Last year, I played through the Resident Evil Requiem demo, controlling the terrified Grace Ashford, weaponless and worried that this entry in the horror franchise would prioritize powerless fear over a zombie-killing power fantasy. But recently, I sat down to play the latest preview of the game, finally controlling the series’ beloved pretty boy Leon, and within minutes, I was cutting apart zombies with a chainsaw. 

“We are so back, baby,” I want to say, though there’s way too much of the game still to be seen. Yet my short time with Leon (less than an hour of gameplay) left me pumped for his return, including everything that made his Resident Evil 4 appearance so iconic, from the action hero antics to the sassy 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 how the game will flow, alternating between the two as distinct flavors of gameplay.

2 approaches, both satisfying

Let me put a popular fear to rest: Grace’s sections don’t resemble infamous segments from Resident Evil games past, where players must control helpless side characters who can only sneak around threats (like the maligned Ashley chapters from Resident Evil 4). 

Instead, Resident Evil Requiem seems to be showcasing two iconic gameplay styles of the franchise around each character: Grace’s sections resemble the spooky puzzle-laden atmosphere of the original Resident Evil, while Leon’s embody the horror action of Resident Evil 4. 

Requiem tailors each character’s experience to each gameplay style. Grace starts with a limited number of inventory slots requiring players to juggle items, and she has limited ammunition — sneaking past enemies is a harrowing necessity. She slowly creeps around, solving baroque puzzles and making the most out of a new crafting system that uses zombie blood (yuck) to make ammo and defensive weapons. 

After Grace’s tense and moody exploration segments, Leon’s sections are a cathartic release, letting players cut loose with a lot of ammo and intense enemies, as well as some satisfying executions with Leon’s new best friend — a carbon fiber hand ax.

This split is exemplified by a new feature in Requiem: the ability to switch between first- and third-person cameras on the fly. Capcom employees running my preview suggested I play through Grace’s sections in the former to ratchet up the tension, then switch to the latter for Leon’s action-oriented sections.

3 hours with Resident Evil Requiem

At Summer Game Fest 2025, CNET’s Sean Booker got to play the first snippet of Requiem gameplay that Capcom unleashed, in which Grace awoke from her abduction and snuck around a derelict hospital, evading a grotesque matronly mutant chasing her through an abandoned ward. This latest preview starts just after that moment, in which Leon arrives at the hospital to find zombie doctors and orderlies — easily dispatched by his gunplay and combat kicks.

When a zombie came crashing in with a chainsaw, I shot him down, picked up the tool, carved open other zombies and cut through a barred door. That’s when Leon ran into Grace, quite literally picking up right where my earlier preview ended. With a powerful revolver — named, I kid you not, Requiem — I gunned down the matronly mutant. Before our heroic duo could properly team up, a gate slammed down between them. The hospital’s tall, pale overseer Dr. Gideon, operating the building from a distant control room, has other plans for them. 

That’s where control shifted to Grace for a 2-hour gameplay segment, placing the wayward FBI agent in a setting familiar to Resident Evil veterans: a foyer 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 manifested in arcane puzzles and ornate wooden furnishings, as well as evading zombies rather than shooting them to preserve scarce ammo. 

It’s a vibe of dangerous exploration, made manageable by another twist: for whatever reason (presumably explained in the full game), these particular undead retain their memories and wander around the set paths they patrolled in life. By sneaking around and not making noise, I was (mostly) fine. 

But as with the original Resident Evil that Grace’s sections evoke, I ended up having to run back and forth, retrieving key items from save rooms to solve puzzles across the map. The traversal became so tedious that I switched to the third-person over-the-shoulder camera to make it easier to weave around the undead.

Then the game sprung another surprise. Back from the 2002 Resident Evil 1 Remake are zombies that come back to un-life, crazier and deadlier. I whipped out the powerful Requiem revolver (which Leon had handed over to Grace through the gate separating them) and fired the single bullet I had to kill it — a precious resource, like a one-hit-kill safety blanket, that now put me more at the mercy of the hospital’s horrors.

It’s clear that Capcom wants players to feel vulnerable while controlling Grace, but not hopeless. During the preview, Capcom employees impressed on me that the FBI agent will grow in capability throughout the game. Mechanically, this was represented by her somewhat shaky aim, which took a second or two of focus to calm her enough for accurate shooting (i.e., the crosshairs shrinking after readying her gun) — which can be improved by finding or crafting injectable reflex boosters. Despite collecting resources and tools, including an offensive lab-made drug I could jab into zombies to make them literally explode, the shambling dead are still dangerous in the face of Grace’s unsure gunplay, and there are worse things haunting the halls.

One of these was a horrifyingly large mutant baby (distinct from the horrifyingly large mutant baby in Resident Evil 8), which chased Grace around one of the hospital wards. I switched to Leon, who escaped from the clutches of Dr. Gideon only to have to take on the grotesque infant the only way he knows how: lots of guns and chops from his ax. 

After dispatching the horror-child, Leon runs around some of the same hospital areas I’d snuck around as Grace — but this time guns a-blazing. Even an ambush of several reanimated, deadlier zombies was a thrilling piece of cake for our hero and his trusty shotgun. 

If the preview is representative of the game’s overall flow, players will survive through Grace’s vulnerable, tense gameplay stretches, while following chapters with Leon will act as release valves of action and gory gunplay. That’s a fun combination…when done right. Resident Evil Requiem seems like an attempt by Capcom to cram two flavors of its franchise into the same game. Independently, either is a joy to play, but how they’ll 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) showcased a game that felt like an intriguing combination of familiar and 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 around a strange hospital ward overrun by its undead residents, locked in the purgatory of their old routines, is delightfully bizarre. So is peering into a microscope to research a way to craft bullets out of scrap metal and blood. Resident Evil’s blend of surreal horror has always been better when it’s trying out new elements to add to its beloved melody — and this duet of novice and veteran, survival and action, feels like we might just be back, (non-mutant) baby.