Resident Evil Requiem 🧟‍♀️

[Nag]

It's finally here and I've been playing it... 😁

 

 

Off the bat it looks and feels fantastic, I've really gotten used to these games feeling fairly heavy to play and this feels no different... it's got a nice sense of inertia on the characters and if you've played any of the remakes I think you'll feel right at home.

 

 

Grace seems like a cool character, I really like the small touch with her hands shaking as she aims due to her being terrified... whereas Leon is just a bad ass from the start, I've never been a Leon fanboy but I already like him in this much more... maybe it's the age thing.

 

 

Probably played for around four hours so far but I've not made too much progress due to deaths/reloads... I'm playing standard difficulty with modern saving on my first playthrough... just picked up the level one wristband. Also stuck with third person views for both characters. Rhodes Hill seems like the closest thing we've had to that classic Resident Evil mansion or police station we've had in years... the zombies are amazing and there's more things to avoid in this place as Grace than we've ever had... it's constant cat and mouse.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can't wait to pile hours in to this...

[Maf]

Good job @Nag glad you like it 

[one-armed dwarf]

I've played very little, but this constant, never-ending shuddering breathing thing that Grace does seems like the very first thing people will mod out, or an option will be included to toggle it off, cause holy fuck it's annoying. 

 

I'm having a really rough time with this game's opening, it has a lot of the hallmarks of REs I don't like as much. 6, VII and Village, feels like you have to put the controller/mouse down a lot to watch some cutscenes. I like RE to be either this Metroidvania-lite thing with keys and stuff, or a rollercoaster of well paced action where you're in total control the whole time like in both versions of 4, and 9 definitely early on leans into the things I don't like about the modern direction, unfortunately. But I'm hoping when it takes the guardrails away it morphs into a better game, for me

 

edit, I've done two Grace and two Leon sections, it feels like they swap between them a bit too quickly and neither style has really had a chance to land any impact as of yet. This might just be teething problems with the opening, but it's not a great opening for this. Compared with an all-timer opening like both versions of 4 anyway. 

 

Leon's gameplay is rather strange though, it feels like there's some Dead Rising in there. Enemies dropping chainsaws which spin around the place, lots of physics interactions. There's also a bit of a counter/parry/dodge mechanic if you wait until the last second to shoot something, I think. Something to spend time figuring out. Eventually, when the game stops swapping around constantly

[Nag]

Give the gal a break... she's petrified. 

 

 

Grace's third segment is where you get to spend some time with her, I played for another couple of hours today and I'm still with her now. It's also where crafting comes in to play... zombies take quite a bit to put down (and if they've got an intact head may still become problems)... there's quite a few crafting recipes and with supplies being fairly scarce deciding what's most useful to you is a pretty big decision. 

 

Spoiler

The Hemolytic Injector can be a really good choice... I've taken out the Chef and Chunk using (multiple in the case of Chunk) these, you can also use them on downed zombies which stop them transforming in to Blisterheads which have just started showing up in my game, these things are a fucking nightmare for Grace and the only sure way of taking them out is with the Requiem... unless you like blowing every single bullet you've managed to scrounge.

 

The Zombies are the stars of the show for me so far, there was a duo in one room (cleaner and blood pack dude) I took out the blood pack guy and once the cleaner noticed the corpse she shot over there and started trying to sort out the mess... with her mouth. Couple of minutes later I had to return to the room and the cleaner heard me, she sat bolt upright looking straight at me and stared... didn't move just stared... goosebumps. Then there's the opera singer in the bar... she's great.

 

The game is the most Resi resi has been in ages... 😃

[DANGERMAN]

I've spoilered a bit of your post @Nag I'm not sure if that's common knowledge but I didn't know it. Sounds like it's fairly early though

[one-armed dwarf]

Yeah, I'm having a better time with the game in this short section (care centre). Like, right now, Grace is Steve Burnside tier for me, incredibly annoying character. But they've done a cool thing with the sneaking around gameplay which avoids one of my pet peeves about games like this, where running away is the only option they give. Here, they let you fight back, but it's often a terrible idea with really big consequences. But you can do it, and that makes the difference to me, and the physics of the zombies and ragdolls makes it very dramatic. 

 

It has a bit of that very very early Resi kind of thing where making decisions of whether to fight zombies, or maim them to push them away and run past, is what you're always thinking about due to the harshness of the ammo economy and the shortcuts you can unlock around enemies. 

[Nag]

OK @DANGERMAN... thanks for that. 👍

 

@one-armed dwarf... Yeah the rag dolling is really good in this, I just like the physics full stop, you can brush past some lunging attacks and it's not a guaranteed grab if they get within distance... not sure if it works on the angle of their grab or what but it's a nice touch.

[one-armed dwarf]

I sorted out both of those 

Spoiler

singers

and I've found that the knives are good for interrupting enemies. I don't think we have parries with Grace, doesn't seem her style. But poking them in the eye with a knife seems better than a headshot at close range. 

 

My whole approach is to kneecap zombos, rush up and push them and run around. Did get chomped on once however. When they come swinging at you with a wine bottle it can get rather fraught, wonder if you can crouch and duck under that? You could do that quite often in RE4 remake

[Nag]

I've got to admit my use of the knife has been severely lacking... 

 

I've just taken control of Leon again... time to wreck house.😂

[one-armed dwarf]

I got control of Leon, and 

Spoiler

did not wreck house, just sort of got wrecked. They give you lots of resources, so they know I guess, but he feels a lot slower than in RE4 remake. I put 100 hours into that game and it didn't really come in handy, lol 

 

Then they throw you right back to Grace after like 10 minutes, weird. The flipping back and forth I remain unconvinced by, I don't know what they're going for here. I think I struggled more with the new crimson heads on Leon than I did Grace tbh but at least Leon can take more chomps. 

 

There was a safe I could have opened as Leon, but I did not expect to lose control of him so quickly like that so it will stay locked I guess

 

to expand on this, I think the whole care center section with Grace was great, a sort of mini spenser mansion with lots of wrapping paths and actually decent stealth, in how it impacts other parts of the game I mean, cause sometimes sneaking around zombies is better than killing them due to a certain mechanic in this game that is borrowed from an earlier remake. 

 

Spoiler

But I was too thorough as Grace I think and it meant that Leon's part of the same area felt sort of pointless, there was like 2 or 3 zombies left. They brought a few more back specifically for Leon, but still. It's like a strange version of the RE2 zapping system, where the game 'rewards' you by making the other area easier, but it doesn't quite make sense to me yet

 

I suspect it's a system which makes more sense on higher difficulties, and probably what you're really meant to do is only kill a few enemies as Grace, and always explode them with the purple stuff if possible, leaving as few Crimson Heads as possible, because even as Leon those things are problematic

 

I'm curious about the charms you get for defeating difficult enemies, and if Leon has a different version of them. This could be an interesting game on higher difficulties if you could strategically do certain things as certain characters. Sort of wish this had an Alan Wake II structure, where you had more freedom to choose what character to play

 

[DANGERMAN]

I'm still fairly early in to Resi 9, I've played as both Grace and Leon a couple of times, and am now exploring with Grace. I'll keep this vague, but it turns out not all of the zombies stay in their location, one of them has gone wandering, I didn't realise and was tootling around to pick up an item I'd left, fucking shit myself when I turned the corner and a big lad was walking towards me 😂  In my blind panic I accidentally hit the x key on my keyboard, which is the quick turn, so I managed to style it out 

[one-armed dwarf]

Good thing I read that now, cause I'm on Leon again and if I didn't know X was quickturn I'd be in trouble

 

This is a really messy game I think, Leon's combat doesn't feel good imo. I don't think I've played a character with as much inertia as him, and this is one of those things that you really feel on M&K. I got used to it in 4 and got really good at controlling him, but even at walking speed in this he has such inertia when changing direction, which wasn't the case in 4 remake

 

I'm going to do an experiment and try the FPS mode with Leon cause I'm thinking there's no way they make the movement as heavy feeling on that, if they did, with this FOV, you'd be vomiting

[Nag]

 

I've made it to Raccoon City... which is where Leon's main story comes in to play, which makes sense.

 

Had some really tense areas on the lead up to escaping the hospital with Grace... and some really nice set pieces too. The game is telling me at at 12 hours now, how accurate that is who knows, but I've enjoyed pretty much all of it so far. The actual story has gone a bit crazy with the introduction of someone I thought was long gone, so if it is him I can't wait to hear the explanation for that. Raccoon feels the most open it ever has done... I can almost see where those rumours of an open world Resi came from.

 

Left off today trying to get fuel from the Stagla gas station... and I'm fairly worried by how long I'm mucking about in areas that I'm not going to get this done before I go away for the week next Friday.

[mfnick]

I’ve only put a couple of hours in but so far I like it. I’m really surprised how well switching between 1st person and 3rd person with the characters works. It’s not jarring at all, just feels right.

 

Loving how wonderfully violent it is. The villain is suitably creepy and interesting. In the care home and it’s already feeling like a classic RE area. 
 

Only downside really so far is how stealth heavy the Grace sections have been. I don’t mind dodging zombies but I can’t be arsed with the stealth shite. Leon

Spoiler

has just killed that stalker monster though and I’ve got a gun with Grace now so hopefully that’ll die down now. 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

I think for a lot of Grace's sections later on, stealth becomes optional, but the option is bypassed by being a good shot and knowing when to kill and when to push and shove staggered enemies. Knowing when to use the 'Requiem' is a big part of it as well, and being on top of the crafting mechanics (which, don't get the wrong idea, it's standard RE crafting, deciding when to make explosive syringes or ammo and allowing player expression to dictate it so it's all interesting and feeds into the decision-making like any good RE). I think they combine a lot of styles of RE really well with Grace tbh, turned me around on her, both as a character and as a vessel for RE gameplay, but her one big problem is she reminds me a lot of Morty in Rick and Morty. 

 

I've gotten better at Leon, but this game's whole thing is being this very meta serving up of the greatest hits, but it can veer into feeling like reheated leftovers at times, even in this remake era. It's not as good as RE4 or 2, so I kinda wonder if Leon should be in the game less, which is weird cause I started off wondering why the hell he seemed to barely be in it. That section in Nag's screenshot really took a long time

[Nag]

2 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

It's not as good as RE4 or 2

 

Up to now I'd disagree with that... it'll have to drop the ball fairly hard for me to change my opinion too.

[one-armed dwarf]

I think we'll feel pretty differently on it, but the Leon part in your screenshot ruined the game for me. It went on so long and was just a series of grey rooms to fight in, with enemies that didn't give any of that sort of Dead Rising-esque chaos that I was led to expect from the very first Leon sections. I got lost constantly as well cause it was so dark, grey and similar looking. People criticise DMC5's levels but at least you're moving forward all the time, and the things you fight are interesting to interact with. 

 

I beat the game midnight last night and I think the big Grace section in the first half is really good, like a 9/10 RE game. I know at this point it's tradition to have one really dense area to explore, then for the game to throw you in a series of more linear sections and straightforward levels later on, so I always assumed that the level of detail wouldn't hold for later on. But the quality was so high for the Grace section, and so phoned in for a lot of the Leon stuff. The Leon stuff simply suffers by drawing constant comparison with RE4, where that game has an avalanche of surprising scenarios and interesting ways for enemies, environments and level design gimmicks to interact in surprising ways, but 9 lacks this except for one bit maybe

Spoiler

glass floor, was neat. 

 

So I don't know where I land with it, fairly disappointed I guess. It does improve after the big fetch quest, has some Hideki Kamiya in there, some new (old) enemies to interact with. But the back half lands this game somewhere in the middle of the pile, imo bouncing between RE3 and Code Veronica when it could have been up towards the upper ranks. Lastly the fact that this is a 'Greatest Hits of' Resident Evil game holds it back a bit for me cause a lot of the fan service doesn't really land when I didn't play the classic games until my 20s, I don't really have this fuzzy nostalgia with it. Code Veronica was the first one I played, then 4 when that came out on PS2. So your mileage may vary for when it gets a bit Act 4 of MGS4, or FFVII Advent Children with it (one bit in particular reminded me so much of FFVII AC)

[Maryokutai]

I read somewhere that it's balanced 80:20 in favour of Grace, does that hold true? Because if so and combined with the feedback, I get the impression that Leon is here for marketing purposes mostly, because the series has become too expensive to make a Grace-only horror stealth game.

 

But that's just looking at it from the outside, I've obviously not played it.

[one-armed dwarf]

Definitely not, I think the intended ratio is 50:50 but distributed unevenly through the game. You could spend more or less time with either character as you get more expert with routing on replays, but you do eventually spend a lot of time playing as Leon. 

 

Leon's sections just imo feel really lazy, or at least his equivalent to Grace's big section does. Also I still say horror stealth isn't really an accurate description of what Grace's stuff is about, you can kill everything with her if you're smart about it. 

 

There's still a great game in here. It just has a very problematic back half. Having said that, I am looking forward to trying 'Insane' mode and I think my issues will be alleviated by knowing exactly where to go in Leon's section and having the extra challenge to figure out, maybe the pacing will work better too cause the swapping between characters is clearly designed as a way to alleviate the comedown you often get in the second half of classic style RE games. It just doesn't quite get there for me on initial Classic Standard playthrough

 

I also want to emphasis that the resource management of Grace's section was really well done, especially with the craftable ink ribbons and how that impacts your decision making, and the purple syringes and how to use them

[Nag]

 

I think you have to give the game a pass for being "dark, grey and similar looking" for the Raccoon City parts, it's a bombed out city... there's only so much that can be done with that... Sounds like Birmingham tbf... 😂

 

I've made my way past that pesky barricade, had a jaunt down the highway and had a pleasant return to the RPD... pretty certain I've left off just in front of a boss encounter, the area certainly looks set up for that anyway. Did you see 

Spoiler

Tofu

wondering around the police station @one-armed dwarf? I caught sight of him twice and wondered wtf was going on the first time.😂

 

I'm definitely enjoying the combat more now I've swapped out the starter weapons and upgraded those I've bought... and the game is still sitting high in my Resi league.