At the 2025 Tokyo Game Show, Capcom put a Switch 2 and Resident Evil: Requiem in my hands, and honestly it felt like they were just showing off how well they know how to nail the Resident Evil formula at this point.
The first thing that ran through my head was how it would run on a Switch 2, and I was pleasantly surprised. I’m not a guy that can tell you the exact number of frames per second a game is running just by looking at it, but I didn’t notice any drops during my gameplay. Exploration, fleeing the monster, and cutscenes all ran as smoothly as I would expect from one of the more powerful consoles, and it looked decent on the small screen.
Literal Dark Souls, But I’m Using “Literal” Correctly
It was, perhaps intentionally, quite dark. You know the screen that many games have, where you adjust the brightness? The one where you’re told to slide the bar until you can barely see a group of lines or the outline of a box? I usually slide that thing till the screen might be mistaken for a shooting star, were I to give an Olympic-style discus throw. Yet despite my obvious attempt to beat the system, the system still won. Some hallways were just plain dark, I’d assume for narrative and immersion purposes. It is, after all, a survival horror game, and they do want to horrify me.
And horrify me they did. The demo began with our heroine, Grace, waking up strapped to a bed with an IV in her arm. Ew. And they show the needle going in. Ew. The recent COVID-19 pandemic taught me that I have a thing about needles. I generally don’t enjoy looking at them, and downright hate seeing them go into the human body. Maximum gross. I’m already clicking my Horrified button.
Then I had to watch Grace rip the IV out, smash a vial of her blood that had been draining out, and cut herself free from the ankle straps that held her to the bed. It was awesome, if a little gruesome. A note in the room read, “Began blood extraction, checked pulse, no abnormalities. Administered Dexifil.” I myself was given something with that name when I got the Rona back in December of 2022. Well, not exactly that name. Mine was Dexafil, or dexamethasone, a steroid in the same family as the more popular, less powerful prednisone. Was a doctor (or mad scientist?) trying to speed up healing, or reduce inflammation? Do steroids inhibit some kind of virus? It raises a lot of questions.
After that, Grace set about some classic Resident Evil: moving back and forth through a set of areas, getting tools and keys in order to gradually advance, all while some threat eerily loomed. Her main goal, apart from the obvious need to survive, was to find a fuse to repair a broken electronic door. Of course, you can see where this is going. Yes, the place to obtain it was a bit far away, and the method of obtaining it required a tool from somewhere else entirely. During all the trekking this way and that, we know that evil is lurking.
Stalker, No Stalking!
There’s once again a stalker doing its thing, following Grace oh-so-slowly this way and that. We became familiar with this type of enemy in Resident Evil 2 with Mr. X, fell in love with it in Nemesis, and still others populate the modern installments. This time around, it’s some big giant thing with bad teeth. It makes its appearance right after the protagonist opens a cabinet to find a dead body, as one does. If you’re too awestruck to move, it might even take a bite out of you. I snuck a peek at the guy next to me getting chomped on, but I don’t know if he was watching a video or playing differently or what, because that didn’t happen to me. I saw Requiem’s stalker show up and noped right out of there.
Is Resident Evil 9 First-Person or Third-Person?
You can play Resident Evil: Requiem with first-person or third-person perspective, and even change in the middle, if you want. It’s as simple as a trip to the options menu. I stuck with first-person mostly, but depending on how it felt after a longer period, I might decide to switch to third-person. They both played well. The lady held her arm and moved a bit jerky in third-person, but that’s presumably a narrative choice, showing us the effects of her injuries and having just ripped a damn IV out of her own arm. That probably stings.
During combat, there’s no time to pause while you shuffle through items. The real-time menus that debuted in Resident Evil 5 are still here, adding tension by making every second stressful and important.
Sadly, the demo came with a strict time limit, so I didn’t get to completely escape my stalker or confront and kill it.
Leon in Resident Evil 9?
Equally unfortunate is the PR goof that claimed interviews weren’t possible, though they apparently were, but I was denied because of not having an appointment. Like, what? So I couldn’t ask about the leaks, such as Leon’s name coming up all the time, comparing Switch 2’s performance to PS5, Xbox, or PC in terms of real numbers, and so on. These burning questions will have to wait.
But that doesn’t take away from the good parts of the game itself, which were plentiful. While one can’t really get the full feel of a game in a 15-minute demo, I’d say Resident Evil Requiem seems to be shaping up to satisfy fans of recent installments. Capcom knows its craft, knows how to please a fanbase, and might just have another Resident Evil hit on its hands.
Resident Evil Requiem is due for release on Feb. 27, 2026 on the PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2 and PC.
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