March 22 2026: I'll Be Examining This!
by Diamond Feit
If you're not operating heavy machinery right now, I have a request: Turn down the lights and think about what scares you. It's a very personal question because there's no one-size-fits-all answer. I get anxious whenever I see bees or spiders but there are people out there\u2014children even\u2014who would happily let a honey-making or insect-eating pal crawl on their hand.
Bigger than any creepy crawly, however, is the looming specter of death. I'm sure every culture has unique views on the matter but I think the fear of dying has to be the one thing we all have in common. I first started seeing a therapist at a young age because my intense thanatophobia locked me in a panicked state. I'd like to tell you that things have changed, but I've just grown better at talking myself down with age.
Human mortality does come with one silver lining in that it motivates us to keep on living. This urge to survive powers almost every video game out there because developers can safely assume that players don't want to die. Even cheerful games targeting all ages know this; we chuckle when Mario falls into a pit but we still recognize it as a loss of life.
Of course, some games tap into our primal thoughts on life and death with less subtlety than others, with no genre more in tune with the matter than horror. Horror games hit players with a full-on sensory assault of music, atmosphere, and freaky monsters hiding in every corner. Forget about Mario comically collapsing onto the floor as a sad trombone plays an off-note: Horror games will tear your screaming avatar to pieces and then write YOU ARE DEAD in blood red letters above the remains.
This week just so happens to coincide with a major anniversary in horror history, one I previously covered five years ago when Resident Evil turned 25. Regular readers will know that I hold Capcom's definitive survival horror series in high regard, writing and podcasting about it as often as I can find an excuse to do so. In that spirit, I want to honor this occasion by reflecting on three decades of zombie infestations, oddly-shaped keys, and why I can't stop seeking entertainment in something deliberately designed to play off my deepest, darkest fear.
The first Resident Evil announces its intentions to the player before it even announces its own title. A camera follows a man\u2014played by an actual human\u2014down a hallway.\u00a0 He screams, the camera rushes forward, we see a splash of blood, and the camera zooms in on his eye as the title zooms out of his iris. With just ten seconds of video, we learn that this game features frightened people who will die violently.
Worse yet, Resident Evil escalates matters by revealing that its narrative involves cannibalism, another universal taboo. As the de facto rulers of this planet we like to imagine ourselves as above the food chain but to a predator, human beings are just another potential meal. Such is the case here as the protagonists investigate a series of homicides committed by multiple killers acting as a group, attacking families and eating the victims.
An opening cutscene\u2014once again featuring footage of actors\u2014shows us just how vulnerable our heroes can be when their search and rescue mission goes south. Five well-armed adults get jumped by a pack of wild dogs. The animals slaughter one man immediately and chase the survivors deeper into the woods where they take shelter in a nearby estate. Of course, as the game's now-infamous text crawl tells us: \"They have escaped into the mansion where they thought it was safe.\"
Players finally take control inside the spacious, well-lit abode and get to work finding an exit. In classic horror movie fashion, the heroes decide to split up rather than stick together and it doesn't take long for players to find themselves utterly alone. Actually, \"alone\" is inaccurate, as the Spencer Mansion's occupants are plentiful and graciously invite the intruders to dinner\u2014as the main course.
In most of the hall's luxurious chambers, zombies shuffle aimlessly in search of meat. Amongst all fictional monsters, they're the ultimate personification of our apprehension concerning mortality. We fear death in part because we don't know what comes next yet zombies answer that question in the worst way possible. I grieve for my departed loved ones and yearn to meet them again; I would never recover from seeing them walk around sans personality eating people.
Real Resident Evil fans will tell you that these shambling figures are not true zombies but victims of a weaponized viral infection, one that robs them of their mental faculties and reduces them to carnivores. This rug pull is part of the reason I fell in love with the first game as it lured me in with the threat of a haunted house only to swerve and reveal a scientific explanation.
On the other hand, considering how often Resident Evil characters refer to these creatures as \"zombies,\" I'd argue that we gain nothing from making such a distinction. After all, if a person ceases all social activity to instead stumble about with a hunger for human flesh, they're behaving exactly like a zombie. It's as silly as insisting that people who discriminate against others on the basis of race are not racist.
After audiences and critics alike heaped praise and cash upon Resident Evil in 1996, Capcom quickly started work on a sequel with the hopes of shipping it the following year. This did not come to pass but the problems which plagued Resident Evil 2's production proved beneficial in the long run. Had the company rushed what we now call Resident Evil 1.5 to market, I cannot imagine we'd still talk about the series today\u2014assuming it lasted long enough to become a series at all.
When negative internal and external feedback convinced Capcom to restart development of Resident Evil 2, it forced them to re-examine what gave the original game its charm. Simply trotting out yet another building bristling with (faux) undead wouldn't wow players like it did the first time. Director Hideki Kamiya, scenario writer Noboru Sugimura, and the rest of the team sought to outdo themselves and raise the stakes across the board.
Instead of a remote mansion, Resident Evil 2 takes place in an urban environment. The heroes begin their journey on the streets of Raccoon City surrounded by makeshift barricades, burning automobiles, and bloodthirsty zombies. Forget the gradual unease of a ticking clock in a dining room; Resident Evil 2 dares you to find safe haven or die trying. It's a total escalation in tone and danger from the start yet it's still scary because our expectations have changed. In Resident Evil 1 you're desperate for a way out; in Resident Evil 2 the last thing you want is to go back outside.
Resident Evil 3 (1999) depicts the actions of another Raccoon City survivor looking to escape the same nightmare. The events of the two games overlap chronologically and share a few locations, although Resident Evil 3 puts a button on the affair by revealing the US government's intention to destroy the entire city to contain the outbreak. Even though both previous titles used a self-destruct countdown to create urgency during the finale, in this case players must defeat the final boss while an on-screen radar shows an inbound missile heading straight towards them. It's a bittersweet ending to the trilogy as the heroes must live with the knowledge that thousands more didn't make it.
As Capcom shifted gears to accommodate new hardware, Resident Evil entered a phase of safe bets. Code Veronica for the Sega Dreamcast features much improved graphics but in service of a story starring familiar characters. Two Nintendo GameCube releases in 2002 looked backwards rather than forward: A remake of the original game celebrating its sixth anniversary and a prequel, Resident Evil Zero. To capitalize on the series' ongoing success, Capcom also invested time and money porting Resident Evil 2 and 3 from the PlayStation to competing consoles.
Everything changed when the much-delayed Resident Evil 4 debuted in 2005. A completely revamped camera, dynamic combat system, and a far more linear structure replace the methodic exploration and careful strategizing of the older games. Gone, too, are the claustrophobic, narrow hallways in favor of outdoor areas like forests and a homely village. Without Leon Kennedy from Resident Evil 2 returning as the protagonist, few people would even recognize it as part of the same franchise.
Resident Evil 4 even abandons zombies as the primary antagonists, replacing them with far more able-bodied foes called Ganados. While no less homicidal, the Ganados use tools, wield weapons, and operate as a hive mind to make Leon regret he ever set foot in Europe on this mission.
Within seconds of starting the game, players must take Leon into a stranger's home. The door is wide open so Leon doesn't even knock, he just barges in and starts asking questions. The inhabitant reacts by swinging a hatchet at Leon's head while his neighbors kill Leon's two police escorts. Suddenly alone, Leon has to fend off dozens of Ganados while they shout at him in Spanish.
Despite a new action-first prerogative, Resident Evil 4 upholds its horror legacy by adding a new layer to the formula: The awful sensation of intruding in someone else's space. If you've ever visited a community where you don't speak the local language, you know exactly how that feels. Now imagine everyone holding a pitchfork and you understand how Resident Evil 4 terrifies even as it ups Leon's athleticism and firepower.
Launching first on the GameCube but arriving by year's end on the PlayStation 2, Resident Evil 4 rewrote the rules for Capcom's flagship survival horror franchise. Though it still featured misshapen creatures and graphic violence, the excitement of making snap decisions amidst hordes of enemies gave Resident Evil a shot of adrenaline.
Capcom pushed the envelope even further by sending a pair of protagonists to the fictional African nation of Kijuju for Resident Evil 5, allowing two players to fight alongside one another for the first time in the series. The resulting blockbuster broke company sales records, though audiences expressed doubt that the game even qualified as horror anymore.
Regardless, Capcom aimed even higher with Resident Evil 6 and its three separate two-player campaigns, each focused on a different duo battling bioweapons around the globe. By now the company line had switched from branding Resident Evil as \"survival horror\" to \"ultimate horror entertainment,\" an acknowledgement that the series had\u2014like the slow-moving zombies from the older titles\u2014grown deadlier and more aggressive.
Yet while these mass-market releases hauled in mega-millions at retail, Capcom never neglected the notion that Resident Evil games are supposed to frighten players. Launched in January 2012 ahead of Resident Evil 6,\u00a0 Revelations offers a small-scale horror experience on the Nintendo 3DS, one structured around an episodic story befitting a handheld console with limited battery capacity. Its 2015 sequel arrived as four individual weekly downloads before Capcom shipped it to stores as a single package.
Both Revelations games, while featuring teamwork and plenty of guns, emphasize dread over non-stop thrills. Revelations 2 even makes feeling scared a central part of its plot with an Overseer trapping civilians in a prison specifically to test their response to stressful situations. Getting kidnapped and waking up on Zombie Island is bad, but the prospect of panicking and then transforming into a brainless behemoth is even worse.
This brings us to the most recent decade of Resident Evil, one where Capcom has successfully steered the series back to its roots while still appealing to the widest possible audience. Originally teased via a virtual reality demo called Kitchen, Resident Evil VII presents a first-person adventure that once again locks players inside a house with no way out.
In hindsight, Resident Evil VII reads as even more revolutionary than Resident Evil 4 did 20+ years ago. The switch from third to first-person increases the tension of every moment of gameplay to an extreme; I've always empathized with my on-screen counterpart but in this game it truly feels like the killers are out to get me personally. Pressing a button to guard brings up \"my\" hands and whenever an enemy swings a blade at the camera, it's as if I'm the one getting dismembered.
As VII and its own sequel Village advanced the series' story forward, Capcom doubled down on mining the series' past by remaking Resident Evil 2 and 3 for modern platforms. These high-resolution adaptations retain the third-person perspective and basic outline of the originals but up the fear quotient by making the enemies more resilient. Zombies still splatter in response to bullets but unless you completely decapitate them, you're never quite sure if they'll get back up. The corpses also remain on screen for much longer, forcing you to wonder when you backtrack if the bodies you left behind on your last visit might have moved just a little.
Capcom also remade Resident Evil 4 because of course they did; the company has long sought to keep the original game available to new and old audiences alike, so why not give it a 4K 60fps facelift that sells for full price. Since that 2023 release, rumors abound as to which other titles might benefit from a second pass. I'm partial to Code Veronica but I also recognize that a Zero remake could really reshape that ho-hum prequel into a story worth telling.
Here in 2026, Resident Evil commemorates its 30th anniversary with a brand-new game, a legacy sequel that looks back on past events and reckons with its own history. Requiem\u2014re9uiem if you're nasty\u2014juggles two narratives with two very different protagonists. 20-something FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft investigates a series of deaths with identical pathology while series veteran Leon Kennedy pursues those same leads because he suffers from those telltale symptoms. The two come together just long enough to realize their goals overlap, though neither party learns all the answers until the dramatic conclusion.
Requiem's dual protagonists deal with their circumstances in a manner befitting their life experiences. Grace has clearly never met a zombie before and lacks combat training, so she has to make do with limited weaponry and stealth tactics. Leon has murdered more monsters than he cares to count at this point, so he takes out the undead like the rest of us take out our garbage.
In line with the series' blend of action and terror, Requiem's two halves invoke opposing gameplay sensations. Grace must approach every enemy like her life depends on it and running away is often the best strategy. Leon faces down deadly fiends by the dozen with a late-game pickup awarding him bonus points for each kill. Fear motivates both characters with Grace completely out of her element and still mourning the loss of her mother, while Leon grapples with his deteriorating condition and regret over those lives he failed to save.
I identify a lot more with Leon in Requiem because this isn't my first rodeo; it takes a lot more than a single skeleton to surprise me at this point. More importantly, though, Leon and I are both pushing 50 and at our age, that birthday comes with introspection. I may not have his muscles or hairline but I've got my share of unfinished business and I'm painfully aware that there are fewer days ahead than there are behind.
Any media property that makes it to 30 will have its ups and downs, so it says something that after three decades I'm just as infatuated by Resident Evil now as I was in the 90s. \"Survival horror\" might not describe every entry accurately, but there's clearly an ethos at work here despite multiple creative teams taking the series in different directions.\u00a0
More to the point, Resident Evil still frightens me which I never expected. I've grown into a horror fan in my middle-age which means most of the stuff that spooked me as a child barely fazes me today. A masked killer stalking teenagers? Yawn. The dead coming back to life and going shopping? Seen it. I've got one inventory slot open and have to choose between more bullets and a first-aid spray? That's timeless.
As proof, I offer this parental anecdote: My teenage daughter\u2014born after Resident Evil 6 launched in 2012\u2014has seen me play countless hours of horror games by this point. Digital gore means little to her, so if a zombie's head pops like a watermelon, she laughs. Months of Capcom's marketing machine meant that when Requiem arrived, she wanted to play it just as much as I did. Yet when I set her up on the PS5 and let her dive in while I went back to my PC, I noticed how quickly her mood changed.
Alone in the dark with a nine-foot-tall girl stalking her every move, my daughter stopped giggling and started shivering. She understood the objective and knew what to do, but didn't want to go any further without moral support from me next to her on the couch. In other words, her first Resident Evil experience mirrored my own; I too couldn't bear to explore the Spencer Mansion without another person in the room.
Two games, two players, thirty years apart, with the same results. That's the magic of Resident Evil.
Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet. All music this week comes from Resident Evil Requiem.
", "contentSnippet": "March 22 2026: I'll Be Examining This!\nby Diamond Feit\nIf you're not operating heavy machinery right now, I have a request: Turn down the lights and think about what scares you. It's a very personal question because there's no one-size-fits-all answer. I get anxious whenever I see bees or spiders but there are people out there\u2014children even\u2014who would happily let a honey-making or insect-eating pal crawl on their hand.\nBigger than any creepy crawly, however, is the looming specter of death. I'm sure every culture has unique views on the matter but I think the fear of dying has to be the one thing we all have in common. I first started seeing a therapist at a young age because my intense thanatophobia locked me in a panicked state. I'd like to tell you that things have changed, but I've just grown better at talking myself down with age.\nHuman mortality does come with one silver lining in that it motivates us to keep on living. This urge to survive powers almost every video game out there because developers can safely assume that players don't want to die. Even cheerful games targeting all ages know this; we chuckle when Mario falls into a pit but we still recognize it as a loss of life.\nOf course, some games tap into our primal thoughts on life and death with less subtlety than others, with no genre more in tune with the matter than horror. Horror games hit players with a full-on sensory assault of music, atmosphere, and freaky monsters hiding in every corner. Forget about Mario comically collapsing onto the floor as a sad trombone plays an off-note: Horror games will tear your screaming avatar to pieces and then write YOU ARE DEAD in blood red letters above the remains.\nThis week just so happens to coincide with a major anniversary in horror history, one I previously covered five years ago when Resident Evil turned 25. Regular readers will know that I hold Capcom's definitive survival horror series in high regard, writing and podcasting about it as often as I can find an excuse to do so. In that spirit, I want to honor this occasion by reflecting on three decades of zombie infestations, oddly-shaped keys, and why I can't stop seeking entertainment in something deliberately designed to play off my deepest, darkest fear.\nThe first Resident Evil announces its intentions to the player before it even announces its own title. A camera follows a man\u2014played by an actual human\u2014down a hallway.\u00a0 He screams, the camera rushes forward, we see a splash of blood, and the camera zooms in on his eye as the title zooms out of his iris. With just ten seconds of video, we learn that this game features frightened people who will die violently.\nWorse yet, Resident Evil escalates matters by revealing that its narrative involves cannibalism, another universal taboo. As the de facto rulers of this planet we like to imagine ourselves as above the food chain but to a predator, human beings are just another potential meal. Such is the case here as the protagonists investigate a series of homicides committed by multiple killers acting as a group, attacking families and eating the victims.\nAn opening cutscene\u2014once again featuring footage of actors\u2014shows us just how vulnerable our heroes can be when their search and rescue mission goes south. Five well-armed adults get jumped by a pack of wild dogs. The animals slaughter one man immediately and chase the survivors deeper into the woods where they take shelter in a nearby estate. Of course, as the game's now-infamous text crawl tells us: \"They have escaped into the mansion where they thought it was safe.\"\nPlayers finally take control inside the spacious, well-lit abode and get to work finding an exit. In classic horror movie fashion, the heroes decide to split up rather than stick together and it doesn't take long for players to find themselves utterly alone. Actually, \"alone\" is inaccurate, as the Spencer Mansion's occupants are plentiful and graciously invite the intruders to dinner\u2014as the main course.\nIn most of the hall's luxurious chambers, zombies shuffle aimlessly in search of meat. Amongst all fictional monsters, they're the ultimate personification of our apprehension concerning mortality. We fear death in part because we don't know what comes next yet zombies answer that question in the worst way possible. I grieve for my departed loved ones and yearn to meet them again; I would never recover from seeing them walk around sans personality eating people.\nReal Resident Evil fans will tell you that these shambling figures are not true zombies but victims of a weaponized viral infection, one that robs them of their mental faculties and reduces them to carnivores. This rug pull is part of the reason I fell in love with the first game as it lured me in with the threat of a haunted house only to swerve and reveal a scientific explanation.\nOn the other hand, considering how often Resident Evil characters refer to these creatures as \"zombies,\" I'd argue that we gain nothing from making such a distinction. After all, if a person ceases all social activity to instead stumble about with a hunger for human flesh, they're behaving exactly like a zombie. It's as silly as insisting that people who discriminate against others on the basis of race are not racist.\nAfter audiences and critics alike heaped praise and cash upon Resident Evil in 1996, Capcom quickly started work on a sequel with the hopes of shipping it the following year. This did not come to pass but the problems which plagued Resident Evil 2's production proved beneficial in the long run. Had the company rushed what we now call Resident Evil 1.5 to market, I cannot imagine we'd still talk about the series today\u2014assuming it lasted long enough to become a series at all.\nWhen negative internal and external feedback convinced Capcom to restart development of Resident Evil 2, it forced them to re-examine what gave the original game its charm. Simply trotting out yet another building bristling with (faux) undead wouldn't wow players like it did the first time. Director Hideki Kamiya, scenario writer Noboru Sugimura, and the rest of the team sought to outdo themselves and raise the stakes across the board.\nInstead of a remote mansion, Resident Evil 2 takes place in an urban environment. The heroes begin their journey on the streets of Raccoon City surrounded by makeshift barricades, burning automobiles, and bloodthirsty zombies. Forget the gradual unease of a ticking clock in a dining room; Resident Evil 2 dares you to find safe haven or die trying. It's a total escalation in tone and danger from the start yet it's still scary because our expectations have changed. In Resident Evil 1 you're desperate for a way out; in Resident Evil 2 the last thing you want is to go back outside.\nResident Evil 3 (1999) depicts the actions of another Raccoon City survivor looking to escape the same nightmare. The events of the two games overlap chronologically and share a few locations, although Resident Evil 3 puts a button on the affair by revealing the US government's intention to destroy the entire city to contain the outbreak. Even though both previous titles used a self-destruct countdown to create urgency during the finale, in this case players must defeat the final boss while an on-screen radar shows an inbound missile heading straight towards them. It's a bittersweet ending to the trilogy as the heroes must live with the knowledge that thousands more didn't make it.\nAs Capcom shifted gears to accommodate new hardware, Resident Evil entered a phase of safe bets. Code Veronica for the Sega Dreamcast features much improved graphics but in service of a story starring familiar characters. Two Nintendo GameCube releases in 2002 looked backwards rather than forward: A remake of the original game celebrating its sixth anniversary and a prequel, Resident Evil Zero. To capitalize on the series' ongoing success, Capcom also invested time and money porting Resident Evil 2 and 3 from the PlayStation to competing consoles.\nEverything changed when the much-delayed Resident Evil 4 debuted in 2005. A completely revamped camera, dynamic combat system, and a far more linear structure replace the methodic exploration and careful strategizing of the older games. Gone, too, are the claustrophobic, narrow hallways in favor of outdoor areas like forests and a homely village. Without Leon Kennedy from Resident Evil 2 returning as the protagonist, few people would even recognize it as part of the same franchise.\nResident Evil 4 even abandons zombies as the primary antagonists, replacing them with far more able-bodied foes called Ganados. While no less homicidal, the Ganados use tools, wield weapons, and operate as a hive mind to make Leon regret he ever set foot in Europe on this mission.\nWithin seconds of starting the game, players must take Leon into a stranger's home. The door is wide open so Leon doesn't even knock, he just barges in and starts asking questions. The inhabitant reacts by swinging a hatchet at Leon's head while his neighbors kill Leon's two police escorts. Suddenly alone, Leon has to fend off dozens of Ganados while they shout at him in Spanish.\nDespite a new action-first prerogative, Resident Evil 4 upholds its horror legacy by adding a new layer to the formula: The awful sensation of intruding in someone else's space. If you've ever visited a community where you don't speak the local language, you know exactly how that feels. Now imagine everyone holding a pitchfork and you understand how Resident Evil 4 terrifies even as it ups Leon's athleticism and firepower.\nLaunching first on the GameCube but arriving by year's end on the PlayStation 2, Resident Evil 4 rewrote the rules for Capcom's flagship survival horror franchise. Though it still featured misshapen creatures and graphic violence, the excitement of making snap decisions amidst hordes of enemies gave Resident Evil a shot of adrenaline.\nCapcom pushed the envelope even further by sending a pair of protagonists to the fictional African nation of Kijuju for Resident Evil 5, allowing two players to fight alongside one another for the first time in the series. The resulting blockbuster broke company sales records, though audiences expressed doubt that the game even qualified as horror anymore.\nRegardless, Capcom aimed even higher with Resident Evil 6 and its three separate two-player campaigns, each focused on a different duo battling bioweapons around the globe. By now the company line had switched from branding Resident Evil as \"survival horror\" to \"ultimate horror entertainment,\" an acknowledgement that the series had\u2014like the slow-moving zombies from the older titles\u2014grown deadlier and more aggressive.\nYet while these mass-market releases hauled in mega-millions at retail, Capcom never neglected the notion that Resident Evil games are supposed to frighten players. Launched in January 2012 ahead of Resident Evil 6,\u00a0 Revelations offers a small-scale horror experience on the Nintendo 3DS, one structured around an episodic story befitting a handheld console with limited battery capacity. Its 2015 sequel arrived as four individual weekly downloads before Capcom shipped it to stores as a single package.\nBoth Revelations games, while featuring teamwork and plenty of guns, emphasize dread over non-stop thrills. Revelations 2 even makes feeling scared a central part of its plot with an Overseer trapping civilians in a prison specifically to test their response to stressful situations. Getting kidnapped and waking up on Zombie Island is bad, but the prospect of panicking and then transforming into a brainless behemoth is even worse.\nThis brings us to the most recent decade of Resident Evil, one where Capcom has successfully steered the series back to its roots while still appealing to the widest possible audience. Originally teased via a virtual reality demo called Kitchen, Resident Evil VII presents a first-person adventure that once again locks players inside a house with no way out.\nIn hindsight, Resident Evil VII reads as even more revolutionary than Resident Evil 4 did 20+ years ago. The switch from third to first-person increases the tension of every moment of gameplay to an extreme; I've always empathized with my on-screen counterpart but in this game it truly feels like the killers are out to get me personally. Pressing a button to guard brings up \"my\" hands and whenever an enemy swings a blade at the camera, it's as if I'm the one getting dismembered.\nAs VII and its own sequel Village advanced the series' story forward, Capcom doubled down on mining the series' past by remaking Resident Evil 2 and 3 for modern platforms. These high-resolution adaptations retain the third-person perspective and basic outline of the originals but up the fear quotient by making the enemies more resilient. Zombies still splatter in response to bullets but unless you completely decapitate them, you're never quite sure if they'll get back up. The corpses also remain on screen for much longer, forcing you to wonder when you backtrack if the bodies you left behind on your last visit might have moved just a little.\nCapcom also remade Resident Evil 4 because of course they did; the company has long sought to keep the original game available to new and old audiences alike, so why not give it a 4K 60fps facelift that sells for full price. Since that 2023 release, rumors abound as to which other titles might benefit from a second pass. I'm partial to Code Veronica but I also recognize that a Zero remake could really reshape that ho-hum prequel into a story worth telling.\nHere in 2026, Resident Evil commemorates its 30th anniversary with a brand-new game, a legacy sequel that looks back on past events and reckons with its own history. Requiem\u2014re9uiem if you're nasty\u2014juggles two narratives with two very different protagonists. 20-something FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft investigates a series of deaths with identical pathology while series veteran Leon Kennedy pursues those same leads because he suffers from those telltale symptoms. The two come together just long enough to realize their goals overlap, though neither party learns all the answers until the dramatic conclusion.\nRequiem's dual protagonists deal with their circumstances in a manner befitting their life experiences. Grace has clearly never met a zombie before and lacks combat training, so she has to make do with limited weaponry and stealth tactics. Leon has murdered more monsters than he cares to count at this point, so he takes out the undead like the rest of us take out our garbage.\nIn line with the series' blend of action and terror, Requiem's two halves invoke opposing gameplay sensations. Grace must approach every enemy like her life depends on it and running away is often the best strategy. Leon faces down deadly fiends by the dozen with a late-game pickup awarding him bonus points for each kill. Fear motivates both characters with Grace completely out of her element and still mourning the loss of her mother, while Leon grapples with his deteriorating condition and regret over those lives he failed to save.\nI identify a lot more with Leon in Requiem because this isn't my first rodeo; it takes a lot more than a single skeleton to surprise me at this point. More importantly, though, Leon and I are both pushing 50 and at our age, that birthday comes with introspection. I may not have his muscles or hairline but I've got my share of unfinished business and I'm painfully aware that there are fewer days ahead than there are behind.\nAny media property that makes it to 30 will have its ups and downs, so it says something that after three decades I'm just as infatuated by Resident Evil now as I was in the 90s. \"Survival horror\" might not describe every entry accurately, but there's clearly an ethos at work here despite multiple creative teams taking the series in different directions.\u00a0\nMore to the point, Resident Evil still frightens me which I never expected. I've grown into a horror fan in my middle-age which means most of the stuff that spooked me as a child barely fazes me today. A masked killer stalking teenagers? Yawn. The dead coming back to life and going shopping? Seen it. I've got one inventory slot open and have to choose between more bullets and a first-aid spray? That's timeless.\nAs proof, I offer this parental anecdote: My teenage daughter\u2014born after Resident Evil 6 launched in 2012\u2014has seen me play countless hours of horror games by this point. Digital gore means little to her, so if a zombie's head pops like a watermelon, she laughs. Months of Capcom's marketing machine meant that when Requiem arrived, she wanted to play it just as much as I did. Yet when I set her up on the PS5 and let her dive in while I went back to my PC, I noticed how quickly her mood changed.\nAlone in the dark with a nine-foot-tall girl stalking her every move, my daughter stopped giggling and started shivering. She understood the objective and knew what to do, but didn't want to go any further without moral support from me next to her on the couch. In other words, her first Resident Evil experience mirrored my own; I too couldn't bear to explore the Spencer Mansion without another person in the room.\nTwo games, two players, thirty years apart, with the same results. That's the magic of Resident Evil.\nWriter/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet. All music this week comes from Resident Evil Requiem.", "guid": "153637263", "isoDate": "2026-03-22T11:00:14.000Z", "itunes": { "duration": "1571", "image": "https://c10.patreonusercontent.com/4/patreon-media/p/post/153637263/3b2021ec52f44dbb8e434c14b7b08443/eyJkIjo3MiwiaCI6MzAwMCwic3RyaXBfYWxwaGEiOjEsInciOjMwMDAsIndlYnAiOjB9/1.jpg?token-hash=0mIFnN-WcmYXh4BCQgD6aTYduiFx4B1mPHPTeYculx0%3D" }, "itunes_duration": "0:26:10" }