Resident Evil Requiem

Where 92 sits: above 7 and Village, a breath short of 4

Drop Requiem into the series' coordinate grid and the spot is clear. A Metacritic 92 cleanly tops Resident Evil 7's 86 and Village's 84, proof it walks the horror-action fusion road more steadily than either forebear. It still cannot touch the 96 ceiling of Resident Evil 4 — the franchise peak remains the mountain nobody gets around. Add six million copies sold in roughly seventeen days, the fastest in series history, and a 95% Overwhelmingly Positive Steam rating, and this reads as a launch that won on both fronts at once: commerce and reception, the kind of double win the series has rarely pulled off so cleanly.

As the ninth mainline entry, its largest historical mark is being the first to fold both product lines — horror and action — squarely into a single game rather than forcing a choice between them.

That ambition alone earns a line in the ledger, regardless of how the final scores shake out. For years the series has swung like a pendulum, lurching toward dread in one game and toward spectacle in the next; Requiem is the first to stop choosing and try to hold both at once. The fact that it largely succeeds is what makes the 92 feel earned rather than inflated.

Who should dive, and who should wait

So who is it for? If you are the kind of Resident Evil fan who wants to be scared breathless and then pick up a weapon and swing back, who can take the cold-to-hot lurch from horror to action mid-game, this game is all but tailored to you — go in eyes closed.

The free first/third-person swap also lets you dial the experience to your own comfort: stay first person when you want the dread maxed out, flip to third when motion sickness creeps in or you simply want a clear look at the fight. The controls hand you that authority instead of locking you into one designer's idea of how the game should feel, and for a horror title that flexibility is more valuable than it sounds.

A few people, though, should think before they buy. First, anyone who wants unbroken pure horror and bristles at Leon's action breaking the suffocation — that action thread may be a subtraction rather than an addition for you, no matter how well it is built.

Second, anyone who weighs post-credits longevity heavily; the launch lacks a Mercenaries-style mode and the long tail is thin, and the promised story DLC is still months out and unpriced. If "how many hours will this keep me busy" is high on your checklist, the honest answer is: one excellent run, and then not much until that expansion actually lands. Against the Silent Hill 2 remake and its single-minded run of pure psychological dread, Requiem wins on scale and on the richness of its action thread — but on undisturbed, nothing-interrupts-it horror immersion, it is the one that chose to step aside. That is not a flaw so much as a different goal: one game wants to suffocate you for ten hours straight, the other wants to put you through an emotional rollercoaster of fear and release. Neither is wrong; they are simply after different things.

Decide which of the two you actually want from a Resident Evil — the kind that keeps you pinned in fear from start to finish, or the kind that scares you and thrills you by turns — and then decide whether to board now. Whichever camp you fall into, though, this is a horror release that 2026 simply will not let you ignore.