Resident Evil Requiem's demo tops the series' scariest moments with what might be the most upsetting monster Capcom’s ever devised, and as a horror baby I'm afraid of how much I want to play it

With Resident Evil Requiem, Capcom aims to blend "true survival horror" with "high-stakes action" – and in a behind-closed-doors gameplay demo, it's clear that the studio is continuing to fire on all cylinders. The 30 minutes or so I got to see were among the most tension-filled, horrifying moments I've seen in any Resident Evil game. Picture the early moments in the Baker house of Resident Evil 7 or the darkest depths of the basement in Village, crank up the intensity even higher, and you might start to get an idea of what the devs are accomplishing here.

Our protagonist Grace Ashcroft is an FBI agent, but while she's had some training, she still doesn't have field experience. That makes her the perfect hero for this kind of story – one who can fully express the terror the setting deserves, but whose ability to survive these horrors feels genuinely earned.

Entering the world of survival horror

The demo opens with the same scene we saw in the trailer: Grace is strapped, upside-down, to a gurney mounted on the wall. Her blood's being drawn for some surely terrible purpose, but that ends up being her saving grace, as she smashes the blood container and uses the shattered remnants to cut herself free from her bonds.

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That all happens in a cutscene, but she becomes playable. We move into a first-person perspective just like the other modern Resident Evil games – but more on that in a minute. It'll look instantly familiar if you've played Resident Evil 7 or 8, with an intimate look at the dingiest corners of claustrophobic rooms, where you look for something you can use to solve a puzzle or any item that can give you an advantage against the monstrous horrors you'll face.

Capcom demonstrated the game running on PS5 Pro, and while it's immediately recognizable as another title on the venerable RE Engine, it looks absolutely stunning. The dim corridors of the decrepit hospital Grace finds herself exploring are absolutely stunning, with terrifically rendered lighting just barely illuminating the way. The corners of some rooms here are pitch black, but there's a gorgeous and terrifying contrast between light and dark.

As Grace moves through the halls, tension builds, thanks in large part to the subtle details of the environment. Long hallways have odd light fixtures at the end to give a subtle impression of faces in the dark, and a bizarre horse sculpture that looks like a grasping monster from certain angles makes a particularly strong impression.

There's a whole 'nother layer to the tension thanks to Grace's reaction to the whole thing. She's breathing heavily, constantly working to calm herself down as she explores, and it all adds even more to the atmosphere. The items she picks up feel like sick jokes - no flashlight, she gets a lighter to brighten the corridors. No weapons, she gets a bottle to distract enemies.

An evil resident

If you've played any previous survival-horror-focused Resident Evil game, you can probably guess the basic format here. You find a door marked with a cherub, so you need to locate the cherub key. There's a big gate missing power, so you need to find a fuse to get it moving. All the while, you're moving back and forth through tight corridors, expecting some awful monster to jump out at any moment.

The eventual jump scare is a fakeout – a classic dead body falling over gag. The real horror comes when some awful, distended creature reaches into the scene and chomps that body's head off directly in front of Grace, prompting a big chase to drive home the "high-stakes action" part of the equation.

This creature was briefly teased in the reveal trailer, and it's deliciously awful. Think of an even more monstrous version of Marguerite Baker from RE7 and you'll get the idea: limbs subtly but grotesquely stretching in all the wrong ways, and an upsetting capacity for sneaking away into the walls and rafters for a thing so large.

The whole sequence felt like something of a Resident Evil greatest hits collection. The classic puzzle solving of the original games, the stalking encounter design of RE7's Jack, and even the claustrophobic hideaways of RE Village's infamous basement.

Grace eventually makes her escape, at least temporarily, by repairing the fuse and narrowly squeezing under the gate. But Capcom had one more surprise for those in attendance for the demo. We reset to the start of it all, then the dev paused the game, opened the options, and toggled into a third-person viewpoint. Yes, it appears you can play Requiem entirely in first or third-person, depending on which flavor of survival-horror you prefer.

It all looks genuinely terrifying, and I'm in full agreement with my colleague James that this might just be the scariest Resident Evil has ever been. I'm an absolute horror baby who's become a Resident Evil fan thanks to its historic camp, and part of me genuinely wonders if I'll be able to stick with Requiem through to the end after how nail-biting what I saw in this demo was. But Capcom's citing the idea of addictive horror - a kind of fear you can't help but keep exploring - as core to Requiem, and I think it might already have taken hold of me, because this little demo has me dying to know what happens next.

Capcom looks poised to deliver yet another one of the best horror games out there.