Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

(2026)

NO SPOILERS! HOORAY!

The Resident Evil Re9uiem Non-review FINALLY:

Now we come to Resident Evil Requiem, the ninth installment in the series proper, excluding a flood of side stories, gaidens, rail-shooters, hand-held versions, ports, director’s cuts, remakes, remakes of remakes, and RE themed pachinko machines.

RE9 was originally going to be an online multiplayer but the fans said boo. They said, and I quote all of the fans at once, “We don’t want an online multiplayer. We want something similar to the original Resident Evil… and also RE4 because that one was pretty good too. Please, no more vampires and possessed dolls. No more giantesses for the internet horndogs to simp over. For the love of god, just give us puzzles and zombies!”

And Capcom said, “Okay”.

Thus we get a game that switches play from one character to another as the story unfolds. As FBI agent Grace Ashcroft (voiced by Angela Sant’Albano) we must traverse various creepy facilities, uncovering clues revealing who she is, why she is, what exactly lead to the baffling events around her mother’s death, and what exactly the sinister Umbrella corporation has been up to these last 30 years in the ruins of Racoon City, back where the initial Zombie pandemic started.

Progress as Grace focuses on puzzle solving while avoiding or eviscerating a wide variety of actual zombies finally!

Eventually she crosses paths with long time fan-favorite Leon S. Kennedy (Nick Apostolides), main character of RE4, RE2, and RE Gaiden.

Leon’s segments play more like RE4, less puzzle solving, more shooting and stabbing. Chain saw flailing zombies are normal Tuesday. Unlike 4, Leon can now pick up these gas-powered gore machines and use them at his discretion, although “discrete” is poor word choice when describing chainsaw usage.

I found the villain, Victor, very fascinating. Voiced by Antony Byrne, Victor actually reminded me again of Peter Boyle but in a kindly non-humorous way that genuinely presented as sinister more than if he was a hulking monster with a deep monstrous voice. It made it hard to determine if he meant well or ill throughout the story and I was truly captivated by the mystery of his motives and actions.

The story is enjoyably mysterious and even though it’s clearly a nostalgia vehicle, it remains fairly well focused throughout. You see plenty of new locations and characters but you also revisit many old locations once traversed in previous games, now laying in nuked shambles. Actual zombies are plentiful, rarely repeating models that don’t disappear after they’ve been dispatched. Sometimes they even sing or apologize as they try to bite you, implying there’s still some remnant of their human mind left. A terrifying thought.

Even without reading every shred of correspondence you encounter, it’s easy to determine what’s going on through gameplay and cut scenes. In fact, it’s even a little absurd to see the little character Chloe (in a playable flashback) stopping to read medical histories and dossiers as if she would understand their vocabulary. The player would understand it, of course, but why is the 7ish-year-old Chloe accommodating the player’s quest for lore? It breaks the fourth wall a bit. But whatever.

One critique I would apply to a game as opposed to a movie is an alteration of an old adage: Show, don’t tell. It’s the rule for good cinema or good storytelling in general. No one wants to sit through endless expository as is the case with this very article, they want to experience it!

In a video game I think the adage would be “Show and tell through play”. Some games are guilty of LONG expository openings, boring tutorial levels that force you to learn commonly known game mechanics, or a stupid fairy repeatedly interrupts your gameplay to explain something you probably already know. All you really want to do is play the damn game and figure it out on your own! A game that puts you in situations that lead you ever so subtly into figuring out how to play without explaining everything is superb. Megaman X would be a grand example of how to do it right (also made by Capcom, I might add.)

RE9 does have a lot of cutscenes but I found it well balanced between extended periods of gameplay. Plus, there was a lot of dialogues and monologues happening during gameplay! That’s good video game storytelling!

Regarding the voice acting, it’s pretty top notch. Older games couldn’t always get the best actors and they often recorded their lines without context from the other actors’ delivery or situations playing out in the game.

My one complaint which research has softened in my mind is Grace’s constant stutter. I chalked it up to poor acting but I later learned Angela Sant’Albano applied Grace’s constant stutter after researching trauma symptoms and the directors told her to lean into it. It just seemed to me like every single line spoken by Grace started with a question word like wh-what, wh-where, wh-when, and wh-why. I found it a bit monotonous.

The graphics were absolutely amazing. I was very impressed to see an abandoned chainsaw bounce wildly all over the place affecting everything around it. Must have had the safety stuck. I come from a family of loggers. I have an inherent knowledge of chainsaws. No shambling uncoordinated zombie would be able to get one started let alone keep the safety bar constantly clenched. Oh, well. It looked cool.

I was also impressed with… uh, how do I say this without getting too graphic?… Suffice it to say when certain red liquids flew through the air and landed on the scenery, it adhered to the shape of the object it hit and then stayed there for the remainder of the game. This means if you had a particularly messy struggle with some zombies in a room and later backtracked through that room, the mess would still be there. That might make perfect sense to some but the technical ingenuity and memory required to allow this impromptu occurrence and then have it remain affected by your actions indefinitely is quite the feat for a video game. Most of the time bullet holes, blood, and dispatched baddies eventually disappear to save memory for later tasks. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised though. This is the future and we can count the hairs in Mario’s mustache. Approximately 600 if you wanted to know.

I hear word the DLC (Downloadable content) for RE9 is going to be big enough to be considered its own game and is supposed to feature more time with Leon traversing the town on his motorcycle. I’m definitely interested. The motorcycle parts of the current game are outrageous “boulder-punching” moments but I loved it anyway!

The cinematic aspects makes this a fun watch for me but I have neither the time nor money to actually play a game like this. It’s two generations ahead of the gaming systems I currently own and likely to stay there for a while. While 9 hours is a relatively breezy playthrough, it would probably take me about 16 hours or more to bumble though. That’s a long time to be engaged in a solitary hobby and I have plenty others I find far more rewarding. Not to mention the usual method I undergo of getting the kids to bed, kissing the Missus goodnight, plopping onto the couch, firing up the gaming system, and instantaneously falling asleep. Adulting sucks… aside from the kissing anyway. Phew! Good save!