game universe. The FBI investigator can collect blood from the corpses and synthesize remedies and other useful bonuses. The first part of Requiem is all the more effective as the puzzles and traditional safes protected by codes guide the player's steps to force him to take risks. Viewing the map is essential and recalls the essence of the first trilogy. As for the hordes of returnees, it is the Resident Evil 2 All spitting. Pure happiness!
Umbrella's funeral postponed sine die?
When you switch to Leon, the gameplay changes at all. Leon 2026 seems straight out of the disillusioned characters of Blade Runner. With its Porsche Cayenne, its Hamilton watch and its large, abusively long cannon, that it seems far away from the era of the blueberry that was taking its first steps in Racoon in the midst of an epidemic. You said bling-bling? Even if Leon partly takes over the character design of the aborted prototype of the Resident Evil 4 In 2003, we feel that Capcom wants to make the former disillusioned cop a new James Bond avatar. As with Chris Redfield, we shoot and think after! Funny way to summarize masculinity... During the first half of the game, the passages with Leon are shorter and rare; especially they are more measured. The transitions show a lot of intelligence with brief, subtle backlashes that one guesses to simple details, like an announcement in a speaker that had not been raised in the stress of action, when Grace was controlled, chased a few minutes earlier by an infamous beast. The game can hold the player in breath by changing in extreme characters at the most perilous moments....
With his body-to-body gameplay, equipped with a tomahawk and a large caliber, Leon does not make lace. We can set off some blows with our sharp axe and kick back Walker sauce, like the good old days of Resident Evil 4. The gameplay is also boosted by skids made at the right timing. Unfortunately Leon's lightness contrasts with the scenes with Grace, especially on the second part of the game where the main roles are reversed. It's like Capcom couldn't figure out between the psychological horror and the big show. Patratras, back to square one! The traumatized but combative young woman goes to the background by a somewhat rude screenplay gimmick and Leon arrives... Racoon, more than twenty years after the epidemic!
Two-speed liturgy
Despite a chilling arrival in the atomised city since the third episode and after a boss as unexpected as original, the rhythm collapses in Racoon, before resuming more beautiful as soon as we leave Leon. The return to known land also disappoints artistically. Where the interiors of the buildings were full of details with Grace, the passages in Raccoon are gloomy and soulless outside of the police station, which rests far too much on the nostalgic fiber of the fans. We are light years away from the emotion experienced when we crossed the ruins of The Last of us. Worse still, the burgundy gameplay is rooted in a semi-open area that breaks all that the game had built so far. Then settles the feeling that the ride puts us back on the tracks of the already seen. The references to fan service are multiplied to an extreme and the return of the old demons of the series come to seek to link the different episodes with a confusing malfee. Read Racoon's reports to see how the script has neither tail nor head since the events of the Spencer mansion
Fortunately, the game resumes its breath during the last third but evil is consumed. The player struggles to forget the frantic beginning of adventure and he starts to imagine what the experience could have been, had Capcom assumed to separate from his former star characters. Where Requiem Could have played the role of Naughty Dog's flagship title excellence in writing and taking risks, the title simply gives the best but also the worst of what fans expected. Too bad Capcom couldn't complete his gesture without worrying about the returns of these most loyal supporters.
Requiem celebrates the memory of a legendary saga for an unbalanced result. The Mass is said but will Resident Evil ever be able to mourn his master stallions? The last born of Capcom has a bad name and struggles to draw a line on his past. Although Requiem is a rich and varied experience, we feel how hard the title struggles to free itself from its own legacy in its second part. If the sequences with Grace are exceptional, those with Leon, much more generic, lose in intensity as adventure unfolds, as if it were necessary to systematically defuse horror or that Capcom did not feel completely ready to abandon his heroes yesterday. Like an old footballer who would sign the contract too much, shouldn't he rather let Grace live her adventure? Without ever turning to a bad game, this ninth episode leaves the feeling that he could have managed to accomplish what others succeeded before him. With the budget of a blockbuster, like the cult series Twin Peaks, the franchise Alan Wake signed with its sequel a game unwitting all the expectations of its most fervent followers. It is probably this path that Capcom should have taken to maintain the excellence of the first half of the title. That being said, would the publisher have sold five million copies in five days by turning his back on his most reactionary fans? Requiem remains a very good cru who could have become a vintage if he had assumed to push his bold line to the end. If you easily give in to the singing of the mermaids pa
For
- Beautiful graphics
- The best saga opening!
- The Seven Fibre of the Introduction
- Modern staging
- Part I
- Ancient exploration
- Rich and varied bestiary
- Grace's character
- Enigmas that raise the level
- The feeling of oppression with Grace
- Antagonist class
- PC options at tune
- Incredible lighting
- The return of ink ribbons
- The really insane mode
- Finally contextual animations
- Gameplay alternating between 1st and 3rd person
Against
- Why don't we just sit down with the past?
- Leon... over and over again
- Fan service too displayed
- Stupid and unfinished scenario
- Armed zombies do stain
- Disappointing music with Leon
- The OST of the trilogy to buy separately
- Breaking pace at half the title
At all points agree with your test! I had an excellent time on Requiem, but I was disappointed by the passages with Léon (TPS effective but lambda in greying and naughty decors, abrupt change of tone) and I found that the title was cruelly lacking in coherence, unlike RE7 and RE Village who assumed their horrific and aesthetic bias. I would have preferred a 100% Grace adventure.
In fact the whole first half of the game is TELLLY successful that it's as if suddenly everything was crumbling when the game turns to decomplexed action. Nevertheless, I will do it again with great pleasure in Dementia!
Thanks. I think I'll soon remake Rebirth and the fourth opus in difficulty. I'm in my Survival launch but my greatest expectation is to remake the Last of us on video pro and all the parameters pushed to max.
You'll enjoy it! For TLOU make them in Grounded (the hardest level), it's absolutely funny! Every ball and every decision counts, and you're in danger all the time.
Definitely planned!