Impressions

Resident Evil Requiem is so scary, my demo computer crashed to escape its monster… probably…

Lex played Resident Evil Requiem at Gamescom this year, and it was so terrifying that even the demo computer didn't want to see what was next.

As mentioned in my previous write-up, I actually played both Pragmata and Resident Evil Requiem twice while at Gamescom; once at Capcom’s booth on the final day of the show, and once at an Nvidia event a day before the show even began. Well, I say I played them both… I played a bit of RE9.

Well, all of these Nvidia PC were state of the art. As a result, most of them had those fancy see-through cases with a cooling system that had a digital readout that tells you how hot your computer is getting. It was getting hot enough in this old industrial building that several team members representing games there were walking up to the demo stations and taking quick pictures of these readouts. Probably so that they could send a strongly worded email, that it was too damn hot. And in some ways, being trapped in a sweltering room with gamers is scarier than any horror game.

Used to the darkness

So it was really hot. We’re all professionals. “I can deal with this,” I thought, as I got set up on a gaming laptop that was scalding to the touch in the tucked-away alcove where Capcom had stations set up for Requiem and Pragmata.

Like this game gets really dark.

Something that you should know about Requiem, its lighting is nuts. I am sure that some of this was added to by the beefy PCs. However, later in the week on PS5, I still found myself wandering in and out rooms, marveling at how the lighting bounced and defused off surfaces. Stunned at how quickly it could get pitch black, the tiny warm glow of my cigarette lighter seemingly swallowed in an instant by darkness. It can be hard to see two feet in front of your face if you play in first person. It is truly, incredibly, impressively dark.

The horror

So the demo begins. After a few moments of gawking at the lighting and toying around with the first and third-person camera, I settled on the first-person view – it would make for more dramatic video footage. I started playing through the demo, which sees young Grace Ashcroft wake up, strapped to a gurney, seemingly after being drugged by “a man.”

I then embarked on a very Resident Evil 7: Prologue/Resident Evil Village Doll House style sequence with no weapons, a horrifying uninfected monster stalking me down the halls. Things reached a fever pitch when I encounter an already dead zombie (which quickly became food for this monster), and the toothy creature begins stalking me through the halls. As I run away, the flickering lights of the hall all went black. Darkness…

Beyond Darkness, actually. I turn around to a slightly mortified-looking Capcom representative behind me staring on in horror, and when I turned back, the lights in the hallway hadn’t turned back on… The computer was rebooting. It crashed in the stifling heat of the building.

All my footage from that session was corrupted - I actually got these screenshots from when I replayed the demo at Capcom's booth on a PS5. I have never had a thematic crash demoing a game before, but this one seems fitting. I am choosing to believe that my laptop actually just got too scared. It makes me feel less bad for being terrified.

There isn't actually much left in the demo after that point, I really did just need to run down that hall and plug a fuse I had picked up into a socket. However, the whole sequence acted as a compelling taster for the horror that Capcom is looking to serve up.

I'm still really interested to see if the game has more traditional RE/combat sections, but we probably won't have to wait for long to find out, as Capcom will be at TGS in just a few weeks.

Resident Evil Requiem arrives on PlayStation 5, Xbox, and PC sometime in 2026. In the meantime, you can read my Pragmata preview from Gamescom below.