Last year I played Resident Evil Requiem democontrolling a terrified, unarmed, and fearful Grace Ashford that this entry in the horror franchise prioritizes helpless fear over a zombie-killing power fantasy. But recently I sat down to play the game’s latest preview, finally controlling the series’ beloved pretty boy Leon, and within minutes I was cutting up zombies with a chainsaw.
“We’re so back, baby,” I want to say, even though there’s still way too much to see. Still, my short time with Leon (less than an hour of gameplay) left me excited for his return, including everything that made his appearance in Resident Evil 4 so iconic, from the action hero’s antics to the cheeky quips to the humble grid-based item box.
In this preview, the two segments I played with Leon were sandwiched around an extended playthrough with Grace, which suggested the flow of the game, alternating between the two as distinct flavors of gameplay.
2 approaches, both satisfactory
Let me dispel a popular fear: Grace’s sections are not like the infamous segments of past Resident Evil games, where players must control helpless side characters who can only sneak around threats (like Resident Evil 4’s maligned Ashley chapters).
Instead, Resident Evil Requiem appears to feature two of the franchise’s signature gameplay styles around each character: Grace’s sections resemble the spooky, puzzle-heavy atmosphere of the original Resident Evil, while Leon’s sections embody the horror action of Resident Evil 4.
Requiem tailors each character’s experience to each playstyle. Grace starts with a limited number of inventory slots forcing players to juggle items, and she has limited ammo – sneaking past enemies is a heartbreaking necessity. She creeps around slowly, solving baroque puzzles and making the most of a new crafting system that uses zombie blood (yuck) to craft ammo and defensive weapons.
After Grace’s tense and brooding exploration segments, Leon’s sections are a cathartic take, letting players go wild with lots of ammo and intense enemies, as well as satisfying executions with Leon’s new best friend – a carbon fiber hand axe.
This division is exemplified by a new feature in Requiem: the ability to switch between first- and third-person cameras on the fly. The Capcom employees who produced my preview suggested I play Grace’s sections in the first to build tension, then move to the second for Leon’s action-oriented sections.
Grace is less tough than Leon, but has her own defensive abilities.
3 hours with Resident Evil Requiem
At Summer Game Fest 2025, CNET’s Sean Booker I have to play the first gameplay clip from Requiem released by Capcom, in which Grace woke up from her kidnapping and sneaked into an abandoned hospital, avoiding a grotesque mutant matron who was chasing her in an abandoned room. This final glimpse begins right after this moment, in which Leon arrives at the hospital to find zombie doctors and nurses – easily taken out with his gunshots and combat kicks.
When a zombie came with a chainsaw, I cut it down, picked up the tool, cut open some more zombies, and walked through a screen door. That’s when Leon ran into Grace, literally picking up where my previous overview left off. With a powerful revolver – named, I kid you not, Requiem – I took down the mutant matron. Before our heroic duo could truly team up, a door closed between them. The tall, pale hospital superintendent, Dr. Gideon, who runs the building from a remote control room, has other plans for them.
That’s where control passed to Grace for a 2-hour gameplay segment, placing the temperamental FBI agent in a setting familiar to Resident Evil veterans: a hall between two staircases, with a door that can only be unlocked with three crystal gems. Echoes of the Spencer Mansion from the first Resident Evil manifest in arcane puzzles and ornate wooden furniture, as well as escaping zombies rather than shooting them to conserve scarce ammo.
Although you can switch between third-person (over-the-shoulder) and first-person views at any time, Capcom recommended playing Grace’s sections in the latter for maximum thrills.
It’s a mood of dangerous exploration, made manageable by another twist: for whatever reason (presumably explained in the full game), these undead retain their memories and wander the set paths they patrolled in life. By sneaking around and not making noise, I was (for the most part) fine.
But like the original Resident Evil that Grace’s sections evoked, I ended up having to go back and forth, collecting key items from save rooms to solve puzzles on the map. Traversing became so tedious that I switched to third-person over-the-shoulder camera to make it easier to navigate around the undead.
Then the game created another surprise. Returning from the 2002 Resident Evil 1 remake, zombies return to unlife, crazier and deadlier. I pulled out the powerful Requiem revolver (which Leon had handed to Grace through the door between them) and fired the only bullet I had to kill him – a precious resource, like a one-shot security blanket, that now put me more at the mercy of the horrors of the hospital.
It’s clear that Capcom wants players to feel vulnerable when controlling Grace, but not desperate. During the preview, Capcom employees made it clear to me that the FBI agent’s abilities would increase throughout the game. Mechanically, this was represented by his somewhat shaky aim, which took a second or two of focusing to calm down enough for an accurate shot (i.e., the reticle shrinking after readying his weapon) – which can be improved by finding or crafting injectable reflex boosters. Despite gathering resources and tools, including an offensive lab-made drug that I could inject into the zombies to literally make them explode, the trailing dead are still dangerous in the face of Grace’s uncertain shots, and there are worse things haunting the halls.
One of them was a horribly large mutant baby (distinct from the horribly large mutant baby of Resident Evil 8), who chased Grace into one of the hospital rooms. I moved on to Leon, who escaped Dr. Gideon’s clutches only to have to confront the grotesque child the only way he knows how: lots of guns and ax blows.
Unlike Grace, Leon can launch melee attacks after stunning his enemies.
After taking out the Horror Child, Leon runs through some of the same hospital areas I snuck into as Grace – only this time the guns are blazing. Even an ambush of several reanimated, deadlier zombies was thrilling child’s play for our hero and his trusty shotgun.
If the preview is representative of the game’s overall flow, players will survive Grace’s vulnerable and tense periods of gameplay, while subsequent chapters with Leon will act as release valves for action and bloody shootouts. It’s a fun combination… when done right. Resident Evil Requiem appears to be an attempt by Capcom to pack two versions of its franchise into the same game. Regardless, either is a joy to play, but how they feel together will prove whether the game can sink or swim.
And yet, what little I saw (including a handful of things I was asked not to reveal) presented a game that looked like an intriguing combination of the familiar and the new. After the saga of Ethan Winters in Resident Evil 7 and 8, it’s a relief to return to fan-favorite Leon and discover Grace’s story.
Running through a strange hospital ward overrun by its undead residents, locked in the purgatory of their old routines, is deliciously bizarre. The same goes for looking through a microscope to look for a way to make bullets out of scrap metal and blood. Resident Evil’s blend of surreal horror has always been best when it tries new elements to add to its beloved tune – and this duo of newbie and veteran, survival and action, makes it feel like we might just be back, baby (non-mutant).
