This year's Summer Game Fest stream opened with a good amount of applause for Resident Evil Veronica, a remake of Dreamcast game Resident Evil — Code: Veronica.

Code Veronica is especially ripe remake material since it's notoriously easy to inadvertently softlock yourself in the original. The series hadn't quite undergone its mid-aughts action-movie reinvention (though this is arguably where that direction started to emerge, what with the John Woo-inspired CG opening), so you were still grappling with awkward tank controls and at the mercy of brutal encounters that really stung if you hadn't conserved your ammo and ink ribbons—the only way to save your game.

Despite the quirks, it's a standout horror game on the Dreamcast, and even though it eventually made its way to other consoles with the Code: Veronica X remaster, it never made it to PC.

Given how past REmakes have gone, I wouldn't be surprised if this cut all the funny business and reimagined Veronica with less finicky controls, amped up by modern Capcom's snazzy visual tech and the original's puzzle-heavy exploration.

No gameplay footage came with the creepy cinematic, but we know the remake is planned to release in 2027. With rumors of a Resident Evil 0 remake also on the way, I'm hopeful that future REmakes will focus on games that shine despite some rough qualities, and therefore benefit most from reinvention, rather than the all-time greats that play perfectly fine even now.

Resident Evil and the devs working on the series are currently rolling off the high that was Resident Evil Requiem's launch. As the fastest selling RE game ever, and with some glowing reviews (I gave it a 92 in our Requiem review), it's abundantly clear that the fans want more. And while nothing's been confirmed, the devs have been sharing some ideas.

In a recent interview with Japanese news site Futaman (via Automaton) producer Masato Kumazawa revealed that amid all the brainstorming for future projects, a Resident Evil game set in Japan has crossed the minds of the dev team.

"I think a Japanese setting is something every Japanese Resident Evil fan has thought about," Kumazawa says. "And I’ve also considered it myself. Since the development team is primarily based in Japan, I think every member has given it some thought. While Japan hasn’t appeared as a game setting so far, it might make an appearance at some point in the future."

"If we keep releasing the same kind of game over and over, players will eventually get bored, so we’d like to keep taking on new challenges moving forward."

Kumazawa goes on to explain that the devs aren't massively concerned with following any strict rules for the location of Resident Evil games, or even the timeline for that matter: "We do adjust the timeline based on the assessment that present-day stories help players feel more immersed. The timeline also changes depending on the characters and story we want to portray in each title. Even in Requiem, we have scenes set eight years prior, as well as even earlier periods. So, where the timeline goes from here will depend on the specific title."

Apparently, the team only started portraying characters aging with Resident Evil 4. Requiem is the most obvious case of this with an aged-up Leon initially sending shockwaves through the fanbase.

But just because there's no solid ruleset to follow doesn't mean the devs are going to get too wacky with it. Kumazawa promises fans that they "won't compromise the core elements of the series" such as characters and the events that unfold and will "continue to preserve what the series holds dear". Which I'm guessing means allowing eccentric scientists to keep getting hold of the T-virus, make some disgustingly violent creature with it, and then leave the pen open for it to escape and wreak havoc—you know, classic Resident Evil stuff.

We rather like Resident Evil Requiem here at PC Gamer—our own resident horror expert, Elie Gould, gave it a stonking 92% in their Resident Evil Requiem review, claiming it provides "excellent action set pieces accompanied by great weapon handling, some truly horrendous horror, and satiates my love of classic Resident Evil puzzles. All within 10 hours."

That's some hefty praise, but now you don't just have to take their word for it (though you absolutely should, they know their stuff), because despite the fact it came out three whole months ago, Requiem now has a playable demo.

"The demo version allows you to play part of the game's early stages. Please note that save data from the demo version cannot be transferred to the full version of the game," Capcom states. The demo itself follows Grace Ashcroft waking up in the Care Center, but it also gives you a taste of Leon, if that's what you're into.

It's an interesting move by Capcom, given Requiem wasn't exactly struggling for sales. Back in April, it was revealed that the game had sold seven million copies in just two months—a number that's likely only increased. For comparison, the Resident Evil 4 Remake took a whole year to pull those numbers.

Maybe it's just a means to keep the ball rolling. After all, if the word-of-mouth about your game's pretty good, a demo's a good way to turn prospective players into buyers. Pragmata enjoyed a huge amount of buzz due to its demo, so Capcom might just be looking to repeat that trick here.

It'd pair nicely with Capcom's seeming desire to stack value on top of the game, too—adding a surprise roguelike mode called Leon Must Die Forever earlier this month. First twink death, now this—I almost feel sorry for the guy.

You can try out Grace Ashcroft's very bad time now via Steam or the Epic Games Store. Or, if you happen to be one of those PC Gamers with a console or two kicking around, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and the Switch 2.

The hype is building for Zach Cregger's upcoming Resident Evil film. The first trailer released just a few weeks ago, and since then fans of the series have been drip-fed more information about Cregger's take on the iconic horror series, with his latest interview explaining what serves as inspiration for this film.

"Resident Evil is kind of the flagship for survival horror," Cregger says. "What I love about survival horror games, and Resident Evil mostly is this overwhelming feeling of dread. Where it's like I have to go down this long dark passageway I have two shotgun shells, I know there's a lot of shit in there waiting for me and it's all really bad but I had to go." Yeah, we've all been there Cregger.

One of the worst encounters I've had in a Resident Evil game was actually pretty recent, with it being in Resident Evil 8. Now some may know what I'm alluding to without me even having to explain any further. But for the record, it was that god damn giant fetus baby that lay underneath the house of Donna Beneviento.

Stripped of all the items and weapons I'd gathered thus far in the game, all I could do was run and hide from this giant baby that was calling out for me. What should have been a quick 20 minute segment ended up taking me almost an hour as I kept having to pause and catch my breath before continuing on down the dark labyrinth underneath the house. So, yeah, I'd say an "overwhelming feeling of dread" is a pretty good way to describe Resident Evil.

But unlike some of the more classic games, Cregger is taking a page out of Resident Evil 7's book: introducing a civilian into the mix who has no prior combat training or knowledge of weapons.

"I had this idea for a story in the world of Resident Evil, but it's kind of like me, like if I was dropped into a Resident Evil game," Cregger explains. "I'm terrible with guns I wouldn't know how any of them work I would miss 99% of my shots." This is accompanied by a genuinely funny shot of the protagonist Bryan missing a close-range shot on a door lock, I feel that pain.

"I loved the games, I played the games, I don't know how many thousands of hours, but too many. This is an opportunity for me to be loyal to the games in spirit and in tone, and build a story that just puts you in that scenario again, and again, and again with increasing stakes."

From what little I've seen alongside all the interviews and explainers Cregger has put out into the world, I'm actually pretty excited about this Resident Evil film—a sentence I never thought I'd hear myself utter.

Resident Evil Requiem has received a new bonus mode in a free update, and by golly it's fabulous. It also has a great name: Leon Must Die Forever. And I'm sorry to say for all the Leon-fanciers out there that, yes, you're going to see Mr. Kennedy dismembered in many different ways.

The mode requires you to have completed the game's story, after which it appears as an option on the main menu. It's a feature-packed roguelike that offers multiple paths through various of the game's environments, on-the-fly 'enhancements' that change up Leon's abilities, new enemy variants, multiple boss fights, and an overarching meta-structure that sees you earn points on each run and unlock abilities, weapons, and costumes for subsequent playthroughs.

The goal is to reach and defeat big bad Victor Gideon, but it's a lot easier said than done. On my first runthrough I got to the second area before being careless with a blister-head which wasted no time before biting Leon's face off. On my second I reached the Super Tyrant before getting absolutely clocked by a flying car and swiftly bisected by his claws. My third… look, it's not called "Leon Must Die Forever" for nothing.

Capcom's notes say that "multiple difficulty levels are available, including an extreme high-difficulty mode for only the most confident players", which presumably unlocks once you've completed a runthrough or two (I haven't yet gotten close). Each time I played the weapons I found were different, the enhancements changed, and I suspect that once you start completing runs other elements will change-up too.

There's also a time limit, which I didn't find especially onerous, but that's also probably because I died on every run without getting close to running out of time. There are weird little gold spiders that scuttle around which reward more time when shot, and you also get time bonuses for killing certain enemies in certain ways.

The enemy variants are colour-coded and reward particular strategies. Red enemies are more resistant to gunfire, for example, but weaker to melee and hatchet attacks. Blue enemies have giant health pools, but are super-vulnerable to being parried and hatchet-ed. And then in amongst these are scattered the game's various mini-bosses and tougher standard foes.

As for the enhancements, some of them are simple buffs while others offer trade-offs, and you earn points towards your next choice by just killing stuff. Some are fairly straightforward: I had one that increased headshot / weak point damage by 50% but decreased damage when you just hit the body. Others lock you into a particular playstyle, like a perk that massively increases grenade damage and gives a chance that a grenade won't be consumed when thrown, but also debuffs all of your firearms. Which led to a fantastically explosive run that ended unceremoniously when I ran out of… erm, grenades.

Finally, you choose your routes by where you exit your current stage, with big red doors dotted around the environments, rather than choosing from a menu: so get ready for some exploring. The first stage is relatively gentle, as this mode goes, and does seem to be more about starting on a particular build and gathering a few weapons, but after that it ramps right up and doesn't stop until Leon's a bloody corpse.

First impressions? Yes please and thank you Capcom. The Leon combat in Requiem is just outstanding, and this builds it out in multiple ways while throwing everything plus the kitchen sink at you. I've been banging my head against Insanity mode since completing Requiem and, while I'm ever-so-slightly disappointed this isn't Mercenaries mode, Leon Must Die Forever is a really well thought-out and meaty addition to what was already one of the year's best games. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get eviscerated again.

Our first look at Leon Kennedy in the lead up to Resident Evil Requiem's release was a momentous occasion. Many fans had theorised his return to the series ever since we realised Requiem would return to Raccoon City, but seeing a 50-year-old Leon in the digital flesh still made almost every fan giddy with excitement.

My biggest concern, however, was that Capcom would break my heart by killing off Leon in Requiem, as it was stated very early on that he'd be pushed to his limits. Luckily, that wasn't the case (sort of), and while he was a little slower and certainly more hunched over Leon defeated everything that came his way in Requiem.

The final cutscene even hinted at the possibility of another Leon escapade, or perhaps just a reunion with Chris, and by the sounds of things director Koshi Nakanishi doesn't see why we couldn't have many more years worth of Leon's one-liners and suplexes.

"I think Leon is really appealing in his current form," Nakanishi rightfully explains in an interview with Eurogamer. "And who knows, we could bring him back when he's 70, and I'm sure he'll still be a great character." Well I'm certainly sold, playing as a 70-year-old Leon Kennedy sounds sick.

Nakanishi follows this up by addressing the future of Resident Evil games and how "it's not a cast iron rule that whenever we come up with a new game and we decide to release it here, that we have to exactly age everyone up to match it or anything like that." It doesn't seem as if Capcom feels "the need to replace [its most recognisable faces] with younger characters ... we don't really think of it in those terms."

Honestly, that sounds pretty good to me. All the scenes with Leon were excellent in Requiem, and while I did miss Grace in parts, racing through Raccoon City on a motorbike may have been some of the most fun I've had in a Resident Evil game in quite some time.

"We did want to gradually introduce [humour] so it isn't like as soon as Leon appears, he's just wisecracking constantly and slightly breaking the horror spell," Nakanishi explains. "So I think we kept his one-liners and whatnot to relatively few near the start. And as his scenes ramp up in intensity and he becomes more accustomed to the situation, we let him off the leash a bit more, and a bit more Leon-style craziness starts to happen, building up towards the end of the game.

"You want to decide which scene is going to be the maximum amount of peak Leon craziness, then keep it as the top level and not go any further, because you do need to balance it with other more serious scenes. So while Leon does motorbike up the side of a skyscraper and has a sort of crazy vehicle chase, he also then has more reflective scenes: where he arrives at the destroyed Raccoon City Police Department and is thinking back to his first day on the job; the scenes about his infection. We want to try and include the fun craziness, but also then have it conclude and give players a chance to get a bit more engaged in the serious storytelling aspect of the game."

You get a fair amount of 180s in Requiem, especially as Leon progresses through Raccoon City. On one hand he's cracking jokes, launching himself off of skyscrapers, and taking on Shelob-like spiders without a hint of fear. And then the atmosphere shifts all of a sudden, such as when he found the remains of Emma Kendo.

I loved getting to play as an older Leon Kennedy in Requiem, and I'd be well up for more adventures with my favourite grey and grizzled protagonist. Although I'm sure at some point Capcom will do to Leon what it did to Jill and inject him with something that slows his aging or perhaps even stops it entirely—anything's possible with the T-virus.

The biggest draw in Resident Evil 9 was undoubtedly Leon Kennedy, but if I'm honest the zombies came in a close second. With yet another mutated strain of the T-virus, these infected are freaky in a whole new way, with many retaining their original memories and habits.

"It's creepier to see that they're slightly more human in the sense that they're repeating certain actions," director Koshi Nakanishi says during an interview with Eurogamer. "It almost looks like you could go up to them and talk to them and ask them what's happening. But of course, they wouldn't be able to reply. And that unsettlingness of them being almost human, but not quite, is something we wanted to use as the core of making them scary this time around."

We had cleaning zombies that would scrub furiously at the walls and floors (and your face if you got caught), chungus zombies that couldn't stop eating, and a couple of BSAA soldiers turned undead that would pepper you with bullets if you got too close.

As Nakanishi explains, the biggest draw of this T-virus strain was really to offer something new for longtime fans who've gone through every iteration of the Protenitor virus thus far: "This terrifying idea they were once human, but they're not anymore. And seeing that reflected back on the person is what makes it scarier than just a monster that was never related to a human being. But we've seen so many zombies over the years that if we can't make them do something a little out of the ordinary or unpredictable, then they start to become more difficult to make consistently scary."

These new zombies were slightly more unpredictable than previous infected I'd come across—whether that meant taking an IV stand to the face or learning that these infected can not only operate military mortars but are actually pretty accurate with them. I was humbled quite a few times throughout Requiem, but I was better for it—it kept things interesting.

"We want to try and push things in terms of horror and fear," Nakanishi adds. But there is such a thing of pushing horror too far, and with that in mind finding the balance between these zombies was integral to the flow of Requiem.

"We don't want it to be so scary and so unbearable that a large swathe of the fan base doesn't want to play the game or can barely keep going," Nakanishi says. "So there's always a sweet spot to try and hit where it's an addictive kind of fear, where you're scared, but you want to keep going, to keep having that thrilling experience."

"It can be scarier in scenes where there aren't any zombies yet," producer Masato Kumazawa adds. "Because the tension of not knowing where they're going to come from, or if they're going to appear at a particular moment, can be scarier than the specific moment you actually encounter a zombie. So that pacing of when to introduce a zombie into a scene or into a section of the game is really important; I think maintaining that tense fear throughout is what I'd say is scarier to me than just a jump scare or having constant threats."

Rhodes Hill Hospital was by far the scariest part of Requiem. Everything was still fresh, unknown, and playing as Grace in first-person during these early stages provided some of the worst (and best) scares I've encountered in a Resident Evil game. Leon's sections balanced this out with masses of unapologetic action, and as time went on the zombies became less scary and more predictable, but it was fun while it lasted.

We just got our first look at the upcoming Resident Evil movie which is being directed by Zach Cregger yesterday, and despite looking surprisingly good fans seem to be wondering how exactly it fits into the canon of the games.

"My rule for this movie was to try and make a movie that felt like my experience of playing the games, that could live in the world of Resident Evil," Cregger says in an IGN trailer breakdown. "This movie takes place alongside the events of Resident Evil 2, I like to think that everything going on inside the police station could be going on in this world; it's just another dude, on another mission on the other side of town."

A crucial piece of information, though, is that Cregger isn't incorporating any of the videogame protagonists, so while Leon is doing his thing in the police station his path won't intersect with the film's protagonist, Bryan: "It's an alternate storyline that takes place on the periphery of the hero’s storyline, so it’s a story that could be happening without necessarily breaking the universe of the story the games are telling."

We're seeing a very opposite experience of Raccoon City's fall through the eyes of Bryan. "It’s like if I were thrust into a Resident Evil video game," Cregger says in an IGN interview. "I’d be totally unequipped. I’m not good with guns. I’m totally out of shape. It would just be me panicking from one situation to another.

"I think it's just fun to be following someone with no combat experience whatsoever as they're walking through hell with a machine gun."

Instead of trying to create a carbon copy of the games this film will be honouring Resident Evil in a different way: “What’s important to me, that I’m honouring from the games, is the narrative structure and following one character from point A to point B, and the concern with resource management, ammunition conservation. We start with a pistol, we graduate to a shotgun, we graduate to an MP5, and things are just getting progressively more intense, and we’re encountering weirder and weirder monsters.”

Throughout the trailer you can see Bryan searching for ammunition, stumble across an exact replica of the green herb from Resident Evil 4, and at one point even try to grab some keys off a corpse, although that doesn't go too well. "On of the other things that's in this movie that comes from the games is the need for keys and padlocks being barriers," Cregger explains.

But one of the best ways in which Cregger looks to take inspiration from the games is in how the film is shot: "What was really fun for me was to try and shoot this visually the way these games are told. I shoot in on a wide lens in an over-the-shoulder for most of the movie, so it feels like the way you play a game where we’re kind of perched on his shoulder, and as he turns a corner, we turn a corner with him. So I’m using video game visual language. First of all, it’s very inherently cinematic, but it also makes things scarier."

One way in which it will deviate is the bombing of Raccoon City, that won't happen, at least not in this film: "I know that Raccoon City gets nuked and I'm a little fuzzy on the timeline of when the nuke drops versus the day Leon sets foot in the police station—that nuking doesn't happen in this movie. This exists like day one in Raccoon City."

That could still line up, though. Resident Evil 2 takes place over a single chaotic night but seeing as the bomb is dropped roughly a day after Leon and Claire escape it wouldn't mess with the canon to not see a mushroom cloud at the end of this film.

If I'm honest, though, I'm not that concerned with this being a faithful adaptation, I'd rather it just be a great movie. This is the most excitement and hope I've ever felt for a Resident Evil film, and I really do believe Cregger when he says that this movie is "a love letter to the games, that I fully, fully obsessively love".

I've watched all the Resident Evil movies, but even worse, I kind of like them. I don't think they're particularly good movies, or even good ambassadors of the games, but they're a fun watch, especially if you want to have a laugh with friends. I'd resigned myself to the fact that this is all Resident Evil movies would ever amount to: a kind of funny way to pass some time—I don't think I'm ready for a genuinely good film take on Resident Evil horror.

In walks the trailer for Zach Cregger's upcoming Resident Evil film.

I've been quietly excited to see what Cregger would come up with ever since I first heard he'd be directing this film. I'm fan of both Weapons and Barbarian for each's left-field way of creating tension and how it captialises on that to create some really scary moments. With this in mind, Cregger seems like a really good fit for Resident Evil. But still I didn't want to get my hopes up, I've been burnt too many times.

However, without getting too excited, the debut trailer for Resident Evil captures everything I'd want from a serious Resi film. The fact that this film is intentionally focusing on a civilian getting swept up in the outbreak is reassuring. Resident Evil's action is fun as all hell in the games, but has always come off as way too cheesy in the films, it's always hard to take it seriously.

But protagonists aside, the best part of this trailer had to be the zombies, because holy hell did they look horrifying. What the hell was that huge naked zombie in the sewers, and the limbs coming out of the dark hallway, chef's kiss.

The different strains of the Progenitor virus and how it mutates and presents in different infected is what makes the games so interesting and horrifying. In Resident Evil Requiem the mutated strain of T-virus not only causes death, mutations, rage, and cannibalism, but it also retains the vague memories and habits of the infected. They complete tasks, use weapons, and are a particularly tormented and tragic bunch to encounter.

So I'm very happy to see how the zombies in this trailer look like more than just dead hunks of flesh which act like background filler rather than the unnerving and terrifying threats that they are. Oh god—I think I'm getting seriously hyped up for a Resident Evil movie in the grand old year of 2026.

Resident Evil Requiem managed to snag the spot of my favourite modern Resi game on release. At just 10 hours long it managed to have me hooked for every zombie jumpscare and complicated puzzle. I didn't think it could get much better, but now I'm finding out that there was even more to it.

"I've mentioned in interviews before that there was a phantom 'Chapter 2' for Resident Evil 7 that was cut during development," director Akifumi Nakanishi explains in an interview with Denfaminicogamer. "It was a scene where you move from the first annex to the main building. But actually, there was also a phantom Chapter 2 for Resident Evil Requiem.

"In the process of finalising the game's structure, we make a lot of choices, like 'Let's move this scene further in the story,' 'Let's cut this part out completely,' or 'Let's add a different element here.'"

Nakanishi doesn't explain in any more detail what this phantom chapter could have entailed, but it likely would've slotted between Grace leaving Rhodes Hill Hospital and Leon's segment shooting his way through the derelict outskirts of Raccoon City. This means it could've been something minor like us getting to drive around in Leon's shiny new Porsche or even perhaps even a trip to the Arklay Mountains, although that's probably worth a whole game in and of itself.

"We don't just suddenly cut things out at the end of development; we often make repeated revisions during the initial, rough draft stage," Nakanishi adds. "In that process, it's quite common for entire chapters to disappear. It's similar to editing text or video. We shoot a lot of footage, arrange it, and think about whether the intended message comes across, how the tempo and interest are, and then we cut out anything that's unnecessary. Surprisingly, sometimes the overall result is better if certain elements are omitted. Subtraction is really important.

"Having a lot of information can change how users perceive things. When I first started working on Resident Evil, I was told, 'Resident Evil may look difficult, but it has to be understandable even to casual gamers who don't usually play games.'"

While I don't actually have many complaints about subtracting or even the length of Requiem—I quite liked the fact that, alongside many other Resi games, it was doable in a weekend—I do think that an extra chapter slotted into Leon's Raccoon City ventures would've been great.

Don't get me wrong, I love playing as Leon as much as the next Resi fan, but I found Raccoon City lacked some of that horror/action balance that the Hospital section managed to strike. I missed playing as Grace and destroying my blood pressure.

"Of course, the person who produced it will be disappointed and may even get angry, but if the result is good, everyone will be satisfied," Nakanishi says. "Conversely, that means we have to take responsibility for the result." The end result was certainly nothing to turn your nose up at, so while I do wish we could've had a little more time with Grace or even another character, I think that structure that Requiem ended on worked well enough.

Between getting beaten up by blister head zombies and running for dear life from The Girl, I spent a great deal of time, perhaps too much time, trying to figure out how the hell I could solve The Final Puzzle in Resident Evil Requiem.

After hours and hours of staring at a bunch of numbers that somehow corresponded to the moon, star, and sun symbol, I gave up on figuring it out myself and opted to wait for the masses to take a crack at it.

It only took four days. With the help of a little datamining, that is. But even still, the accomplishment was so great it even managed to surprise the dev team.

"Wow, that was quick," director Akifumi Nakanishi said in an interview with Denfaminicogamer. "We did something similar with the 'doll's finger' puzzle in the demo for Resident Evil 7, and even then I was worried that nobody would be able to solve it. But when we actually released it, it was solved in half a day.

"So, regarding this 'final mystery,' I intended to design it as something that would last at least two weeks. Even within the development team, people were saying, 'I don't think anyone will notice this.' But as you can see, the result was very fast."

Producer Masato Kumazawa even added: "When I heard about it from Nakanishi, I said, 'No way, nobody will be able to solve this!'"

There were many outlandish parts to The Final Puzzle, but the most ridiculous was undoubtedly the grinder part. After completing all the prior steps perfectly, once you reached the conveyor belt and grinder in the basement you had to wait there for 15 minutes until the belt ran out of bodies to put in the pit. Only then is the stage set for you to jump in and try to survive several more minutes of the grinder running—while avoiding all the zombies that stand up, rather than killing them.

Some fans theorised that the point of this arcane process was supplying enough blood to the grinder to flood the system and bring the doll floating up to the surface, but Capcom has yet to confirm that theory, or the reasoning behind the next absurd step. After surviving the grinder you had to go back to the Hospital's bathroom and flush the toilet eight times.

What do you mean that's convoluted? There's a picture of a dead body in a toilet stall with the number eight scribbled in blood next to it—sort of—so obviously that means you need to flush the toilet eight times to flood the system, to get the doll, to reunite the doll and Emily in the next playthrough, to complete the symbol puzzle with the doll and Emily, to get a little message and 20,000 in-game currency, god. Keep up will you.

Resident Evil Requiem offered up two protagonists, two ways of playing its horror game, and two perspectives, with the choice to switch between first and third person at any point throughout the game players could finally decide just how scary they wanted to make things.

If I'm honest, I reluctantly did my first playthrough as intended: Grace in first person and Leon in third. But then as soon as I started my subsequent playthrough I switched to third person throughout. I told myself it was so I could experience all the stumbles and falls that make Grace's third-person so unique, but frankly I'm just a coward, plain and simple. What's worse than being a coward, though? Finding out no one else is.

Director Akifumi Nakanishi recently revealed in an interview with Denfaminicogamer that a minority of players switched to third person while playing as Grace: "Looking at the data from about a month after release, we can see some interesting trends. First of all, for the first playthrough, about 90% of people play Leon's scenario in TPS mode. On the other hand, in the Grace chapter, 60% of players play in FPS mode, while 40% switch to TPS mode."

Playing through Grace's sections in first person was truly horrifying. The basement section took at least five years off my life, what with all the monster jumpscares, flickering lights, and stealth sections; my poor blood pressure will never recover.

I know I'm not the only one to have given in to the appeal of third person (it helps me dissociate). But really the choice whether to go first or third person is just a preference, driven by what other games players have experience with.

"In fact, there are clear differences in this data depending on the platform and region," Nakanishi explains. "Players in Japan and other parts of Asia tend to prefer TPS games, while on PC, the number of players who play FPS games increases."

"I think familiarity with the game genres that players are used to playing is a major factor," producer, Masato Kumazawa adds. "From the development side, the results were largely as expected."

The beauty of having two protagonists in Requiem, though, was that it would push players towards different styles. There was the action-oriented side which favoured third person for its strategic view of the battlefield which made taking on larger groups easier. Then there was the horror, which was largely Grace's domain, and which worked well with first-person because it made the action feel more chaotic and suffocating.

"In this game, we chose to feature two protagonists, Leon and Grace, who have very different gameplay styles," Nakanishi adds. "Because we were confident that this would allow us to create a wider range of emotional fluctuations for the player than ever before."

That it certainly did. Although my range of emotional fluctuations went from B-lining down dark hallways as Grace in first person with my heart in my mouth, to hunting down any and every zombie that crossed my path as Leon with absolutely no fear. There wasn't much in between, if I'm honest.

If you needed any further proof of the terrifying cultural potency of Leon S. Kennedy, here it is: Resident Evil Requiem has sold over 7 million copies in just under two months. The latest in a string of Capcom sales successes, the milestone makes Requiem the fastest-selling Resident Evil game to date.

While Capcom hasn't circulated a press release officially confirming the figure, the milestone was shared on game director Koshi Nakanishi's Instagram (via Twisted Voxel), where he posted a photo of Capcom staff honoring the achievement with a pair of celebratory Resident Evil-themed cakes.

Capcom also hasn't circulated a press release confirming the quality of the cakes, but we can presume they were delightful.

Resident Evil has already been setting series sales records for years: In 2021, Resident Evil Village sold 3 million copies in four days. In 2023, the RE4 remake smashed that success by selling the same amount in half the time. By selling 7 million copies since its February 26 launch, however, Requiem needed just two months to cross a sales milestone that the RE4 remake took a year to accomplish, having sold 6.48 million units in February 2024.

Earlier this week, industry analyst Mat Piscatella shared some additional context about Requiem's impressive sales performance: According to Circana sales data, Piscatella said "Requiem now ranks among the top 5 best-selling Resident Evil games in all-time US dollar sales," with only Resident Evil 5, the RE4 remake, Resident Evil Village, and the original Resident Evil 4 still ranking ahead of it in lifetime US sales.

Content - After just two months in market, Resident Evil: Requiem now ranks among the top 5 best-selling Resident Evil games in all-time US dollar sales. It trails only Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil 4 (2023), Resident Evil: Village and the original Resident Evil 4.

— @matpiscatella.bsky.social (@matpiscatella.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-04-24T21:02:56.905Z

It's not just Resident Evil that's posting admirable numbers for Capcom, either. The company announced on Monday that Pragmata, its Xbox 360-core scifi shooter, had sold over a million copies in just two days. And given that Monster Hunter Wilds is poised to culminate its redemption arc with an expansion reveal this summer after finally addressing its glaring performance issues, the company can probably expect to see another sales bounty in its future.

Everything, it seems, is coming up Capcom.

Resident Evil: Requiem is my favourite Capcom game in years, and one reason for that is it gets genuinely scary at times. That's not just in the Grace sections either: Leon might be a complete badass but, on Insanity difficulty especially, the game doesn't hesitate to swarm you with teeth and claws, alongside some truly horrible death animations.

So if it all gets a bit much, might I suggest just making all those nasty monsters super small? It's hard to be scared by a cleaver-wielding zombie chef when he doesn't even come up to Grace's kneecap, after all. Such joys await thanks to the straightforwardly named Enemies Scale Modifier from modder lucablight83

The mod requires RE Framework installed to work, but after that the script will let you modify enemy size in both directions: you can shrink them down to 10% of their original size, or scale them up to 300% larger. The effect is toggled with an in-game button and slider that should apply any changes instantaneously, though of course there are some glitches with things like enemy clothing when you suddenly make a room full of zombies into miniature zombies.

The mod's creator also notes that "sometimes, when the enemies are killed, there are weird physics glitches, like the bodies move on their own (or even fly away...)"

One side effect of this mod is that it actually makes Requiem both funny and much harder at the same time. Leon's opening scene now features a load of normal-sized NPCs fleeing in terror from tiny zombies which are quite difficult to shoot and, while it's hard to feel intimidated by a pint-sized doctor with a ludicrously billowing coat, it's also not easy at all to put him down. As for the likes of Chunk, he ends up looking almost cute. Almost.

Pair this up with the mod that turns Leon's Porsche into a driveable hamburger, and we've almost made Requiem into a comedy. If you want a mod that's a little more serious about how it ups the challenge, how about one that makes zombie bites actually infect you. And for the true sickos, yep, there's already a mod that lets you play the whole thing in VR: no thanks!

The Steam Deck seems like a lovely machine for tackling retro games, since they tend not to guzzle storage space. That doesn't mean their Steam versions are always deck verified, though—if you've hit this wall trying to replay Capcom classics like Dino Crisis or the OG Resident Evil games, you'll be pleased to hear better days are coming.

A report on Steam Deck HQ shares yesterday's Proton Experimental patch notes, which see a bunch of games getting promoted to "playable" status. From Dust, Metal Gear Survive, Warhammer: Vermintide 2 and a few others are included, alongside Resident Evil (1996), Resident Evil 2 (1998), Dino Crisis, and Dino Crisis 2. These old-but-gold survival horror games finally arrived on Steam this year after a very long wait.

Granted, this is only if you enable Proton Experimental and the games aren't yet verified, so it won't be a perfect experience. The above Steam Deck HQ states that Dino Crisis 2's FMV cutscenes still aren't working as intended without community fixes. But if you've been itching to get jumpscared by a dog leaping through a window while riding the train or during a work Zoom call, now's the best time to make that happen.

It's good to see the old-school Resident Evil games getting some love, even if both remakes of the original are impressive in their own right. While the bigwigs at Capcom might not understand why I'd want to try the OG games when the new ones are right there, it seems completely obvious to me: sometimes a thing that was good in 1996 is no less good in 2026. And even if it sucked, you can't have those snazzy remakes without the original to crib concepts from—that I can play the classics on the go these days just sweetens the pot.

Before joining the hardware team here, I spent a significant chunk of my early career writing for Official PlayStation Magazine UK—and not even I am excited for the next Sony console.

When I pre-ordered my PS5 back in 2020, I never once considered I was actually getting a good deal at the time. For context, I'm UK-based, and I love my Blu-rays, so I paid £450 for the basic version of the PlayStation 5 with the disc drive back in late 2020. But since then, the PS5 has gone up in price not once, not twice, but three times since launch; if you want to buy the same basic PS5 I have today, it will cost you $650/£570/€650.

That a console, or any ageing hardware really, would get more expensive with this amount of distance from launch is kind of unprecedented. For perspective, the basic PS4 cost $399/£349/€399 back in 2013, and I paid £279 for the 1 TB model in late 2017. With runaway pricing like the PS5's, it's hard not to wonder what the point of a console even is anymore.

The memory supply crisis is in part to blame for the PS5's rising price tag. Sony is apparently considering pushing back the release of the PS6 until 2028 or even 2029 due to 'rampant AI demand for memory' according to Bloomberg. While that gives me some time to save my pennies, I doubt I'll be getting the next PlayStation console on launch day or otherwise.

For a long time, console gaming genuinely seemed like the most cost-effective way for me to play all the games I wanted at decent fidelity. That relative affordability is one reason why I stuck with console gaming for so long, and resisted getting back into PC gaming until relatively recently. That isn't to say I'm under any illusion that PC gaming is even slightly more affordable; it's absolutely a point of despair for me that some folks are fully spending much more than $650 on their GPU alone.

If the PS6 comes out with mouth-watering specs at a price point of, say, $800 or likely more, that may well be the 'cost-effective' option for someone who doesn't already own a gaming PC. Still, now more than perhaps ever before, it feels particularly difficult to justify the expense of such an expensive, separate box for games, plus about $70 for each major release I then want to play on top. At least on a PC, I can answer emails too, I guess? Gaming has always been an expensive hobby—and that's true now more than ever—but even on a severely underpowered PC, there's still a wealth of games to enjoy.

A significant drawback on going all-in on PC is cutting myself off from PlayStation-exclusive games, as Sony has recently backpedalled from bringing headliner acts like Ghost of Yōtei to PC. It's not hard to understand the reasoning behind this move, as exclusive games like this would've been a hardware seller once upon a time. Ghost of Yōtei itself builds on everything that made Ghost of Tsushima a razor-sharp samurai epic, but it's also another massive game with cinematic aspirations.

Huge open worlds have become PlayStation's bread and butter. Considering brand new games increasingly cost upwards of $60, I see the argument for getting your money's worth. Unfortunately, having played a whole lot of them, I've simply fallen out of love with the sort of big-budget efforts that have come to dominate the console landscape. In other words, I've got big game burnout.

"For a long time, many games have been focused on creating these infinitely replayable, high-retention, forever experiences," Night Signal Entertainment co-founder Nick Lives recently said, "Either their magic works on you and you actually play them forever until you die, or else the spell wears off and your last impression is getting burned out. I think a bunch of players are gradually warming up to the idea of self-contained, satisfying one-off experiences that can leave you on a high note."

Case in point, I really dug Night Signal Entertainment's off-beat, supernatural customer service sim Home Safety Hotline. Like many of the games I've played, finished, and enjoyed on PC lately, it's a focused experience—costing much less than $20 on Steam. If you're looking for a few more self-contained games costing close to $15, I'd also recommend the original Perfect Tides (teenage angst in a point-and-click wrapper), and Ambrosia Sky: Act One (think Power Wash Simulator but with more story and space fungi).

Heck, even Resident Evil Requiem is under 10 hours long, and lends itself well to multiple, increasingly overpowered playthroughs. Unfortunately, at 60 bucks, it's the most expensive of my recent rotation. It's also the game most recently that has justified my continued ownership of a PS5, as I happened to play it on console. It's Resident Evil, man—ain't no way I'm playing it on anything other than a PlayStation.

Besides maybe the PS5 Pro's PSSR upscaling tech (which enjoys the same 'core' as AMD's FSR Redstone anyway) and uncovering the mystery of who exactly Leon S. Kennedy is married to, there's little about PlayStation's future that truly excites me. For one thing, if the ageing PS5 already costs about 700 smackers, I dread to think just how pricey the PS6 will be.

When it comes to consoles, Nintendo appears to be the sole entity that still sort of understands the assignment. Just in terms of price, you can pick up a Switch 2 for $450/£396, though this console will likely also see a price hike before long. That's also without mentioning how Nintendo games tend to retain their value over time, or the fact I'm currently considering pre-ordering the $60 Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream (I've decided the demo was just that good).

Our Ted has already made the case that the Switch 2 'looks like every other console now: A worse PC with a few exclusive games'. While I'll concede it's not reinventing the original Switch's wheel, that hybrid design still offers something PC has yet to fully crack. Sure, you can 'dock' the Steam Deck, but it's not really as elegant an experience—though I'll grant you there's nothing elegant about the enduring spectre of Joy-Con stick drift.

On the subject of exclusives, Pokopia has become something of a system seller for the Switch 2 and, having spent 25 hours with it myself, I can absolutely see why. Despite having written for PlayStation publications for a huge chunk of my career, it's the Nintendo console I'm currently reaching for. How's that for words I never thought I'd write…

Mass Effect Legendary Edition's photo mode was a constant temptation, pulling me away from dramatic moments to check how they'd look with vignetting turned off and maybe a filter. So I'm kind of glad I finished Resident Evil Requiem before its photo mode was patched in. Firing it up today, I lost a chunk of my morning to checking out all of Leon and Grace's poses and stickers and how they look kicking like a maniac.

While the amount you can move the camera away from the characters is limited—maybe something for modders to fix—this is a decent time-killing photo mode. It could do with a way of changing light sources though, like the one in No Man's Sky that lets you move the sun wherever you click, because otherwise you're just cranking the brightness up and hoping details in the background become visible before the foreground gets washed out.

Photo mode was added as part of a patch that also fixes some bugs, though the patch notes are incredibly vague. "Fixed a bug that caused progress to be impossible under certain conditions." OK, that's good, I guess. "Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash in some circumstances." I would love to know more? "Character expressions in some cutscenes have been adjusted to better convey emotion." I hadn't noticed a lack of expressiveness, but maybe I was too busy being freaked out myself to check if Grace looked properly afraid.

Now, of course, I can give Grace a cheery smile in every photo, as well as make her look like she's skanking in the direction of danger. And I can make Leon look like he's adjusting his hair every five minutes, which just makes sense.

To bring up the photo mode press Escape and then R, or select it from the pause menu. If you're in the middle of a canned animation you won't be able to move the camera, but you'll still be able to apply filters and tweak the lighting.

Do you want to play Resident Evil Requiem in VR? If so, seek help. Your fear gland may be broken and next you'll be jamming a fork into the toaster just to feel something. In the meantime though, go ahead and download a mod that lets you be Grace Ashcroft, an FBI desk jockey so out of her depth when she gets back she'll have the bends, in senses-shattering virtual reality.

I enjoyed Resident Evil Requiem a lot, sticking to the default viewpoint options of first-person for Grace and third-person for Leon. (I have to point out you can change these in the menu because if I don't some chucklefuck will be along to explain it as if we don't know already.) Seeing things through Grace's eyes that way was scary enough, especially when she was seeing the shadowy outline of something far too large slithering out of a hole in the ceiling at the end of the hallway I needed to get through.

After a bit of that, bouncing back into jolly third-person to watch Leon S. Kennedy's bulging biceps (the S is for the size of his shirts) as he hatchet-murders a dozen zombies then says a quip is an ecstatic relief. It's a perfect formula for a series that's often struggled to reconcile its survival horror roots with its shift to action-movie dopiness, making one the dessert you enjoy after the meat-and-potatoes of the other.

Anyway, if you're made of sterner stuff than me and played Alien Isolation in VR while chewing gum and generally not giving a shit, then go ahead and download RE9VR as well as its requirements ViGEmBus and REFramework. You will apparently need to pop your headset off and play flatscreen to solve puzzles at computers, but otherwise you should mostly be able to experience Resident Evil Requiem as if it's really happening to you. You maniac.

Resident Evil Requiem's Hamilton watches aren't the only product placement in Capcom's latest action-horror thrilltime. There's also Leon Kennedy's Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT, which he hoons around in when there isn't a convenient motorbike nearby. But if you'd rather not see your middle-aged action hero in a high-performance SUV, modder SinderyMonk is here to help.

The Patty Wagon mod swaps that souped-up sports car for a drivable hamburger right out of SpongeBob Squarepants, so that you can rep for Krusty Krab rather than Porsche. Seeing Leon's ultra-serious face grimly staring over a Krabby patty elevates every scene it's in.

We've already pointed out the first sexy Leon mod, but in the last couple of weeks the shitpost modders have really been busy. There's a mod to replace Chunk with Shrek, one to replace The Girl with a chibi character from Umamusume Pretty Derby, and for the arachnophobes there's one that lets you swap the giant spider for modder favorite Thomas the Tank Engine.

It's not all gags and memes. We recently highlighted a mod that makes Insanity mode even more brutal by turning zombie bites infectious. Like all of these mods, you'll need to install REFramework first to load it.

Voice acting: It can't be that hard, right? You never have to worry about hitting your marks or where your eyes are. Like Ron Perlman said, you go in, you rip it, you get your 40 bucks and your ham sammie, and you're outta there. Right?

Well, no, of course not. Good voice acting is a skill unto itself, and it's not easy. (And to be completely fair to the esteemed Mr. Perlman, he also said voice actors are "a pretty elite group of people" who represent "some of the most talented people in the entire business.")

And because they're reliant solely on vocalizations, voice actors sometimes even have to go a little above and beyond their on-screen counterparts to get the job done: Such as in the case of Angela Sant'Albano, voice of Grace Ashcroft in Resident Evil Requiem, who as part of her audition had to spend an extended period of time audibly dying, while various undead indignities were inflicted on her soon-to-be corpse.

"We did a lot of improvisation," Sant'Albano said in an interview with Polgyon. "We did a couple of scenes that [Capcom] had already written, and then one of the improv prompts was, 'I need you to die for about two to three minutes, and I'm going to time you. But you can't die quickly. It's got to be a slow burn of a death. And you've got to give a death cry at the end'.

"And then, while I was dying, [casting director Kate Saxon] would give me new instructions like, 'and now a zombie has bitten your left leg'."

While Sant'Albano has numerous television appearances to her name, Resident Evil Requiem is her first game credit, and she said performing the motion capture presented some unique challenges. Doors, for instance: "There's a door, but it can't be like a 3D door, because that would block the camera sensors or the cameras," Sant'Albano said. "So it's a fake door but you have to approach it the way you would a real door. You can't wrap your hand around the fake handle, because that's not realistic."

Requiem might be Sant'Albano's first game credit but I think it's a good bet it won't be her last, given its success: Capcom announced today that the game has surpassed six million copies sold, a milestone it achieved faster than any other game in the series.

I had tried to the best of my ability to downplay any expectations I had for Resident Evil Requiem during the run up to its release, how could it possibly live up to the hype? But it was all for nought, because it's an absolute banger.

I've already gushed about it enough in my Resident Evil Requiem review, but it's also clear that I wasn't the only one who enjoyed it so much, not by a long shot. Capcom revealed that Requiem has since sold 6 million units in an Investor Relations press release: "Worldwide sales of Resident Evil Requiem, now exceed 6 million units, which is the fastest that a title in the series has reached this milestone."

It's not exactly surprising. Requiem has received some glowing reviews, is currently sat at "Overwhelmingly positive" on Steam, and managed to pull in 270,000 players in the first two hours on release, the most of any Resident Evil release. It has since reached a player count peak of 344,214.

"Going forward, Capcom plans to implement several measures, such as ongoing support and additional game content, so players can continue to enjoy the title longer," the press release says.

Director Koshi Nakanishi has already announced several new features coming to Requiem such as a photo mode and new minigame which'll be added sometime in May. Work on DLC has also already begun at Capcom but that could take a while as Nakanishi urges patience from fans: "It will take some time, so we ask for your patience and hope you'll look forward to it."

"In addition, the Resident Evil series will celebrate its 30th anniversary on March 22, 2026," the press release continues. "Capcom is readying various plans for this anniversary to delight series fans, such as a collaboration between Universal Studios Japan and Resident Evil Requiem in 2026, and orchestral concerts in Japan, the US, and Europe." So if you enjoyed Requiem then you'll be able to keep the good times going with more content and collaborations coming up.

Resident Evil Requiem is now and likely will, forever, be in the forefront of my mind. I'd set my hopes so high I really didn't think Capcom could manage the monumental task of meeting them, and yet here we are with the best modern RE game yet. I feel truly spoilt.

As you can probably tell from my Resident Evil Requiem review, I loved pretty much everything: the action, puzzles, and even the horror. But even with all the motorbike chases and Chunk showdowns there's still one part of Requiem that gets on my nerves, and it's right at the end.

Major story spoilers for Resident Evil Requiem and Resident Evil 7 ahead

After making your way through a decimated Raccoon City, chopping through Plant 42, and navigating ARK, yet another underground Umbrella facility, you finally come to the end game where you as Grace get the option to either release or destroy Elpis. The catch being Zeno only promises to spare Leon if you release it.

After absolutely no internal deliberation, I decided to hell with it, the world can burn, I'm saving Leon. Luckily, that was the right choice, as Elpis was not a virus but a cure—something the game hints at prior to the end. You don't just spare Leon from getting a bullet to the head, but also cure his infection and save Sherry and Emily, alongside countless other Umbrella test subjects I'm sure.

This ending also gives you an extra boss fight against a Victor Gideon in Nemesis form, after which Leon and Grace get out of ARK and the BSAA save the day, and there's even a post-credit scene. All's well that ends well. Needless to say, this is the good and also canon ending.

Alternatively, if you choose not to release Elpis, Leon dies, ARK collapses, and things go so badly the game even asks you whether you want to take another shot at your decision. It's pretty clear that this is the wrong choice.

But if it's so bad, and clearly not canon, why add it? I've since come to terms with the bad ending by simply playing it off as a failed skill check, or something of less significance, but the most frustrating part of it all is that it's given me war flashbacks to Resident Evil 7's end choice, and by god did I hate that.

Spoiler: At the end of the house section of Resident Evil 7, before you get on the wrecked ship, Ethan gets a choice. Save Mia, his girlfriend and the reason he came all the way out to a remote house in Louisiana, with the anti-mould serum. Or you can save Zoe with said serum, the last survivor of the Baker family and someone who actually helped you get through some tough spots while in the house.

I chose Zoe. I know that wasn't what the game wanted me to do, but I'd had enough of Mia. She'd lied, implicated Ethan in this mess, and then acted like a liability throughout the whole game. I did not appreciate getting an axe embedded in my chest. Unfortunately, that triggered the game's non-canon ending. Zoe gets calcified and killed by Eveline, and Mia dies from the infection.

I was happy enough with my decision but to my horror, Mia was waiting for me at the opening of Resident Evil 8. She was back, and my valiant effort to cut the toxicity out of Ethan's life came to absolutely nothing.

Luckily, Requiem's end choice didn't give me anywhere near as much whiplash as Mia did in RE8, perhaps that's because it had prepared me for this moment. But still, let's not even joke about killing Leon, even in the bad non-canon ending.

If you're one of the 9.2% of Steam users who've already beaten Resident Evil Requiem on the unlockable Insanity difficulty, you're probably in need of a fresh challenge to tide you over until Capcom releases that upcoming story DLC, and hopefully mercenaries mode (they zoomed in to Koshi Nakanishi's face when he said "mini game," it's mercenaries).

Good news, then, for those who like it when Resident Evil leaves you sobbing in a corner, clutching your last green herb like a rosary. Bites Matter—Infection leans into the 'survival' half of Requiem's survival horror, making each zombie bite infectious. Even more dastardly, the infection gets worse over time until you treat it with rare healing items.

Each time you're bitten, you'll get a 'stack' of the infection. The more stacks you've got, the faster your health will drain. The infection will gradually add more stacks until you treat it with green herbs. The more herbs you mix together, the more stack you'll heal, and you'll also buy yourself temporary relief from your health going south. So, three herbs mixed together will cure all but one of your stacks. It'll also give you 30 blissful minutes where all you have to worry about is getting your cheeks nibbled off by a Blisterhead. There's also an option to have a med injector completely cure the infection, but it's disabled by default.

I'm a fan. I'm sure there's some deeply convoluted reason why most Resident Evil protagonists are immune to zombie bites but, aside from the Outbreak games, we haven't seen the series really explore the idea outside cutscenes. It's obviously unacceptable that Capcom would ever ask me to suspend my disbelief about anything, but at least I can use this mod to heighten the realism in the game where a man who looks like this strolls around the streets without anyone freaking out until he starts shooting infect-o-darts.

It's a simple one to install, too. All you'll need is the RE Framework and quick copy paste of the folder. Although if you'd prefer Requiem to have a bit more whimsy instead, you could always just replace Leon's Porsche with Spongebob's Patty Wagon.

We just can't get beyond Raccoon City, can we? From Biorand's screwball silliness to Requiem's post-apocalyptic return tour, it's all gotten a bit familiar. A bit… safe.

But no longer: Now is the age of sickos, and thanks to Resident Evil 2 Remake's slightly barmy Chinese modding scene, the most popular game in the series has become a rich ground for one-upsmanship and sharing of challenge mods. Resurgence Of The Dead Shadows is one of the newer big releases, one of the most actively updated, and it WILL kill you and laugh about your demise.

So why would you want to play a Kaizo-style Resident Evil 2? Because it's a fun challenge and frequently very funny. Right off the bat, this mod dials up the shenanigans to 11. I couldn't stop laughing on my first run through the prologue area at the gas station. My first discovery is that I needed some C4 to blast open the door, and my second surprise is that the bomb's beside the Raccoon City road-sign… and Mr X.

So, I grab that, run like hell, plant the bomb and oh no—Mr X brought the family.

Mr Y, Z and the rest of the alphabet gang joined the party, along with a half-dozen zombies, and I can't even draw my gun yet. And just when I thought I'd got it all right, the bomb went off just as I was passing it after a panicked lap around the forecourt. Game Over. And I'm just one minute into an extended 10+ hour campaign. And if you can't laugh about that, this might not be the mod for you.

But if that does sound like fun (in a perverse sorta way), setting up this mod is similar to Berserker for RE4R, but with a couple extra steps, as Capcom's update adding ray tracing to RE2R broke a lot of mod support:

• Install the non-raytracing version of RE2 Remake on Steam (This is important!)
• To do this, right-click on it in Steam and select Properties/Game Versions/DX11_Non-RT
• Grab Fluffy Mod Manager, download it and unpack it anywhere you like
• Run Fluffy Mod Manager once to get updated
• Run it again, go into Downloads and download RE Framework
• Download Resurgence Of The Dead Shadows and place it in Mod Manager\Games\RE2R\Mods
• Launch RE2 Remake from within the launcher and begin.
• You'll know it worked if the gas station is boarded up and everything goes to hell from there.

Despite the silly, death-defying (or more likely causing) opening, this mod is designed to be consistently beatable even on the highest difficulty. Very hard, but doable. Yes, there's extra enemies everywhere, but you'll frequently find full boxes of 60 bullets, and Leon starts with a rapid-fire pistol that will be fully upgraded within the first hour. Easy mode even cuts you some slack, with a pile of bonus items and a fully loaded minigun just inside the police station. It's a power trip if you want it to be, but masochists get in free.

Being a Kaizo-style mod, there's no real rhyme or reason to the placement of new elements beyond 'it's funny'. For the most part, the new additions are fairly smart, with slowly opening gates forcing you into endurance fights and some creative re-routing on puzzles and key items giving the adventure a very different flow. It's also really stupid in places, with a pair of suggestively posed (but fully clothed) zombies getting posthumously freaky with it in the lobby of the police station.

Expect the unexpected, including bonus Mr X fights as a requirement to progress, repurposed bosses, lickers rudely sneaking into safe rooms and dead end trap triggers unleashing swarms of zombie dogs upon you. You'll need a jester's temperament to endure this one on anything above Easy mode, and the patience to retry tricky fights, but there's few funnier, weirder ways to spice up a familiar survival horror classic.

Were I to go full grump-mode, I might say that virtual reality has yet to fully deliver on its sci-fi potential. But then I remember just how petrified I was playing the Resident Evil 4 Remake in VR, and now that I've seen the level of horror that can be experienced with a full-body VR setup, I might just be sold.

Virtuix Omni, purveyor of virtual reality peripherals, have taken the experience several terrifying steps further. The company recently shared a demo of a VR mod for the Resident Evil 2 Remake being played using its omni-directional VR treadmill interface called the Omni One.

I'm not sure about you, but I'm already sweating bullets thinking about how a chest harness would add to the game's overall sense of claustrophobia—'Immersive' doesn't really cover it.

Virtuix Omni did not create the Resident Evil 2 Remake VR mod seen in the demo. The credit for that instead goes to PrayDog, and you can investigate venturing into Raccoon City in virtual reality for yourself by taking a gander at their REFramework project on GitHub. Better yet, this project is designed to work with multiple RE Engine games, so you're not necessarily limited to games set near the Arklay Mountains.

As neat as this all looks, it also highlights some aspects about VR that remain less than ideal. While the Meta Quest 3S is one of the best VR headsets for good reason—namely the fact that it combines the best of the Quest 2 and 3 for only 300 bucks—virtual reality is hardly the most accessible gaming space to jump into.

For one thing, immersion-enhancing peripherals come at a steep cost; the complete Omni One VR package will set you back more than three grand, while the separately sold ProTubeVR ProVolver Elite recoil accessory, also featured in the demo video, costs nearly $300 all on its own.

Virtual reality is an already pretty pricey niche within the niche of high-powered hardware, and a tough sell to anyone without the deepest of pockets. Then, there's the logistical nightmare of finding the space to set it all up.

Provided you do get over that initial, often pricey hardware hurdle and have ample room to use it, there's still the chance virtual reality makes you feel too motion sick to play. That said, Meta's new frame timing technique, FrameSync, could help make VR a little less nauseating for some folks.

Even so, it's clear virtual reality still has a ways to go to fully realise its potential on PC—but community crafted VR mods like PrayDog's REFramework go some ways to crossing that distance. I just hope someone adapts the project for Resident Evil Requiem before too long so I can one day run a hand through Leon S. Kennedy's floppy boyband member fringe for myself.

Resident Evil Requiem had a fantastic launch, the best of any modern Resident Evil game, alongside the most concurrents of any RE game ever. And to keep the hype train running, Requiem's director Koshi Nakanishi has announced even more "story content".

"We released an update the other day to fix a variety of issues, and we will continue to address any other bugs and performance issues," Nakanishi says in a social media post. "But that's not all, we are also preparing to add more content."

"First, the much-awaited photo-mode. On top of that there's another surprise coming around May; we're planning to add a minigame." Excellent. I really hope we'll get a resi dating sim, which sounds ridiculous but Nakanishi did have a printout for something called Forbidden Requiem (requiem), so it's not completely out of the realm of possibility.

Nakanishi also flips through a few more gag printouts promoting fake DLC, including a Buckshot Roulette-like with Victor Gideon, something that looks like resi Candy Crush, and a Requiem DLC where Grace and Leon are cats. Absolute cinema.

But the real treat is we're getting even more Requiem: "We're planning to make extra story content. In this story we will delve deeper into the world of Requiem. We're hard at work on it now. It will take some time, so we ask for your patience and hope you'll look forward to it." I will have patience and I will certainly look forward to it.

While news of more Requiem misadventures isn't a surprise, it's certainly nice to hear it confirmed. There's no further information as to what players can expect from this. But I'd like to see a bit more of Alyssa's investigation into Wesker or what Leon was getting up to while Ethan was gluing his hand back on and fighting for his life during RE7 and RE8.

"On behalf of the development team I want to extend our heartfelt gratitude, thank you very much," Nakanishi adds. "We hope to continue providing support on Resident Evil Requiem to live up to its positive reception."

It always seemed odd that Harry Mason was such a badass. The protagonist of the original Silent Hill was a novelist searching for his missing daughter, and yet over the course of the game he managed to accrue a handgun, a shotgun, a rifle, and multiple melee weapons, which he confidently used to defeat a giant caterpillar, a split-headed lizard, Mothra, and also God.

Meanwhile, badass cop Cybil Bennett was just kind of there. Silent Hill implies that she's off having her own awful adventure at the same time, but we only see glimpses of it. Apparently the original plan was to have two playable characters. When you played Harry you'd get a version of Silent Hill that was puzzle-focused, and when you played Cybil you'd see a more action-oriented version of the game.

That explains why there are some objects you can interact with only to have Harry say he can't use them right now, and why this untrained author became such a proficient boss-killer. Cuts during development meant the two protagonists were folded into one.

Later Silent Hill games toyed with similar ideas. Multiple protagonists were considered for Silent Hill 2, though in the end all we got was the chance to briefly play Maria in the Born from a Wish scenario. It's a lot more work to animate and voice playable characters than non-playable ones, and the Silent Hill series has often been forced to do its best with shoestring budgets.

It took a Capcom survival horror budget to give me what I've always wanted. Resident Evil Requiem encourages stealth and problem-solving when you're playing as Grace, then becomes an over-the-top action movie the moment you start playing as Leon. The contrast benefits both. As Grace, I'm manipulating zombies using light switches and broken bottles to bypass them, fleeing from oversized monstrosities, constantly in a state of near-panic. That tension releases the moment I switch to Leon, a man who sees zombies as targets for a roundhouse-kick workout and big beasts as natural targets for big guns and corny one-liners.

Every time the screen fades out and goes back to Grace, I can feel the tension start building again in my shoulders. It's like I'm watching a marathon of the Evil Dead movies but someone periodically flips to another channel where they're showing The Shining, Ringu, and The Descent back to back.

Silent Hill F tried something similar with its two realities. In the foggy Ebisugaoka you played a version of Hinako who had to contend with fragile weapons and could sometimes sneak past monsters, while in the dark shrine world she was a katana-toting badass. I didn't think the contrast worked as well there, though—one of Silent Hill F's most effective body-horror sequences happened in the dark world, but was followed by tooltips explaining how your new power-up worked in a way that undercut the effect.

Requiem makes the smart decision not to try for real horror when you're Leon. Though he faces grotesque enemies and is in real peril, there's a slapstick quality to the way dropped chainsaws spin dangerously and can be picked up by zombie after zombie to create the perfect "here we go again" sequence of pratfalls and near-disasters. Leon is rarely afraid and is mostly just done with this shit, while Grace sounds like she's permanently on the edge of hyperventilating and would very much like to be home and safe and logged into her Reddit account.

The Resident Evil games have often had multiple protagonists, going all the way back to Jill and Chris in the original. Sometimes it's been a choice, with the second player-character saved for a second playthrough, and sometimes we get to play two at once, like Rebecca and Billy in Resident Evil 0 and the two sets of paired protagonists in Revelations 2. The way Requiem divides its playtime between the two, pairing each with a different flavor of horror, has given me exactly what I wanted from Silent Hill all this time. Even though Resident Evil has always been my second-favorite of the two series I can't be mad at it for getting there first, given how effective the result is.

Resident Evil Requiem is here, and it's proving to be an enormous smash hit for the venerable horror series. Deservedly so, too—our own reviewer Elie gave it a 92%, calling it "a game that is built on the backs of everything that's come before it".

Is that so? Well, in that case, what better time to look back on everything that's come before it, right?

Today's quiz does exactly that. The challenge is to name all 30 Resident Evil games, from 1996 to now, in just three minutes.

You might think that's easy, as you type in all the numbered mainline sequels and their remakes. But you'll soon find that there are deeper horrors waiting for you, in the form of bizarrely named spin-offs, dead co-op games, light gun shooters, and more…

Stay strong, keep your aim true, and search back through the rooms of your mind for useful memories to rearrange in your mental inventory—otherwise you're definitely going to come undone somewhere in the mid-2000s.

Get all 30, and you can truly call yourself a Resident Evil expert, fully clued in on the legacy that Requiem so perfectly caps off. Score less and we will set the zombie dogs on you. Naturally.

Let us know how you did in the comments below—and what your favourite Resident Evil game is!

In our last foray into the world of Resident Evil modding, I said that the best thing you can do is play Resident Evil 4 twice. Would you believe me that there's a third, even more over-the-top version to justify yet another run?

All you need is the RE4 Remake on Steam, the Separate Ways expansion, a little fiddling around and the tenacity to face down the most ridiculous battles Leon S. Kennedy and Ada Wong have ever been plunged into.

Berserker, by Chinese modder RabbitTooneedIM, adds a remixed extra mode to the game, similar to RE3 Remake's Nightmare mode, RE7's Madhouse mode and Requiem's Insanity mode. Key items are relocated, combat is rebalanced, late-game enemies appear earlier and the intensity and enemy density are dialled way up—there are even some new weapons to help thin the herd. This is RE4 as a full-on shooter, horror be damned. Some minor bugs aside (cycle save slots, just to make sure), it's a surprisingly polished production, too.

Berserker goes as far as adding all of the monsters from the Separate Ways expansion into Leon's campaign and opening up some areas that were previously blocked off, complete with extra loot and battles. While some have called Berserker an impossible challenge mod for the ultra-hardcore, that only really applies to the higher difficulty modes, which are optional. I found it surprisingly manageable despite it throwing chainsaw guys at me constantly, and on Easy mode, you'll always have far more ammo than you know what to do with. Normal isn't much harder.

While not unfair, the mod does love to prank the player. And by that, I mean I have stepped on every rake it could possibly place for me. Expect rocket-equipped counter-snipers in the valley fight, new tripwire traps in obnoxious places and bear traps wherever they can serve as a punchline. Handy typewriter in the village chief's house? Don't mind if I d-AMMIT!

Installation for Berserker is remarkably simple:

• Make sure you've got RE4 Remake installed, along with Separate Ways
• Grab the Fluffy Mod Manager, follow its quick setup instructions & update it
• Download Berserker into your Mod Manager\Games\RE4R\Mods directory
• Run the mod manager, find Berserker in the mod list, toggle it on and play

The best part? There's more.

Valkyrie, Profiled

Berserker would be an impressive enough mod by itself, but you shouldn't skip on its second half, Valkyrie, which is even more transformative. Valkyrie greatly expands Ada's adventure with areas that previously were accessible only to Leon, adding a good 2-3 hours to her side of the game.

Installing Valkyrie is exactly the same as Berserker above. Grab it, drop it into the same directory as Berserker and go. The only limitation is that only one remix can be active at once, but the Fluffy Mod Manager lets you toggle between them easily.

You'll notice the difference almost immediately. Where Ada would normally head out onto the castle rooftops after the first tussle with Pesanta (the black-robed, bug-faced psychic stalker enemy), she now finds the exit locked. Cue battling through a whole new multi-phase encounter (immediately after a new safe room) within the castle to find the key.

From there things only expand further, with whole new zones being interwoven into Ada's campaign. For the most part they fit in naturally, although some of the new areas aren't as well lit as the rest of the game, and sometimes lack environmental effects like rain. Still, Ada gets to really stretch her legs this time, and there's even a (brief) segment where you get to play as Wesker!

As with Berserker, expect a lot more enemies (yes, double or triple chainsaw fights abound) and some nasty twists added to boss fights. Ada's grapple-assisted Gigante fight? She's got to fight two of them at once while a chanting cultist inside of the buildings psychically batters her. At least until you can convince one of the big guys to break the building open for you in just one of many clever new twists.

Once you've warmed up with these two mods, you might want to check out RabbitTooneedIM's latest, silliest work yet. Ever wanted to fight through thousands of enemies in a Resident Evil game? Now you can.

Oh, and pro tip: If you see two ornate vases right beside each other, shoot them from a safe distance. You'll thank me later.

Capcom's settled into a pretty rhythmic schedule: new game about mould, remake, another remake, new game about mould in a village, remake, and now, with Resident Evil Requiem, we've got our next new game. So what's next? Well, there are some rumours of a Requiem DLC, but otherwise it's a safe bet that there'll be yet another remake somewhere on the horizon.

But what should Capcom remake next? Resident Evil 5? Probably shouldn't touch that with a barge pole. Revelations? Markiplier's Iron Lung movie did well recently, so there's clearly an audience for it. Well, Nick Apostolides, Leon Kennedy's actor, recently put his two cents in and revealed that a Code Veronica remake is what's on his wishlist.

"I would like to see a Code Veronica get remade because that, to me, was a very challenging game," Apostolides says in an interview with PC Gamer's Midas Whittaker. "But the story of it was just so wild and weird, and I think if they did it in today's RE Engine with today's storytelling and grounded acting, I think that would be one hell of a game."

I couldn't agree more. Now we've got the bigguns (RE2 and RE4) out of the way, I think new and old Resi fans alike could really benefit from a Veronica remake. While I prefer some of the originals to their remakes, I still appreciate how remaking older games makes them more accessible to new fans who probably weren't alive when the original game released. Plus, who doesn't want to see Alfred being weird in higher res: "To see that game in the RE Engine, oh wow. If they announce that, I think fans are going to go ballistic."

But honestly, Capcom is currently on a generational run when it comes to RE right now, so I have faith that whatever comes next will be pretty sick. "Where I would like to see the series go is just to continue on the same path," Apostolides adds. "Since Biohazard, around that time when they really shifted their gears. This direction they're going in is just fantastic. I've loved everything they've done for the last seven / eight years. And I don't think they're showing any signs of slowing down. So just keep going, Capcom."

You can get to all kinds of places you're not supposed to by going out of bounds in videogames. You might find a mysterious arena in Elden Ring. You might make it all the way to Hammerfell in Oblivion. Or you might visit the most cursed place of all: Reddit.

As KnyH_82 and Connect_Base_217 both discovered and, appropriately, posted to the Resident Evil subreddit, a quick look where you're not supposed to look during the flashback cutscene where young Grace Ashcroft is on her laptop reveals that she's on a subreddit called r/amateurjournalists.

Mentions of "old man Jack" and "that giant black monster" as well as "the Baker family" make it clear she's reading about the events of Resident Evil 7. Other posts in the sub ask "Do you think there are still infected out there?" and "The government are doing child experiments?" as well as "Evidence the BSAA are fishy", all of which tie into the events of Requiem. Although the post about ​"Mice on the moon? The Clangers are real and out there?" not so much.

Though there is a real sub for r/amateurjournalism it's private. A fan has made Grace's special interest real though, creating r/amateurjournalists for all your conspiracy theories about zombies, corporate experiments, and British television shows about mice who live on the moon, I guess.

Few men, fictional or otherwise, have spinkicked their way into the hearts of as many thirsty internet admirers as Leon S. Kennedy. And given his recent upgrade to hot uncle status thanks to the devoted efforts of the women on the Resident Evil Requiem dev team, there has been an intense interest in how long it would take modders to let the Leon-crazed masses more fully appreciate the fruits of that labor.

That wait has ended. Today, a new page is added to the great chronicles of history. As of 11:23 am EDT on March 3, 2026, Nexus Mods now hosts its first sexy Leon mod for Resident Evil Requiem: Leon Shirtless RPD by modder SERGISHOLS, whose name will live forever.

Given Requiem's midnight EDT launch time, that means it clocked a TtLL (or 'Time to Lewd Leon') of just 4 days, 11 hours, and 23 minutes—or roughly 386,580 seconds, if you'd prefer. Frankly, after watching the RE4 remake's modders put Leon in a maid outfit and thong before the game even launched, I wondered whether it would even take a day before Leon's hot uncle era was intensified by third parties. Regardless, I think we can all agree that turning around a peeled Leon in under a week is an accomplishment by any metric.

Although, maybe I should say "half-peeled." It's pretty tame as far as horny mods go: Leon probably shows more skin at the beach. If you're hoping for mods more titillating than Leon's exposed uncle nipples, you're still in for a longer wait.

Leon's admirers on Nexus Mods certainly aren't content with the early offering: At time of writing, 14 separate commenters have said that this particular rendition of Leon's uncle bod is insufficiently muscular. Everyone's a critic. That said, they haven't had to yearn for other options for very long: Another shirtless Leon mod arrived just an hour before I wrote this sentence.

Whether or not these increasingly shredded shirtless Leons prove enough to satisfy, I'll confess, isn't my concern. I'm simply here to ensure that the earliest achievements in the field aren't entirely overshadowed by whatever great works follow as modders get acclimated. (And I'm sure there will be plenty.)

I just hope everyone stays respectful. Leon's a married man now, after all.

It's not just PC Gamer's Elie Gould who loves the new Resident Evil. The ninth game in the series—not counting twice that number of spin-offs and remakes—has taken off like a rocket, selling more than five million copies since its release on February 27.

Resident Evil Requiem had the series' biggest-ever launch on Steam by far, beating out Resident Evil 4 Remake's launch numbers by some 100,000 concurrent players. That's quite a feat for a singleplayer game, and as of this writing the game remains firmly in place at the top of Steam's Global Top Sellers list. Well, okay, there are currently more people spending their entire paychecks on Counter-Strike 2 gun skins, but Requiem is the top paid game on the chart closing in on a week after launch.

While Resident Evil Requiem couldn't keep pace with Monster Hunter Wilds' astronomical launch sales of eight million copies in just three days, I have a feeling it may end up having the longer tail.

Regardless, it's already one for Capcom's history books. The publisher helpfully maintains a page of its all-time bestsellers, and Requiem's first week of sales alone have earned it a spot in the top 20 list. Current numbers would slot it in between the original 1998 Resident Evil 2 (#19) and the HD-ified update of Resident Evil Remake, released in 2014 (#18). That means RE9 has already passed the lifetime sales of 2024's Dragon's Dogma 2, as well as dozens of Capcom classics.

Requiem has a long way to go to climb to the very top of the list. The first two spots are occupied by Monster Hunter: World and Rise, which have sold 22 million and 18.2 million, respectively. At number three and four are Resident Evil 2 Remake and Resident Evil 7, both in the 16 million sales range.

Can older but wiser Hot Uncle Leon Kennedy still put up the kind of numbers he managed in his youth? With Requiem blending the action and survival strains of Resident Evil so effectively, I think there's a damn good chance.

When I blasted through Resident Evil Requiem over the course of one blood-spattered weekend, I thought Capcom's latest looked great—though I did play it on a PS5. Turns out, on PC, your zombie mashing mileage may vary due to Nvidia driver shenanigans.

Unhappy PC gamers took to Reddit earlier this week, claiming to have seen a significant drop in performance while playing Resi with the GeForce Game Ready Driver 591.86 installed. One Redditor gaming on an RTX 40-series GPU reported a drop to 74 fps, and even a dip in average GPU power draw to 304 W while path tracing was enabled.

The suggested fix? Rolling back to an older driver. Multiple RTX 40-series gamers in the same thread reported a significant gain in frames and power draw with this one weird trick. So, I had to test it for myself.

But before I properly get into it, a little more context: it was hoped that the driver update released on March 2, 595.71, would address some of this wonkiness. Unfortunately, this is still causing up to a 16% drop in performance for some on even 50-series cards (via Bang4BuckPC Gamer).

This all comes after Nvidia released GeForce driver 595.59, and then unreleased it last month after reports of graphics card fan outages and clock speed issues. This whole driver drama has drawn no small amount of ire from the community, which has undoubtedly been emboldened in its critique by recent comments from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang suggesting that nothing would give him more joy than if none of his software engineers were coding.

The plot only thickened when I took to the PC Gamer test bench myself. First things first, I made sure to use Display Driver Uninstaller to blitz any GPU drivers on the machine. I would install my chosen driver, test, remove it with DDU, and then repeat.

For those curious, the hardware team's test bench is built on a Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master motherboard, with an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU, and enjoys 64 GB of DDR5 RAM.

As for game settings within Resident Evil Requiem, I switched on path tracing and my resolution to 1920 x 1080. I also set graphics, lighting and shadow quality to max, set the upscaling mode to 'Performance', and kicked up Nvidia Frame Generation to '2x'. All in order to match the settings presented by one Redditor impacted by the issue.

Beginning testing with an RTX 4080 Super slotted in, I played Resident Evil Requiem with the latest 595.71 driver installed, and path tracing enabled. Running around Wrenwood, blasting zombies as Leon S. Kennedy, I saw fps averaging—drum roll, please—164.

With the earlier 576.88 driver installed, my average fps was 167. The stretch of game I'd chosen to loop for these tests is pretty frantic, with civilians running away towards Leon as a fresh batch of infected shamble down the street. If I was going to see a bump in performance from rolling back the driver this would be the place, though a gain of 3 fps is nowhere close to the massive uptick reported by others, and is largely within standard testing variance.

Whacking in an RTX 5090, and changing nothing else, my FPS average climbed to 186 with the latest 595.71 driver installed. So far, that's still nothing really earth-shattering. Continuing with the RTX 5090, and installing the earlier 591.86 driver, I saw an average of 178 FPS. With the driver release before that, 576.88, I saw an average of 180. As for average GPU power draw throughout these later tests, the RTX 5090 sucked up 240 watts on average.

Again, I'd argue the frame fluctuations are all still within expected variance. Certainly while memorising the zombie placement throughout this apocalyptic stretch of Wrenwood, I didn't notice a tangible difference, either.

Nvidia GeForce driver comparison

Resident Evil Requiem (RTX 4080 Super) (1080p Path tracing)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

595.71

164.173

115.942

576.88

166.85

119.25

050100150200

Resident Evil Requiem (RTX 4080 Super) (1080p Path tracing) Data

Product	Value
595.71	164.173 Avg FPS, 115.942 1% Low FPS
576.88	166.85 Avg FPS, 119.25 1% Low FPS

Resident Evil Requiem (RTX 5090) (1080p Path tracing)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

595.71

185.97

123.47

576.88

180.06

119.83

050100150200

Resident Evil Requiem (RTX 5090) (1080p Path tracing) Data

Product	Value
595.71	185.97 Avg FPS, 123.47 1% Low FPS
576.88	180.06 Avg FPS, 119.83 1% Low FPS

In short, even after a whole day of testing across multiple software and hardware setups, I was not able to replicate the driver issue in Resident Evil Requiem—though, granted, our test bench enjoys a lot more grunt than most rigs (especially in the midst of a memory supply crisis).

That's not to say the driver issue isn't happening, but simply that it won't affect absolutely everyone—there may be more at play than just Nvidia's drivers. A number of the posts I've seen online don't specify which part of the game is seeing these frame drops for one thing, or don't give a lot of detail about the setup it's running on beyond the GPU and driver.

With all that in mind, it's entirely possible that the cache-heavy 3D V-Cache gaming CPU installed in the hardware team's test bench is papering over the cracks, though I definitely can't say for sure.

At any rate, these aren't the only driver shenanigans we've recently seen surrounding Resident Evil Requiem. Nick tested the game on the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme-based Asus ROG Ally and endured pretty abysmal results. The weaker Steam Deck seemed to deal just fine, however.

This seemingly fanned the flames of the rumour that official support was ending for the Ryzen Z1 chip series. However, Lenovo came forward to say they were working with AMD on driver updates for their own handheld gaming PC; the company explicitly stated that it would support the Ryzen Z1 Extreme-based Lenovo Legion Go "through October 2029."

But to bring it back to Resident Evil Requiem, it's one of very few games rocking up with path tracing as its technical headline act. This driver drama doesn't necessarily showcase the tech at its best, even though path tracing is perhaps not specifically to blame. Nick has previously been optimistic that it won't take developers as long to adopt path tracing compared to ray tracing.

Unfortunately for such a GPU-intensive technology, PC gaming is an expensive hobby at the best of times and the knock-on effects of the memory supply crisis has not helped this at all. Basically, devs will need to get to grips with path tracing quickly and then quickly figure out how to optimise the tech for a wide range of rigs—particularly those far less powerful than our test bench.

Back in school, we were always told to be careful what we put on the internet, you never know who may see it. The same rule still applies, but maybe all those Leon Kennedy fan accounts forgot, because it turns out that Leon's current VA, Nick Apostolides, has seen all your thirst traps.

"I think it's funny, I see all the thirst traps," Apostolides says in a recent interview with PC Gamer's own video producer Midas Whittaker. "I've been seeing that since 2019, about seven years, it's nothing new, it's just evolved. Because he's old hunk Leon at this point."

The internet truly freaked out when we got to see what Leon would look like in Resident Evil Requiem. People were so impressed with his more grizzled "hot uncle" look that Capcom ended up explaining that it was all thanks to the women on the dev team. "They made him look really good in this new one," Apostolides adds. That they did.

"I just think it's hilarious that somehow I found myself in life just embodying an avatar that's just infinitely better looking than myself, seen as this sex symbol," Apostolides continues. "He's easy on the eyes, Leon Kennedy, and he has been all his life. He has arguably the best hair in videogames. He'll never get rid of that '90s boyband haircut."

Leon doesn't just look different in Requiem. Apostolides also discussed how he needed to approach this role slightly differently than he has in previous games. With Leon being around 51, and an old hand when it comes to monsters beyond an average human's comprehension. He's not the spring chicken he once was.

The worry is that Leon can't simply backflip out of harm's way without a second thought anymore. He's getting on a bit, and so Apostolides had to play Leon with the knowledge that any fight could be his last. Let's be honest, nothing bad will ever happen to Leon, but I suppose it's still good to have the worst-case scenario in mind, for acting reasons.

The GameCube era of the early 2000s was a magical time for Resident Evil. Not only did Capcom return to the first game, releasing a much more challenging and intense remake (where mutating, self-reviving enemies first appeared, a feature every Requiem player is VERY familiar with by now), but it also pushed the genre towards a new, more action-oriented era with the gloriously camp Resident Evil 4.

Liberated from the GameCube and now over 20 years old each, both REmake and the OG RE4 are available with some mild enhancements on Steam. They're perfectly playable straight from the installer—but we can do better.

Thanks to painstaking efforts by the community, extensive graphical mods are available for both games, although not much gameplay-wise. Best not to mess with perfection, after all.

Resident Evil Remake

While REmake is fine without mods, at higher resolutions it's not hard to notice that the character models stand out against pre-rendered backdrops originally meant for 480i CRT TV screens. Capcom has done some cursory cleanup with its HD ports, but modders have gone one step further.

While the Nexus page for REmake has several options, your best bet is the well-titled REscale:

• Download (don't forget the Hotfix and the 3D Assets, plus this little fix)
• Unzip to your installed game directory and overwrite as needed
• Play as normal, simple as that

This is probably my ideal way to play Resident Evil, though I do recommend sticking to the classic tank-style controls—it wouldn't be RE1 without them.

As with any upscale (done with home-friendly tech predating the water- and power-guzzling AI tools now in wider use), it's never going to be perfect, with some things like the shadows around flickering fires looking a little warped. But this mod does a commendable job of blurring the line between foreground and background without losing that thick layer of grime and shadow that defined the look of the first remake.

Resident Evil 4: The Pain in Spain

While the first REmake's community-made remasters might have some minor tradeoffs, Resident Evil 4's HD Mod is widely considered one of the greatest ever made.

A massive labor of love that went far beyond upscaling textures, the two-man team (one of whom is now working for Nightdive) went as far as to track down the original source images used where possible for creating new high-res replacements. And where they couldn't, they travelled to locations around the world to create new source photography.

Most of the game's 3D models (including a lot of low-fi backdrop objects) have been entirely recreated too, but the final cherry on the las plagas sundae is refreshed dynamic lighting. With the mod, every light-source in the environment behaves as it "should" have. Something we take for granted now, but the old reliable GameCube would have started wheezing if asked to do it back in 2005.

Having replayed this version of Resident Evil 4 myself recently, it's shocking how much the remaster mod looks like I THOUGHT the game looked 20 years ago. But in comparison (see this before-and-after showcase) it's night and day.

RE4's HD mod looks pin-sharp and perfectly consistent with the game's original visuals, just better, and at minimal performance cost. The only tradeoff is the install size, nearly quadrupling the game's SSD footprint.

Installation is dead simple:

• Download from the RE4 HD site
• Unpack to wherever you have the Steam version of the game installed.
• If you want a smaller HUD, alternative controller glyphs or a patch to reduce flashing effects for those with photosensitivity issues, there are mini mods for those on the Extras page, too.

All of this is important, because as good as the Resident Evil 4 Remake is, it's effectively a whole new game following the same plot beats. It's not a replacement: Resident Evil 4 remains a blast to play, and features some fun setpieces cut from the remake. With this mod, the venerable 2005 original stands proud alongside its 2023 cousin. The only thing better than playing RE4 is playing it twice.

Since the dawn of time, people have been picking sides and fighting each other, Rome vs Carthage, Edward vs Jacob, the list goes on. But one battle that has engulfed the Resident Evil fandom ever since I can remember is the fight between who has Leon's heart, Ada Wong or Claire Redfield.

I wrote about this war of attrition only the other day, after the news that Leon Kennedy had been spotted with a wedding ring in Resident Evil Requiem broke everyone's hearts. As the discovery had fans theorising who the lucky lady could be, Ada, Claire, or someone else entirely. There are some pretty strong arguments for each side, but we may have just had a tiebreaker.

Talking with PC Gamer's video producer, Midas Whittaker, Leon Kennedy's voice actor Nick Apostolides revealed what he would want to see Leon do next: "I would love to see him kind of settle down for once, maybe open an ice cream parlour. I think he deserves a little break, a little vacation, and maybe fight zombies once and a while." I agree, some relaxation is way overdue for poor old Leon.

But when asked who he would want to see Leon settle down with, and whether it would be nice to see him with Ada, Apostolides just replied, "I don't know, I feel like I could get into big trouble for saying that, half the fans would want to hang me." Smart move.

Although when pressed on whether he likes Ada, he did admit: "I like Ada too. Hate her all you want, but Leon wouldn't be alive if it weren't for her. She saved him three or four times." That's very true. Ada may have betrayed Leon here and there, and sure, their relationship is probably best left to a therapist to deal with, but she has been there with Leon at many pivotal moments. That's not an indictment against Claire, but it does seem like a win for Ada, even if it's only a small one.

Capcom tried to hide it for as long as possible, but fans managed to sniff out Leon Kennedy in Resident Evil Requiem long before the game launched. Even so, Leon's grizzled appearance still managed to surprise some players.

"He's yet wiser to the world, he's been through 25 more years of missions and bs and global takeovers and outbreaks," Leon's voice actor Nick Apostolides told us. "He's just been there and seen it all.

"In the Resident Evil 2 remake, he was excitable; he was seeing everything for the first time. In the Resident Evil 4 remake, he was a bit more trained, a little bit more grizzled. But [Requiem] is the peak, the limit he's reached; everything has taken a toll at this point. He's older now, and any fight could be his last." Leon may look a little more tired in Requiem, but I refuse to accept he's reached his limit; he'll still be roundhouse kicking zombies well into his 90s.

Denial aside, age doesn't just bring a weathered look; it also adds some confidence. "I had to do a bit of internal work with this one, more than RE4," Apostolides says. "I knew the assignment from day one on RE4, and I knew how to approach it because I was incredibly familiar with the original RE4. [Requiem] is all new; this is uncharted territory even for the developers, and we were finding this version of the character together throughout the whole process, for almost two years."

When you say Leon Kennedy, I think cool, calm, and collected. He's certainly seen enough ungodly mutants and been through enough near-death experiences for stress to just roll off his back. But he was somehow even more chill in Requiem than I had expected.

There wasn't even a moment of fear with Leon. You had so many guns, melee weapons, and body armour that nothing felt like much of a challenge. Even with some of the bigger fight scenes. But this was a welcome change to Grace's sections, which were often quite stressful and terrifying, especially when she was in Rhodes Hill Hospital.

But how did Apostolides get into this unbothered, steadfast headspace for Leon Kennedy? Well, it's simple really, he did some arts and crafts: "I did create a whole mood board, with words, phrases, ideas, imagery, art, all kinds of stuff, music. Just to get into that [headspace]. I would revisit this mood board before every major session, just to get into that mindset of really understanding every scene that we filmed. The stakes are higher here."

The subject of AI being used to replace voice actors has been a recurring theme in videogames, with the debate reaching a pinnacle last October when Arc Raiders was released, as it was made clear that Embark Studios used AI to pad out voice lines.

Since then, we've heard arguments as to why this isn't the way forward, with Astarion's actor Neil Newbon calling it "dull as hell" and the Demonschool devs saying they'd rather "cut off our own arms" than use AI in their games. And now Leon Kennedy's voice actor, Nick Apostolides, has put in his two cents.

"AI is here, there's no turning it off, there's no dialling it back," Apostolides says in a recent interview with PC Gamer's video producer Midas Whittaker. "I think it's coming at us full speed ahead, and it's going to have effects on the creative industry, on every industry, a lot for good, but when it comes to art—that is human-born.

"AI generates a lot of content, yes, it can do that, it's a tool. But for [studios] to feel the need to replace actors when a game can sell 15 million copies or so, as Arc Raiders did, to pay for an actor's voice session is not that big of a deal."

Apostolides has just wrapped up work on Resident Evil Requiem. It's one of the best Resident Evil games I've played in a hot minute. It's a perfect balance of horror, action, puzzles, and stealth is certainly a huge part of what makes it so great, but I would be remiss if I didn't also mention how fantastic the voice acting is.

Going into Requiem, I knew Apostolides would hit it out of the park as Leon Kennedy, especially after his performance in the Resident Evil 4 remake, but Grace's actor, Angela Sant-Albano and Victor Gideon's voice actor, Antony Byrne, were my surprise favourites. I can't remember the last time I heard a villain's voice quite as iconic as Byrne's.

"I think what people love about games today is that they are so human," Apostolides continues. "The stories are so real, the emotions are real, you get so invested in these characters, and I don't believe AI can do that. AI can speak lines, but there's nothing human behind it."

I couldn't agree more, you can't even compare Byrne or Sant-Albano's performances to the AI voice lines in Arc Raiders. Yes, both have different goals. Requiem is a story game; its performance is its driving feature, while Arc Raiders is less about the story and more about social interactions among players, accompanied by great third person shooting, but it's still night and day.

But regardless of what you prefer, Apostolides points out that AI is here to stay: "We're going to have to learn how to evolve with it. And I think things are inevitably going to change in the next few years, but we're just going to have to navigate this together and roll with it."

When you hear the bluebird whistle five times after the clock strikes 15:41, walk three steps towards the Orion constellation and wait for 15 minutes. Ok, that's not the actual steps you need to take to complete The Final Puzzle in Resident Evil Requiem, but it's also not far off.

Spoilers for Resident Evil Requiem: The Final Puzzle ahead

After four days, some absolute madlads have managed to figure out the most convoluted puzzle to grace Resident Evil yet, and it's long. We already figured out the beginning of the puzzle, or at least part of it, by determining which letter in the DNA code sequence corresponds to the sun, moon, or star symbols.

Apparently, the trick lies with getting your mitts on a Marie doll. You can see them at various points during the playthrough, but you can only ever pick one up at one moment and only after having completed a myriad of strange tasks.

The next step is to head to the basement, towards the grinder, and instead of turning the machine off straight away, save and wait there for about 15 minutes, until all the bodies have dropped into the disposal. Then turn the conveyor off and jump into the pit, but do not kill any of the zombies that try to attack you.

Ensuring that every zombie dies by the grinder is apparently a condition for solving the puzzle: "We don't get the doll if we don't AFK at the grinder," BigRedtheBard explains. This is supposedly so there's enough blood in the system to drag the doll up to where you'll eventually find it. So instead of killing the zombies outright, you can shoot them in the legs or stun them so they get caught up in the grinder.

You'll know whether it's worked or not depending on which text displays after you drain the blood after the grinder. A regular playthrough will show "a lot of blood flowed out", while the puzzle solution playthrough will read "a ton of blood flowed out."

Then, after you escape the basement, head back to the Hospital and go to the bathroom. There, you need to flush the toilet eight times. Why? The first file in the game is an image of a dead body in a toilet stall next to the number eight scribbled on the wall in blood.

RE9 Final Puzzle Solved (Lore Explanation) from r/residentevil

Then progress normally to the underground laboratory, but before you escape, make sure to pick up a doll that you'll find at the bottom of the stairs. Carry this doll with you for the rest of the game, finish the game, and start again. There's no NG+ in Requiem, but you will be able to carry the doll into your next playthrough. Progress normally, but instead of taking Emily to the final puzzle box, bring her to the lead researcher's office along with the doll, input the code, and there you have it. The Final Puzzle is complete.

It's certainly one of the most convoluted ARGs I've come across, especially in a Resident Evil game, but it's completely enamoured the community, so at the very least, players have had some fun trying to figure it out.

There are a few players who have been slightly disappointed with this puzzle, as the payoff doesn't seem quite worth it to them. "The bad part is that you only get a message saying you solved The Final Puzzle, no weapon, skin, or anything," one player says. The reward is actually 20,000 CP, the currency which players can use to buy skins, concept art, and other endgame bonuses. But maybe the real reward was all the puzzles we solved along the way?

The Final Puzzle ended up being a huge community effort, and while some players did resort to datamining to find the answer, many also managed to get to the end thanks to sheer willpower and some helpful tips from fellow players: "It was a fun community effort, and really gave us something to collectively rack our brains about."

It's an awful day to be Leon Kennedy's number one fan, as players have discovered that he's married. You can see what looks to be a wedding ring on his finger in a couple of Resident Evil Requiem's cutscenes, and can take a good look at it in the concept art if you're an eagle-eyed gamer. My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.

But this discovery now raises a bigger, more sinister question: who is Leon Kennedy married to? Putting aside the fact that it could very well be some random civilian that we've not seen in the series thus far, players seem to have their own theories, which settle into two camps: Claire or Ada.

Resident Evil has always had something of a Team Edward or Team Jacob rivalry with players debating who's best suited for Leon aeons before we found a ring on his finger. In the interest of not receiving any deadly packages in my mail, I'm not going to disclose whose side I'm on, but I'll give a summary of both accounts.

Team Ada likes the dynamic that's been shown between her and Leon throughout the games. The two characters have also had plenty of screentime together, letting us see how their relationship has progressed over the years. Oh, and they kissed that one time.

On the other side of the ring, Team Claire generally thinks Ada and Leon's relationship is a bit toxic and that Claire is a better match for Leon, as she's kinder and matches Leon's sense of justice. Also: "If Leon is indeed married to Claire, this would explain why Leon was extra chummy about Chris when Sherry asked for his whereabouts towards the end of Resident Evil: Requiem."

Will Capcom reveal it? from r/ResidentEvilRequiem

There's also a pretty big third contingent who all think Leon is married to them: "I don't like how y'all are talking about Leon being married to other women when he is very clearly married to me." So true, bestie.

As for who Leon's actually married to, it's anyone's guess—Capcom may never tell us. Although I'm a big fan of whatever this theory is: "They won't say it outright, but you'll play Chris in the DLC and see an identical ring on his hand." That would certainly be a power couple to rival all others.

Leon Kennedy is a veteran of the zombie apocalypse, and performed by a veteran too. Nick Apostolides returns to the role after voicing Leon in the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 4, as well as the animated series Infinite Darkness. Grace Ashcroft is the opposite—Resident Evil Requiem is very much her first rodeo, and like Ethan in RE7, her first-person segments are a return to the desperate survival horror the series was once known for.

Grace is played by Angela Sant'Albano, who is not only new to the series but to horror games in general. "I watched a ton of gameplay," Sant'Albano told PCGamesN, "because [Capcom] referred a lot to the fact that they wanted to go back to the horror Resident Evil games. It was my first experience with horror, so I really wanted to make sure that I was capturing that and leaning into that slow, creeping tone that you really need to achieve."

One way of achieving that while in a mocap studio, wearing those dorky capture suits and helmets, was just like the way we play horror games: in the dark. "We would turn off all the light [in] the studio," Sant'Albano said, "and we would only operate by flashlight or camera light on our head—I think [Capcom was] very good at trying to make the situation feel as close to what it was without, you know, having a real-life zombie running at you."

While Sant'Albano watched a lot of Resident Evil gameplay to get caught up, she started playing the games as well, getting hooked on fan-favorite RE4 in particular. "I remember looking up and thinking, 'I've been playing for three and a half hours. Where did the time go?'" she said. "Terrifying—but it's so immersive, and it's the most amazing distraction, because you have to be so incredibly focused that time just flies, which I think is great, but also," she laughed, "a bit of a time suck."

Resident Evil Requiem encourages you to play Grace's sections in first-person and Leon's over the shoulder, which helps emphasize the scariness of the former and the badassness of the chainsaw-parrying latter. I played through the whole opening with my mouse in molasses though, because I thought there wasn't a way to change the sensitivity. It's a Capcom game, you'll forgive me for assuming the PC options might be lacking.

Capcom had to point it out themselves in a news announcement post-release: "Mouse sensitivity settings for each character can be changed via Camera in the Options menu. First, select Grace's Camera or Leon's Camera. Once selected, a menu with more detailed settings will open. From there, you can adjust the camera speed of first-person and third-person perspectives."

It's not under the Keyboard and Mouse section of the Controls submenu like you'd expect, and even if you look in the Camera section you'd be forgiven for not realizing that next to the toggle for first- and third-person there's an icon that leads to the other menu where you'll finally find sliders for camera speed and acceleration.

You won't find an FOV slider anywhere, however, even though the Resident Evil 4 remake had one—an odd instance of backsliding on a useful feature after finally giving in and adding it. The resolution options are pretty basic too, and my wackadoo 2560x1600 monitor isn't supported. There's always REFramework, I guess.

Resident Evil Requiem claims to take us back to Raccoon City, but how well do you really remember it? Because Capcom would have you believe that Lady Dimitrescu never rode into town on a motorcycle on that fateful day, shotgun in hand. But we know better. Or at least we have BioRand to enhance our nostalgia.

As you might have guessed from the name, BioRand is a randomizer mod for the classic, original Resident Evil trilogy, pre-remakes, and a long-running passion project continually updated by a large team of RE community oddballs. Normally a randomizer just reshuffles where key items and enemies are placed, forcing you to forge a new path through the game. And while you can do that with BioRand, it also lets you do so, so much worse more.

If I want to cross-wire every door in the game to lead somewhere different? Easy. Completely reshuffling the characters and their voice lines to create unhinged adlibbed cutscenes? One click. Fill every single room in the game with enemies, including 'safe' areas? Sure, why not.

And on top of that, it comes with a huge library of alternative characters from across the series, fully voiced. Alternative enemies (I just fought a mutated Steve Burnside as Regina from Dino Crisis), and even randomized soundtracks to really put a fresh spin on these familiar survival horror classics. Does it make sense that Salazar (the tiny evil Napoleon guy from Resident Evil 4) is leading the STARS team? Absolutely not. But playing as him is an absolute blast. Especially when the game starts me off with a magnum revolver and enough ammo to kill god. Guess he's just getting even.

Mixed Herbs

While you could install the latest version of BioRand via ModDB or GitHub (requiring the pre-GOG PC ports of RE 1–3), the much faster option is just to grab one of the pre-assembled packages from the BioRand website. It offers several options, including packages with the unofficial HD remaster mods for all three games built in, as seen in the screenshots here.

Whether you go HD is up to personal preference, and while I'll be the first to admit that the upscaled backdrops look a bit weird and wonky in places, I find that only adds to the fever-dream aesthetic of the BioRand experience. This is Resident Evil gone horribly wrong. Plus, the 3D models don't stand out so badly against higher-resolution environments. Whichever you pick, it's surprisingly easy and intuitive to use.

Once unpacked, run BioRand.exe, go into the options and point it towards your copies of Resident Evil 1, 2, and 3. Now you're free to mess with the configuration panel. Pick which game you want to scrungle and which characters, weapons, enemies, and more you want to throw into the blender. You can enable or disable any features or content you prefer, although I highly recommend ticking the 'Reduce awkward silences' box, which tries to keep dialogue timing close to the original.

Probably the most impactful option you can enable is Randomize Doors, which throws the entire game into the wood-chipper. Step through the front door of RCPD HQ and you'll find yourself in an Umbrella lab. BioRand is smart enough to place the right keys to let you navigate this new liminal nightmare, but it's a dizzying way to experience the games again. Funny, though. And really, BioRand is amazing for goofing around. The weirder the better, and while I can't promise that you'll be able to complete the game if you let it completely loose, you'll probably have a wild time with it.

The final bit of icing on the cake is that BioRand is an ever-evolving (mutating?) project, with a steady drip-feed of new content and features. But perhaps more excitingly is that versions of the randomizer are coming soon for the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 4, with sign-ups open for early testing now.

Deciding to destroy or release Elpis in Resident Evil Requiem determines which ending you get, and so if you're here and aren't near the end yet, begone! I don't want to spoil it for you, so please stop reading now. However, if you're at the pivotal decision and want to know what the different outcomes are, I'll lay them out below in detail.

Even though you're about to finish the game, and decide "What does the creator desire?" you can still go back and grab any Mr. Raccoon locations you didn't find, since they are independent from your progress in the story. Once you shoot one, it disappears for good. There are also Charms to collect that you might have missed.

As mentioned, I'll run through the outcomes for each ending, plus which one is the canon choice, which is almost 100% sure to be the one that is continued from in the next Resident Evil game, whenever that happens. This guide will contain spoilers for both Resident Evil Requiem endings, so again, leave now if you're here by accident.

Should you destroy Elpis?

This is the choice that Leon asks you to promise you'll make as Grace, but it's definitely the bad, non-canon ending, namely because of one specific consequence: Leon dies. After choosing to destroy Elpis, the ARK facility will begin to self-destruct, and Leon will manage to save Grace, getting her onto a walkway above the platform, but then Zeno will catch and kill him.

Leon expresses that he's happy he managed to save Grace, Zeno will shoot him in the head, and then the platform will plummet to the bottom of the shaft and explode, presumably killing Zeno as well, though it's hard to say with that guy. Grace will escape and get on the waiting helicopter that Leon called earlier, ending the nightmare.

If you need any more indication that this is the non-canon bad ending, the game literally asks you whether you'd like to immediately return to the point of the decision and choose the opposite. Honestly, if you want to see both endings, definitely choose this one first and then take advantage of that option to pick the next one instead, since it'll save you rolling back to another save.

Should you release Elpis?

Choosing to release Elpis is definitely the canon ending, since it includes an extra boss battle and even a post-credits scene. When you release Elpis, Zeno will take it and inject it into himself, thinking it's a super weapon, but actually it's a new anti-viral drug and strips him of his powers. Woops. Oh, also, Dr. Gideon somehow returns, though he's got an arm off.

Grace cures Leon, Zeno and Gideon argue before Gideon beheads him, and then Gideon goes super mode, and Leon has to fight him in a boss battle. The big picture? Elpis's antiviral qualities will shift the power balance of the world, I guess because it can be used to cure even the most messed-up infected. Imagine Leon walking into a boss battle, jabbing the monster with a syringe, and them turning back into a human.

After that, you'll escape thanks to the BSAA. It also turns out Emily can be saved, again, somehow, I guess with Elpis? The epilogue shows that Sherry has been cured and that Grace is now guardian to a pre-monsterfied Emily. Also, make sure you hold on for the post-credits cutscene. As mentioned, this is definitely the right ending, though you can see both if you choose to destroy Elpis first.

Resident Evil Requiem does a lot. I said it in my review, it plays like a highlight reel of all the best moments of the series. There are puzzles, horror, action, and Leon S Kennedy, of course. But its greatest achievement is that it manages to pull everything together in just 10 hours or so.

Resident Evil Requiem spoilers ahead

Now, 10 hours may seem too short to some. I was a little surprised myself at just how quickly I managed to get through the whole game. It wasn't like I was rushing either. Yes, I had a small advantage as I'd played the three-hour demo set in Rhodes Hill Hospital, so I remembered a couple of helpful strategies from that, but otherwise I played on modern standard difficulty and spent a lot of time running around looking for secrets and Mr. Raccoons.

But looking back, I now realise that 10 hours was just right. It may not seem like it at face value, especially considering that Requiem has a hefty $70 price tag, but it's quality from start to finish. There were no moments which I felt were added to pad out the runtime, and I enjoyed every task it set before me, even the ones that scared me out of my mind.

Sure, I enjoyed hunting for treasure and side quests in my 25-hour Resident Evil 4 remake run, but 10 hours is actually pretty in line for a RE game. Resident Evil 7 is approximately 10 hours long, and Village and Resident Evil 2 take around 12 hours. So, if anything, RE4 is the black sheep of the family. Honestly, I'm just happy to have another game in my library that I can finish over a weekend.

Yes, there are some tough parts to Requiem. Some fights that you'll probably need to retry, and some puzzles that'll likely leave you stumped. I spent longer than I'd like to admit trying to figure out which battery to place in which power bank in the basement of Rhodes Hill Hospital. But really, Requiem's length is a testimony to how smooth and seamless it is.

Great storytelling, intuitive level design, and combat that's actually fun are part of the reason why Requiem feels so good to play, but I think its greatest strength is switching between two protagonists. Before the horror sequences or puzzles could become sluggish or repetitive, you were switched from Grace to Leon, given a rifle and told to go kill zombies to your heart's content.

Playing as Leon honestly felt like a reward for the hard work creeping around as Grace, unlocking safe boxes and retrieving quartz to open the main door. But after killing pretty much every zombie left in Raccoon City, I was glad to be back in Grace's shoes. It can be nice to have a break from the action as well.

Before I knew it, I had landed on "The Final Mission" objective. In my head, I'd been playing for just a little while, but in reality, I'd been playing for about five hours straight. I was just enjoying it so much that it felt like no time at all.

I'm now just about to finish my second playthrough of Requiem, and there'll undoubtedly be more of those ahead of me because of just how nice it is to get through. Who knows, I may even try to complete the four-hour speedrun.

It's finally here, Resident Evil Requiem is out in the wild, and the wait is over. I was expecting a larger-than-normal reception for this game, considering how much it seeks to do and how great all the reviews have been for it, including ours, but these numbers have surpassed even what I thought Requiem would pull in.

In the last two hours since launch, Requiem has pulled in 267,509 players, with 237,092 still playing at the time of writing. It's an incredible achievement for a Resident Evil game, especially if you compare it to how well recent series additions have done in terms of player count.

The Resident Evil 4 remake released almost three years ago now (oh god, time flies), and despite being largely praised as an excellent remake, it only managed to pull in 168,191 players: a fantastic achievement, but absolutely nothing compared to Requiem.

Meanwhile, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard got a measly peak of 20,449 players, which is ridiculously low considering Biohazard is one of the best modern RE games to have been released. And Resident Evil 8: Village managed to entice a respectable 106,631 players.

There has to be some accounting for the fact that PlayStation likely holds a large number of Resident Evil players, and we can't account for that number, as we don't know the figures just yet. But there's a good chance that if there are this many more players on Steam, there are likely more playing on PlayStation, Xbox, and maybe even Nintendo Switch as well.

I'm not surprised, as I said in my review, playing Requiem is like playing a highlight reel of all the best moments of previous RE games. There really is something in it for everyone: puzzles, action, horror, and Leon, obviously. But in all seriousness, Requiem is an excellent addition to the long-running Resident Evil series and will undoubtedly become a must-play for players long after its launch.

I should be on the beach, but instead I'm playing Resident Evil Requiem.

Here I am in Hawaii, sunny skies and steps from the ocean, and as soon as it gets dark, I'm thinking about making my way back to my hotel room so I can sit in the dark and play more of the Resident Evil that our reviewer Elie Gould praised for "wrapping all the best elements of previous Resident Evil games into one."

So far, I agree, but mostly I've been marvelling at just how playable this shiny new 2026 game is on the Steam Deck. Four years on from the gaming handheld's release, it's becoming more and more common for new triple-A games to be a bit too demanding of the Deck's modest hardware—even 30 fps can be out of reach.

When the Deck came out, the 2019 Resident Evil 2 Remake was one of the best games on it. I wrote at the time that "with a mix of low and mid settings I was able to run it at 60 fps, which was a genuine 'wow, this really works?' moment for such a relatively new and gorgeous game."

Capcom's in-house RE Engine developed a reputation for looking really nice while still scaling down impressively well to low-end hardware. Unfortunately, in the last couple of years, the RE Engine has also developed a reputation for not being great at everything Capcom has used it for—specifically Monster Hunter Wilds and Dragon's Dogma 2, open-world games which suffered from major performance issues that took months and months of updates to improve.

But you know what RE Engine is still really good at, it turns out? Resident Evil.

As PC Gamer's Nick Evanson highlighted in his Resident Evil Requiem performance analysis, there are some shiny new tricks in this updated version of the engine, like path-traced lighting, but mostly it's smooth performance that's a welcome sign. "Compared to the disappointment of Dragon's Dogma 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds, in terms of graphics and performance, Resident Evil Requiem is a breath of fresh air. But then again, it should be, as it's not an open world game and the levels are generally quite compact," he wrote.

Asus ROG Ally | 720p Lowest preset | No ray tracing (RT) | FSR Balanced upscaling

While Nick ran into a major issue running Requiem on the Windows-based ROG Ally, I've had zero problems running it on the Steam Deck at a very playable framerate. Initially, I let Requiem set the graphics options automatically, at which point it knocked everything to the lowest settings.

But with a bit of experimentation, I ended up with a balance of options that let me cap the framerate at a very stable 40 fps with a few nice improvements over the bottom-of-the-barrel preset:

• Hair Strands: On (from main menu)
• Screen space reflections: On
• AMD FSR 3.1.5 upscaling: Balanced
• Volumetric fog: Low
• Shadow quality: Normal
• Ambient occlusion: Low

As you can see from this video from YouTuber Santiago Santiago, who runs through all the game's graphical settings on the Deck and tries a variety of tweaks, Requiem can run on the Deck at 40 fps even in Leon's action sections, as long as you're okay with some shimmering from AMD FSR 3 upscaling.

If you disable upscaling and instead use TXAA, you're going to see some more dips into the 30s in scenes with a lot going on—but that's also a stress test scenario. Much of the game has you playing as Grace in confined hallways with just one or two enemies around at a time, making 40 fps a pretty reasonable target for at least the first half of Requiem.

If you're playing in the more confined first-person view, it's definitely easier to maintain a consistent 40 fps with few dips; I saw the framerate fluctuate more when I switched to the more expansive third-person camera, particularly with the fast camera movement from over-the-shoulder aiming. I'd love to see the same 60 fps RE2 Remake could deliver on the Steam Deck, of course, but seven years after that game's release hitting 40 with a few caveats still feels like a win.

If you're not used to Steam Deck tinkering, you may be wondering why 40, rather than bumping up some graphics settings and locking at the 30 fps that games have had on consoles for so many years. You certainly can do that, but I find that the lower frame times at 40 fps—exactly halfway between 30 fps's 33.33 ms and 60 fps's 16.66 ms—to feel noticeably better. Human perception is a bit too complicated to say that the math is the be-all end-all here, but it at least feels true that you can get a meaningful bump in responsiveness at a modest performance cost.

If I was at home, I'd definitely rather play Resident Evil Requiem on my OLED monitor with its inky blacks and a 120 fps framerate cap—but as distractions from the boundless beauty of the natural world go, turns out RE and the Steam Deck are still an eerily good match.

Doors with mysterious slots and arcane runes? Tantalizingly locked safes? Giant monsters roaming the hallways? Yep: This is Resident Evil, all right.

As PC Gamer's Elie Gould highlighted in their glowing Resident Evil Requiem review, this entry in the series attempts a delicate balancing act, delivering the series' classic puzzles and exploration as well as bursts of all-out action. It nails that balance, which means there are all sorts of strange doors waiting for you to figure out how to open them, as well as well-hidden collectibles to find and upgrades you can—but won't want to—miss.

A warning if you're spoiler-averse: While our guides won't delve into Requiem's story beats outright, they will naturally reveal some things about the game's major enemies, puzzles and other obstacles. Avoid idly scrolling the list to preserve as much mystery as possible!

With that caveat out of the way, here are all of our Resident Evil Requiem guides rounded up in one place.

RE Requiem puzzle solutions

RE Requiem Combination locks

RE Requiem: Locked doors, drawers, and warped doors

RE Requiem: Charm, coin, and Mr. Raccoon locations

RE Requiem Boss and Monster guides

Other RE Requiem guides

Keeping an eye out for charm locations in Resident Evil Requiem will give you an advantage over the zombies trying to munch on your face, especially on higher difficulties, and especially when playing as Grace. Since the FBI agent is a bit weak early on, charms can be a decent way to buff her otherwise lackluster offensive capabilities.

Leon doesn't need as much help in that department, but you can still use charms to buff his weapons and tweak his playstyle slightly. There are nine charms in Resident Evil Requiem, unless there are further secret ones that only appear after specific challenges that I didn't find. Here's where to get them all.

Resident Evil Requiem charm locations

These are all nine of the charms that I've found in Resident Evil Requiem. For any you purchase or unlock via challenges in the Special Content menu, such as the Rugged Rookie and Trusted Companion Charm, you can collect them via the Supply Box: