RESIDENT EVIL requiem

Ohoho, it is good to be back.

I played this on my PS5.

RESIDENT EVIL requiem, or RE9, or RE9uiem as I like to call it, is the newest Resident Evil game. If you're reading this then you may already know that I played through (practically) every Resident Evil (and Silent Hill) game a few years back, so suffice it to say I'm something of a fan of the series. Where Resident Evil 7 and 8 sort of function as a standalone duology however, this game very much feels in conversation with the series as a whole and honestly feels a bit like a greatest-hits for the franchise.

About half of the game is structured like, and by default looks and plays like, Resident Evil 7, in that much of it has you playing (in first-person) as new-protagonist Grace as she wanders through the sorts of places you'd expect to find in this series. She'll be solving puzzles, using items on other items, and just generally doing classic Resident Evil stuff. Grace's sections also often introduce powerful enemies without giving you any reliable way of dealing with them, meaning it's usually wise to avoid direct conflict whenever possible. Village was fun, but it was more in line with 4 and the action-y entries while this game seems just as tense as the classics. There were countless times when a jumpscare legitimately startled me, and the sections where you play as an underpowered Grace consistently left me feeling nervous and on-edge. It ruled. 

Creepy stuff.

One reason I found it so tense was because I opted to play the "Classic" mode which forces you to use ink ribbons when you want to manually save. I believe some recent entries have had a mode like this, but I'm not sure whether they were selectable from the jump (or, if they were, I certainly didn't play them that way). Regardless, playing a survival horror game where I'm trying to limit my saves means that, yes, I'll occasionally need to replay long segments when I fail, but it also means that I have that much more of an incentive to not fail. There's some legitimate fear and tension there, a real sense that dying could set me back some amount of time and force me to replay sequences of the game multiple times if I'm not careful, and that honestly took me back to how I felt when I played the earliest games in the series.

The other half of the game puts you in the shoes of fan-favorite character Leon. His characterization feels a bit like it did in 6, but he has the face he had in the remakes and he plays like a cross between the RE4make and RE6. As I mentioned earlier, Grace's sections play like RE7, which itself was a lot like the classic RE games. This game is a hodge-podge of elements from throughout the series and yet, despite it all, it works.

Leon's still dreamy...

I could talk about how they brought in a mechanic from the remake of Resident Evil 1, or how they sort-of-canonize one of the spinoffs, or how they actually seem to be following up on a different spinoff's loose end from, uh, two decades ago, but specific allusions and connections were incredibly fun to discover on my own. And it's not just them incorporating plot points or bringing back locations, there are also mechanical and thematic elements that heavily evoke things found in earlier titles. A lot of love clearly went into this game.

As a bit of an aside, I have a friend who seemed dead-set on spoiling things which was... not great. I didn't get any of the late(r) reveals ruined for me, but hearing about mechanics and a character that both didn't appear until several hours in did kind of put a damper on some of my time with the game. Maybe it seems petty to bring this up, but I happen to like being surprised by things and I really don't appreciate just having the pacing and intent of a story pulled out from under me like that. I mention that because, well, there are some fantastic reveals and references in this.

As a sort of joke, a different friend and I made two Bingo boards before we played the game. One featured a bunch of returning mechanics and elements from earlier games that we somewhat sincerely thought might show up, and the other was effectively just a list of RE characters we could come up with. Somehow, we got a bingo. There were some characters and concepts that were suggested and thrown out (because they seemed too far-fetched) that made an appearance as well. This game is callback city.

There are some deep cuts in this.

Somehow, though, it doesn't feel cheap. Sure, some of it may seem like little more than fanservice to some but personally, as a fan, I happen to like being serviced! This is a series with a rich history, they should absolutely be allowed to lean into and embrace that history when given the chance. Resident Evil 7 and 8 proved they could reinvent the wheel and create new, standalone entries in the series, but this game very much feels like a continuation of what RE1-6 were doing. It may not be a globetrotting adventure, but it's about the BSAA and a conspiracy and returning threats and just generally seems like a game that isn't necessarily meant for newcomers. The series has been on an incredible hot-streak since 7 and this game feels like the culmination of everything that's come out in the past decade.

Lastly, I was playing this and, after going out of my way a bit, found something that I can only describe as part of an ARG. After solving a puzzle I was treated to a cryptic message and some sort of code, and I still don't know what the heck it's all about. I've pictured the thing I found below, but a friend told me about another code he seemingly found in his playthrough and, combined with an arbitrary puzzle I solved involving a roulette wheel and some other stuff surrounding an assortment of other objects, there's clearly something hidden in this game that I have no idea how to solve (though, apparently, the community has cracked it). That's super cool! Obviously I'm reminded of the rush to solve PT, yes, but there's also the RE7 demo, The Beginning Hour, which featured its own obtuse steps you needed to follow to reach the "true" ending. Nothing in the series (maybe barring Gaiden) feels off-limits here.

Stumbling across this organically was wild.

The game does keep track of how many times you've saved, but it doesn't record that information at the end. I ended up saving 16 times, and my PS5 says I spent roughly 26 real-time hours playing the game (though a fair amount of that was spent while paused). I played through this on the "Standard (Classic)" difficulty and I've included my clear screen below.

I love this game. It was the first time I got to play a Resident Evil at release and, because of that, it was maybe the first time I've ever been able to be truly surprised by an entry. They're able to have their cake and eat it too by creating classic survival horror locations while also letting you do sick action-hero stuff in those same locations. I don't know how it compares to other games in the series at this point and I'll still need some time to reflect on how I feel about the game's pacing, but my immediate reaction is to say that this game is fantastic. I had a wonderful time.