The Ringer-Verse - 'Resident Evil Requiem' Reactions | Button Mash

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

Ben, Matt James, and Joshua Rivera team up to take on one of the most anticipated video games of the year: 'Resident Evil Requiem,' the ninth mainline entry in the 30-year-old survival-horror franchise. First, they analyze the significance of Sony's shocking closure of Bluepoint Games, and an Xbox leadership shake-up. Then they compare their 'Resident Evil' histories, have an in-depth (but spoiler-free) discussion about how 'Requiem' weaves together different strands of the series, and offer their final verdicts on the game. Email us at ⁠[e-mail]⁠! Intro (0:00) Patch Notes (3:00) Bluepoint Closure (3:30) Xbox Leadership Changes (10:40) First Thoughts on ‘Resident Evil Requiem’ (29:11) Mash or Pass? (1:10:50) Outro (1:16:00) Host: Ben Lindbergh Guest: Matt James and Joshua Rivera Producer: Devon Renaldo Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, The Town, on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name's Matt Bellany. I'm founding partner at Puck and the writer of the What I'm Hearing newsletter. And with my show, The Town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week, we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about. We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight. Which streamer is on the brink of collapse? And which executive is on the hot seat? Disney, Netflix, who's up, down, and who will never eat lunch in this town again?

Follow the town on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Trimphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. doctor decides that you can self-inject Trimphia, proper training is required. Tremfaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis.

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Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. Hello and welcome into the ringerverse, your nexus speed for all things fandom. I am Ben, Biohazard Lindberg, senior editor at The Ringer and your host here at Button Mesh, flanking me today so closely that they're almost making me a Ben sandwich, which are two cherished colleagues, Ringer, deputy art lead, Resident Evil remake, Matt, James.

Hi, man. Hello. In our third chair today, providing valuable backup, Ringer freelance contributor, Joshua, Code Veronica, Rivera. How do you feel about that nickname? Oh, I love it. I always thought Code Veronica was a cool name. Well, now it's yours. You're welcome.

Happy to have you both here. And to quote Leon Kennedy, I'm sure you boys. didn't just tag along so we could sing kumbaya together at some Boy Scout bonfire. Maybe we can do that a little later in the pod. Then again, maybe you did. No, you didn't. We're here to talk about one of the most anticipated and most warmly received video games of the year. Resident Evil Requiem developed by Capcom, of course, and published on all platforms on the same day as this podcast,

which means if you're listening to me right now, you can go play Resident Evil Requiem. It's there for you. You can put on this podcast. while you creep around zombie-infested mansions, which might be a good way to lower the tension a little bit. And it takes a village to cover video games, a Resident Evil village. And so I'm happy to have you both.

We're going to get into everything surrounding this latest Resident Evil release. Of course, we're not going to get too deep into specific story spoilers. We will describe the basic structure of the game. Maybe we will allude to some ways in which it relates to the, history of the franchise, but we know this thing just came out. We don't want to ruin everything for you, although the internet has done a pretty decent job of ruining this game's plot for everyone already. Thanks, leekers. Anyway, we will talk about all aspects of this gigantic game. We just have a bit of news to talk about first. So let's lead, as we usually do, with our patch notes section,

and we just have two notes for you today. The latest indications of industry decline, the latest stories and video games that everyone is upset about and has been for the past week. We're going to talk about a PlayStation-centric story and an Xbox-centric story. There's been a leadership change at Xbox. There's also been yet another studio closure at Sony. So let's start with the latter. Blue Point is No More. The famed remake studio that has made many great new versions of old games is not going to be

making any more of those because they have. have been shut down. You have perhaps played BluePoint's versions of Shadow of the Colossus, demon souls, of course, they worked on uncharted, they worked on God of War. And somewhat unceremoniously, last week, Sony announced that it will be shutting down BluPoint. And this is just the latest in a string of disasters that have befallen studios that have been acquired by Sony in a bit of an expansion spree in the post-pandemic craze. Matt, what did you make of the decision to shut down BluPoint games? I think it's just shocking, right?

It's absolutely shocking from multiple angles. For the most part, I feel like their remakes have been very well received. I mean, personally, I thought that their Demon Souls remake was excellent. They were, you know, the studio that had the most chance, I think, of possibly remaking Bloodbourne, as so many gamers wanted to see. Yes. RIP, the non-existent Bloodbourne remake that everyone kind of counted on. Would have been an easy cash grab.

I mean, I assume. So from a quality of work standpoint, it's shocking. But as we all know, quality of work does not equate to getting to. keep your job in this industry, unfortunately. But on the flip side of things, just from a financial perspective, it's shocking to see BluPoint be closed because they are specializing,

they were specializing in remakes and remasters. And that is one of the most guaranteed sources of income that you could find in the industry. Remakes and remasters are huge in this era, and they were known as the best of the best in this. It's just flabbergasted. I'm flabbergasted. Of all the studios, I thought that would have been one of the safer ones,

and here we are they're gone. And the reason that I think this provoked such shock and also disdain, not just the fact that BluPoint has been shut down, that a lot of people like the games they worked on, that 70 people were laid off or about to be as a result of this. But also that, well, we've described them as remaster specialists, but they were miscast after being acquired. And that's, I think, the part that's so flummoxing is that you acquire BluPoint games

who have this specialty. They've done this one thing and they've done it extremely well. And then you task them with doing something completely different, which is reportedly a live service god of war game. And that got canceled. and that probably led to the closure of BluPoint. And so you have asked them to do something that they've never done before, that they presumably weren't the greatest fit for.

It's very much like you take Rocksteady, which has distinguished itself with the Arkham games, and then you say, make us a live service game. And granted, they played a part in that decision too, but that's not really in the studio's DNA. And so I think that's the frustrating thing here, really, is that you see the statement from PlayStation executive Herman Holst, and he's talking about all the challenges, all the headwinds in the industry.

We're operating in an increasingly challenging industry environment, rising development costs, slow at industry, growth, changing player behavior, broader economic headwinds, et cetera, et cetera. Sure, that's all true, but it's hard to say the industry made us do it when you chose to reassign this specialist studio to something that it most likely was not suited for, then you canceled those plans and then you scuttle the studio entirely. It's hard not to see that as self-inflicted and self-sabotage. Joshua, what do you think? Yeah, it's also, I mean, like, fair to have it out for Sony and Hulse because this is the latest of,

you know, I think three, four years ago, he had said that Sony had, what, 10 live service games in the pipeline, right? Like that, Sony had a big question. We have not seen. most of them, you know. And some of them we saw for two weeks before they disappeared forever. So it just looks like, you know, mismanagement of several studios. You know, like Matt was saying, Blue Point had such a clearly defined lane, a thing that they were good at and appreciated for. And then they were put to do something else entirely.

Not only something else entirely, part of an ongoing boondoggle, right? Which kind of seemed like a boondoggle when it was announced. But like, you know, the only hindsight part that we have is that like we've seen them cancel stuff and, you know, Concord fail, you know. But it does seem like an act of hubris to put so many eggs in this one basket. It would have felt even a little bit different, right, if they had put them on a different project entirely. Yeah. That wasn't tied to this life service initiative. Yeah.

And maybe more will come out. Maybe there will be a Jason Schreier TikTok blow by blow. How did this happen? exactly. But from afar, at least it's hard not to have that interpretation. And I think that's what leads to a lot of the live service fatigue and frustration, which we talked about last week. We praised the upcoming PlayStation lineup and all the games that were teased, but we also talked about high guard and how everyone had it out for high guard and why there's just no patience whatsoever for this genre. And I don't think it's solely that there are so many games like that and that

it's hard for new ones to stand out. But also because you have studios, that are just being forced to fit into this. It's very much a square peg, round hole situation. And when you're actively cannibalizing talented studios that could make other kinds of great games to feed the live service beast and then not even have those games come out or be successful, that just feels like a huge own goal.

And I think this is the third studio that Sony has officially closed after acquiring it over the past few years. Others have been downsized or haven't released any games or have undergone struggles, like Bungy, for instance, which of course will be releasing Marathon in a week, which we will talk about on button mash. And so there is still a lot being placed into this basket with the Horizon game that is about to be beta tested that we talked about last week with Marathon. We'll see whether any of those gambles pan out. But they didn't for Blue Point, unfortunately. RIP, hope those people go on to do something else. Excellent. freed from the shackles of live service constraints. But this is why I think live service development has kind of become the T-virus of video gaming. This is why it just feels like everything's infected and we can't get away. But before we talk about the T-virus, we have one more bit of news to discuss, which is a change at the top at Xbox. Phil Spencer is out. He is retiring. He of course has led

Microsoft's Xbox efforts since 2014, and he has been at Microsoft for close to 40 years. So that alone is sort of a seismic change, but you also have other changes. Matt Booty, who is the head of content at Xbox, is being promoted to chief content officer. He's sticking around. But Sarah Bond, the former president, is out, and there's been some post-changeover sniping in the press about her. and the new head of Xbox gaming is Asha Sharma, who most recently was running Microsoft's core AI efforts,

and that alone is enough to strike fear into the heart of some gamers. She was at Instacart previously. She did have a long ago stint at Xbox, but she isn't really from the gaming world. So I don't know that we have learned anything definitive. This is a big change, which was released somewhat hastily a week ago because of some reporting that was about to drop. And so the timeline for these announcements was actually moved up,

which was why it sort of seemed like a Friday news dump. So the timing, I think, was not exactly the way Microsoft had planned it. But Asher Sharma has been doing the rounds and doing various interviews and reassuring some people and scaring other people. And we don't actually know much more about the direction of the gaming business. at Microsoft than we did a week ago, but it muddies the waters even further. Matt, what did you make of this change? Well, as always with Microsoft,

I think there's two sides to the story. One is the side that they present rather eloquently saying a lot of the right things. Right out the gate, it's been, you know, we're not going to be doing AI slop and we're going to get back to what made Xbox card. And the talk is, the talk is, the words are good. But, you know, in the past few years, with Phil and with Sarah, the talk was always good.

It was always a bit of a dance of semantics, right? It was, you know, hey, we're going to start putting some games on PlayStation. Right now we're only putting four games on PlayStation, right? And it was like truthful at the time. Like, yes, right now you did only put four. But the intention was you were going to put a lot more games on PlayStation and that's what happened. So it's always a dance with Xbox of the words are great, but what are we actually seeing?

How are the chess pieces being arranged? Right. And that's where you take a look and you say, okay, Xbox has been floundering. The creative team, you know, Phil and Sarah, who's been in charge, have been pushed out, it seems. It certainly seems like, you know, Sarah didn't see it coming.

She had a post on LinkedIn. that morning that she left the company, that seemed to imply that this was maybe not something that she anticipated happening at the time, but you brought in someone from an AI background with a boss who has been on record as loving AI, and with little to no gaming experience. And you have to wonder if the intentions here

are to bring back Xbox as it once was to great, to greatness, or if we're bringing someone in to appease the shareholders, and we're going to take Xbox now into whatever area makes the most financial sense for the company, Microsoft, which has been doubling down on AI at every opportunity. So we're going to see, are they bringing Xbox back to greatness? Or are they going to kind of sit on their hands? make as much money off this thing as possible and approach every decision as a business decision and not one particularly focused on gaming.

Do we have new Xbox hardware? Or is this something that is going to sort of die a slow death, the Xbox brand? Joshua, are the T-Leaves telling you anything? I fall on the, I guess, the more downer of options that Matt lays out here. I think that while Xbox, you know, compared to the rest of the industry, is huge. It's within Microsoft, it's small.

You know, it is not their primary concern, which, you know, like you were saying, right now, Microsoft is interested in at least selling itself as an AI company, right? Because that's where all the investor money is. That's where all the excitement is. That's where all the growth is. And so at the very least, they have to appear, they feel they have to appear as one, or get left behind and miss out on all this money and opportunities. So basically, I mean, you know, you treat the company like that.

You know, like if you look at the company that way, their decisions make a lot of sense. I don't think that is good for anybody, you know. I do wonder if, you know, they aren't interested in making games anymore, if that makes sense for anybody. I mean, we've all talked about how, you know, in various conversations and podcasts and pieces, just how risky a business.

AAA video game development is, right? It's extremely expensive. You are more likely to crash out than to see huge success. You're sounding like Herman Hulst. Start shuddering studios, Joshua Rivera. No, like, I think this is all bad. I just don't think these companies are just turning profits, right? And the profits are not in video games. They could be, right? I think we all know, I don't know. Like, that's the big story of, like, glare obscure, right? And Sample, all interactive and like figuring out. Yes, Sandville will save us all. Clare obscure, the shining beacon of the industry. Just make more clear obscures. It's easy. And that's the thing. It's not, right?

Like you have to, like any other creative endeavor, right? Like you've got to shoot your shots and there are fewer shots being fired. Yes. Yeah, I think if you look at the long-term trajectory of Microsoft, it's not pointing up when it comes to the Xbox brand. And there has been a lot of reporting about, yes, they're being held to certain expectations of profitability that are not the norm in video games and what kind of effects has that had. What stood out to me in the interviews that we've seen so far is that there's been a lot

of hedging, as you would expect. There hasn't been any definitive, here's what we're doing, here's what I'm doing differently. There's been a lot of, hey, I'm new here, I'm learning. I'm just kind of trying to figure out what we've been doing, which you might think, well, it'd be ideal to do that before you're the boss, I suppose. although Spencer and Bond are sticking around in an advisory capacity for a while to ease the transition. But I think there has been a reluctance to scare anyone off any more than they already are. So there's been a lot of sort of pandering, placating, appeasing, signaling to various constituencies that we see you or we hear you, as one tweet from Asha Sharma explicitly said. when someone asked about more exclusives, we hear you.

Well, what does that mean exactly? Does that mean more exclusives? Does it not? We don't know. And maybe they don't know. And I think it sounds as if they're trying to sort of serve every audience in ways that sound almost contradictory to me at times. Because Asha Sharma said, well, we'll recommit to our core Xbox fans and players

and we'll celebrate our roots and we'll have a renewed commitment to Xbox, starting with console. But then in the very next paragraph, gaming now lives across devices, not within the limits of any single piece of hardware. We're going to expand to everything. We don't want any barriers. How is it possible for all of those things to be true, is what I wonder, to recommit to the core Xbox fans who want you to make stuff for Xbox and to make Xboxes? And how do you square that with the idea that everything should be multi-platform? So I don't know. And I don't know that they have an answer and we will continue to monitor not just the words, as you said, Matt, but the actual substantive decisions because that's ultimately what matters.

Do you guys have any read on what Xbox fans want? Because it's been what? It's been a solid, what, 10, 15 years of like being in the pits, you know? I don't know. Like what does that look like, I don't know, Halo being cool again? Does that look like something new? Hey, we've got Gears of War again. We've got Halo.

Wouldn't hurt, would it? Fables coming. Forces coming. Microsoft has made a lot of games lately and a lot of good games. And they've really ramped up their production, as you would expect, given that they've acquired a large portion of the industry. But that has not really led to exclusives by design. And so as someone who's owned every Xbox console, other than professional obligation,

I don't know that there is a strong proposition out there right now for the next Xbox hardware. Why do I need to buy that? And we'll see whether there actually is a next Xbox hardware, whether that's just a branded version, whether there is a recommitment to exclusives. That's all very up in the air. Fortunately, there's no RAM on planet Earth anymore,

so we won't actually have to figure out who's making which consoles went until 2029. Yeah. I mean, you'd say, like, what is, what does the Xbox gamer want, right? And I think it starts with exclusives, right? If you're like an Xbox fan and you're in the ecosystem and you don't have a PlayStation, you're just frustrated that, you know,

you can't help but partake in that bit of tribalism of Xbox versus PlayStation if you're someone who has an Xbox and doesn't have a PlayStation. And seeing, you know, every great game end up on PlayStation has got to be frustrating. Like, Forsa is going to be huge, and it's going to be on PlayStation. I mean, I don't know what Xbox fans want

out of next-gen hardware, aside from performance at a reasonable price, which is seeming less and less likely, given the nature of hardware manufacturing in our glorious AI era. But my sort of thought is that it's a huge uphill battle for Xbox, one that is unlikely to pay off. And if I'm an executive in Microsoft, who doesn't have a love for gaming, I just see hardware,

the next hardware, as maybe too tall a mountain to climb. But we'll see. I think there is a path that they could possibly take with a system that is heavily marketed as half Xbox, half PC, that costs more. than PS6, but you could market it as, you know, you can get a PS6 or for a few hundred dollars more, you can get an Xbox and a PC. And being that they're Microsoft, you would think, and we've been thinking this for years, that they could possibly make a version of Windows that is gamer friendly. So if they could make a system that's half Xbox, full backwards

compatibility, half PC, you know, you can boot it up and play Steam games on there, that's a potential Avenue I could see as appealing. But again, it just seems less and less likely that Xbox is just going to miraculously do everything right because they haven't in a very long time. My last observation is that the retirement and departure of Spencer, at least the departure from Xbox, does seem like the end of an era, not just for him and for Microsoft, but really for gaming executives and the public faces of gaming companies as a whole. Because if you knew anything about Spencer, it was that he was a big gamer, that everyone could look at what games he was playing and see the enormous numbers of hours, the Matt James-esque tallies that he was putting into certain

games. And that was really a whole generation or multi-generations of the leaders of gaming companies were big gamers who were relating to their audiences on that level, gamer to gamer. And that seems to have changed. And I don't know that that's a good thing or a bad thing. been a lot of conversation about Asha Sharma, she publicized her gamer tag, which was created about a month ago. And she's not going to any lengths to paint herself as more of a gamer than she is. I don't think there's been a lot of kind of questioning her gamer cred, which can be kind of a sexist thing often. But I think by her own admission, she's not a big gamer historically. She's just kind of dipping her toe in now that she's actually running the business. It does

seemed somewhat important to have some level of familiarity with the products that you're releasing. However, she's not alone in that area. We had this whole, you know, at Nintendo, you had Sotori Wuata, you had Reggie Fizame, who was more of a business background guy, but also did talk a lot about how he grew up playing S&ES and he loved Nintendo games. And at Sony, you had Ken Kuduragi, who designed hardware. You had Shuhay Ushida, who's a huge gamer and champion of games. You had Spencer at Microsoft, and now you don't have that.

And you don't really have even public-facing executives so much. And that's just an interesting change. It's true at Sony, where I don't know how many PlayStation players could even name the president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Hideaki Nishino, at Nintendo these days, at Shuntaro for Akawa. These are people with business backgrounds and people who don't really lead with their gaming credit, even at Nintendo, you had Doug Bowser who replaced Reggie, who had a video game name, but not really a video game background.

And I think that makes some sense. Video games are big business. You don't have to be a big gamer to be a successful gaming CEO. But it does seem as if there's been a bit of a changing of the guard there that we've entered a new era. And maybe that's just generational. It's just gaming has been around for a long time. It's now a big business.

You don't necessarily have to relate to players on that. level or sell yourself as someone who is intimately familiar with the medium. Or maybe this goes along with what we were saying about Sony, where it's not always about making the best games, it's about making the most money. And that may or may not be something that someone who really loves video games is best equipped to do. So we will see whether Fables good and whether Forsa's good and whether Xbox turns things around. And we'll see whether Sony can be bailed out by a couple of its acquisitions that have worked out, Insomniac, which will be releasing Marvel's Wolverine on September 15th.

We got a release date now. And Housemark, which will be releasing Saros soon, the makers of Returnal. But let us proceed to our main quest and talk about a big game that is out right now, Resident Evil Requiem, which is the ninth mainline game in the Resident Evil series, the 30-somethings Resident Evil release, depending on how you define that, spinoffs, remakes, et cetera. It's the first mainline game

since Resident Evil Village five years ago, though it's not a direct continuation of that game. And, you know, the day that this podcast is coming out is Pokemon's 30th birthday. Happy birthday, Pokemon. We will wait a week to celebrate that birthday by talking about Pokemon Pocopia next week. There's also a big showcase of all the Pokemon news.

Don't want to snub the Pokemon, but it's also Resident Evil's 30th birthday this year. It has turned 30. There have been more than 30 games. That gives you some sense of the pace here. But this one is a watershed and I think a release that ties together a lot of the strands of mutant DNA that have made up this franchise for years and years. And I think for the purposes of this discussion, we can mirror Requiem itself. So, Matt, your portions of the podcast, you will just kind of creep around and stammer a lot and breathe very heavily.

And you won't be able to carry very much. Yeah. And you'll just be constantly looking for keys and trying to unlock stuff and solve puzzles. And then I'll throw it to Joshua and he'll just come in guns blazing with his shoddy and his action hero one-liners. and that will provide the contrast on this episode that Requiem provides its players. No, we won't actually do that on the podcast. But that is the way Reckleum works.

And I think this will be a great blend of backgrounds with this franchise because you guys are Resident Evil veterans. You've been playing these games for a very long time. You are very familiar with them and with the lore to the extent that any Resident Evil fan can be familiar with the lore. Whereas I am a Resident Evil noob, and that will probably not come as a surprise to anyone who's been listening to ButtMesh for a while and knows of my cowardice, but I have conquered that cowardice in service of podcast content.

So brave. I know, it is. Thank you. Thank you for celebrating my sacrifice, although it turned out not to be a sacrifice, because guess what? I really like this game. So, oh my God. I know.

What have I been missing all these years? I've just been avoiding this franchise like a plague. And then I found that the plague is actually quite compelling. And maybe I want to play more. So, Matt, why don't you tell us just briefly about your history with Resident Evil and your high-level big-picture thoughts about Requiem? And Joshua can do the same. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable Internet means everything for your business.

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Perfect for a no foundation base. Nars, better together. Visit Sephora to shop now. Yeah, I started playing Resident Evil with Resident Evil one on the PlayStation 1. I have played every mainline Resident Evil one through nine. I have not played Zero. I have not played the Revelations games. But I have loved this franchise since the beginning.

And as someone who, not quite to your degree, Ben, but I tend to only check in on horror and scary stuff when there is sort of a buzz around it as being good. I don't, that's not in some place I usually like to sit in, is that horror genre. But I am capable of enjoying that stuff when, you know, it's good. And as you can read about in Joshua's great, piece on the site this week. There is

a lot of humor in the Resident Evil series as well. So it's not like a fully serious nonstop, dour horror experience. It never has been for the most part. So I have a big background in Resident Evil and the lore. Oh, Code Veronica. I forgot to mention

my beloved Code Veronica. So I played that as well. Gosh, that's a good remake to do. I'm a big Resident Evil guy. And Requiem just hit me so hard. I absolutely love it. I had high hopes for it, and it really did an excellent job

of bringing together sort of the history of the series with the old style of survival horror with some of the newer elements. You have the Resident Evil 7 and 8 have been that first person, very creepy stuff, which you get in the game through sort of Grace's perspective.

And then the Leon stuff harkens back to Resident Evil 4, perhaps the greatest game in the series. And coming into it, I was a little worried. Typically, when a game does two things, I will end up liking one of those things more. This happened for me with Cult of the Lamb

and a whole number of games. You make two kinds of elements. I'm going to find one that I like more. And here, I did not. every time it switched between those two perspective, I was so happy to get back to what was going on with that character. I think they really threaded a needle

with this. It's just start to finish. One of the most enjoyable games I've played in the past few years for me personally. It's not without flaws. It's not perfect. There's a lot of things you could nitpick at, but I think the headline

of it is, man, that's a fun ride. That's sort of where I'm at of it. How about you, Joshua? Were you scared? Like, how do you react to just like the pure hard stuff? Because like, like Ben, I am a huge turkey. There is like a solid four extra hours on my safe file that are just from me putting the controller down saying, nope, leaving the room.

And then just being like, I have a job to do, I guess. Yes. Yeah, that was a challenge for me, well, obviously. But I was trying to be considerate and spare my four-year-old. daughter, any of the moaning and groaning and sometimes singing. Got to hand it to the sound design of this game. Oh, yeah. Which is just fantastic.

You can just hear what is about to chomp your head off before you can see it. And that makes it so much worse. But there's a lot of squelching that happens here, certainly. So I was wearing headphones. It's so much worse, right? And like not just any headphones, but the PlayStation branded surround sound headphones. I couldn't hear anything else except that. And yeah, that backfired for me because that made it so much scarier.

It's a good little hack to do. If you're in a scary section, maybe take off one side of your headphones. Just get the audio coming through one side. I find that kind of removes a bit of the tension when you can sort of sit in your own world and the game world simultaneously. Yes. I took some precautions I was playing with the lights on largely whenever my wife was available to sit next to me and do something while I played.

I definitely took her up on that. But there were enough moments of levity, which as you just alluded to, Matt, was the subject of Joshua's piece for the ringer.com. What a great website this week about how, yes, this franchise is horrifying, but it's also hilarious and that this game is a great example of that. That did just lighten the mood often enough that I was able to play and proceed and enjoy. It's also front-loaded. I feel like most of the scary stuff is in the first half of the game. So if you do enter into it and you're just kind of getting exhausted by how stressed you are, by how scary it is, like, that's, it'll peter off.

Don't worry. Yeah. So, Joshua, what was your, your, your, overall reaction? Yeah, I mean, I've been either adjacent to or playing the series for like as long as I've been playing video games. I've been like, again, I'm a huge chicken. I didn't really like horror games. The first game came out and it was like the game I had to leave the room for when my cousins played came over to play.

Yeah, that's my level of experience with this franchise other than the lore and the memes and the contributions to gaming culture. Yeah. So I think I started playing with four. because that one just sort of like, you know, it's scary, but like it leans more towards the thriller, the action, you know, like hero stuff. And it's just like, that's just the rock solid video game, man, just like really, you know, not a bit of fat on it, just like beautifully put together.

And then from then on, I think I've basically played all of them, you know. Reckm kind of like, you know, hits that sweet spot. You know, like you're saying, by design, it's sort of meant to sort of like do something for you regardless of where you came to risen evil, right? And for me, that was a little bit of a drag in the sense where, like, I was kind of hoping to be a little surprised, you know, by it, you know, but like at the same time, there's, I'm, you know, you play the hits, I'm going to rock out, you know. So, uh, it was like, you know, there were some points and I think in like, uh, like the second half of

game where like you kind of mess the perfectly calibrated tension of the first half right but then it just hits you with like really fun level design or like just like a set piece where you're like I'm doing something really cool here and it's uh you know it's it's easy to forgive it so yeah I had I had a blast with Requiem I was whenever Requiem was not on the TV I was like when should I play Requiem again it was you know a delight yeah Yeah, it feels like 30 years in, we have cracked this code, Veronica. We have figured this thing out. We have refined Resident Evil. We have identified what people like about it, the really different strains of the series, right?

So there's the more classic survival, horror, slow-paced, deliberate tank controls era, Resident Evil. There's the more action-oriented Resident Evil. and different players have different preferences. But Requiem essentially says, why not both? We will just bring you both of those things. And as we've been alluded to, there are two playable protagonists, one new, one old. So, of course, there is Leon Kennedy,

co-star of RE2, protagonist of RE4, franchise icon, looking better than ever in his 50s, aging fantastically, just distinguished, weathering, wrinkling. but just aging as well as one could hope. And then you have a new character, Grace Ashcroft, who is the daughter of a character from Resident Evil Outbreak, a game that probably not that many people really remember.

But that gives you a good entry point to the series, if you're like me, and you haven't been playing Resident Evil games for 30 years. And this is directed by Koshinakanishi, who also directed Resident Evil 7 Biohazard. So you can certainly see that style of gameplay in here. But it's old and new characters' gameplay melded in what does feel like a perfectly balanced way, as you were saying, Matt, because it's just two completely different play styles that complement each other. Because very often, sometimes Leon and Grace are meeting up and directly interacting and assisting each other. Often, though, you play.

through a certain place and a certain sequence as one character, and then you pick up in sort of an adjacent area or time with the other character, and then those threads intertwine in some way in the end, and so you sometimes play through the same areas, but in a completely different style. And both are great, because if you were just running and gunning and knocking doors down as Leon for the whole game, then that might get a bit. old at a certain point. But if you were just creeping around and terrified and trying to find the right key card for the entire game, well, that might get a bit punishing and tedious and tiresome too. And so every time you switch from Grace to Leon, it's like, oh, what a relief. Look how huge my

inventory is. I can carry all these items. I don't need to store anything in a chest. I've got a shoddy. I can just blast these guys. And then you do that for a while. And okay, it starts to get maybe a bit monotonous, and you start to hunger for some puzzle solving and some exploration. And then suddenly your grace again. And there were a few sequences where maybe one or the other lingered a little long for me or overstayed their welcome. There's one sequence with grace. There's a big chunk of the game where you're in this zombie infested facility, kind of a classic Resident Evil environment, I guess, and lots of locked doors

and different levels of key cards and zombies roaming around. And you do stick with Grace for quite a while in that period. And I was kind of yearning. I was lamenting the lack of Leon, but it kind of pays off in the end. But it just felt perfectly paced.

Yeah, that's interesting because I thought that that section you're describing was the highlight of the game for me. If I had to pick one chunk of it, First of all, I think that the hospital in this game, which is very reminiscent of previous settings in the series, that's the star of the show. That, to me, which is in the first half of the game, is just an immaculately designed piece of gaming real estate and intricately designed as well. There's something so additive to walking around such a well-designed environment that I think we sort of stray away from in the second. half of the game, you know, it's still excellent in the second half, but, you know, the environments

aren't quite as rich once you leave that hospital. But, you know, you're talking about the two gameplay styles. I think, you know, you as someone who's come to this as a relative noob to the series, from a gameplay perspective, this is an excellent place to jump into the series, because it really does show you the full breadth of what the series is capable of. From a story perspective, I don't think that This is a place to jump into the series. Yes. I think it would be better served as a newbie to jump in on maybe Resident Evil 2 remake, maybe even the old Resident Evil 1 remake on GameCube, if you could dig that up.

It's interesting to hear your response to those two different playstiles. You seem to enjoy them both. Have you played Resident Evil 4? No. No. Okay. It's probably where you should go next. Yeah.

It's a huge hole in my gaming knowledge. And by design, really, because I actively avoided it, knowing what I was missing out on, but also just scared. It really is, I mean, one of the nice things about doing this podcast. There are many nice things. But it pushes me out of my gaming comfort zone because we do get stuck in our ruts, you know? And we know the data's out there that most people are playing the exact same game every single year. That's not us. But even so, we have the genres that we gravitate toward and the others that we avoid.

And this podcast pushes me to play everything and sample everything. And even if it's not always exactly up my alley or my cup of tea, I love being exposed to these different genres and subcultures. And also, I'm just proud of myself for playing this game and surviving it. I'm proud of you, too. Thank you. Yes. Please.

We're all behind you back. Yeah, send all your congratulatory emails to me at ring andversegaming at gmail.com, just telling me what a hero I am and how I put the podcast before my own interests and needs. But it works out most of the time when I've played something purely for the podcast as opposed to personal preference. I have either enjoyed it as kind of anthropological expedition. Just, ah, here's what the people have been talking about and enjoying for all these years. but also usually on a more visceral level, it's like, oh, yeah, this is good. No wonder people have left this for a long time.

And in that sense, this was a good time to jump in because this just feels like the perfectly crafted and perfected version of this franchise. And yes, I was a lot lost, not even a little lost, but when it came to the lore, I did some research, I did some reading. There were some helpful explainers out there at the usual sites, kind of giving you a sense of what you need to know or what it helps to know. But it's incredibly convoluted because this is a 30-year timeline that has not really been rebooted.

I mean, no, either to Capcom's credit or to its detriment, it just gets more and more labyrinthine and just like piled on top of, and it's self-referential. And sometimes that can be bad. And it can just be sort of constant callbacks and Easter eggs and, fan service and you have to have played 18 games to understand what's happening here. And that wasn't

the case. Like, you can just jump in and play this the way I did and you'll love it. But a lot of it will be lost, like, the finer points, the specifics. A lot of it. And I think not just like the pure plot points, like, what are they talking about? Who is that? Where? But also probably some of the emotional beats and without getting specific, there's definitely some connective tissue to past games here that I imagine would be more satisfying to people who have played those games. Yeah, I was actually, you know, there is, without spoiling anything, there is an encounter later in the game that I think, Ben, you probably walked into feeling like, should I, this, they seem to be like, it seems to be like a hype moment that maybe going over my head a little,

whereas I encountered this particular encounter and was like, oh my God, this is one of the, coolest things they've ever done. But I feel like they structure the game and they frame everything in a way that, like, I don't feel like nubes to the series like yourself really felt like you were lost in the lore. Is that correct? Am I correct in assuming that? Yeah, I mean, there's no previously on in this game, which maybe is understandable because

it would need to be seven hours long to actually help you understand anything. I actually say seven. I think they're like 12. our videos on YouTube. Oh, I'm sure. That's short for a YouTube essay. Yeah. Yeah, I often wish that we had more previously on in video games,

because many games just issue those entirely. We are getting more and more of them, except that they're typically the length of a previously on before a TV episode that you watched last week. And generally, we're talking about a game that you played six years ago or nine games that you played over a course of 30 years and to actually do that justice. you can't possibly do it in a five-minute refresher. So I assume that video games,

they've just sort of outsourced that to YouTube. They're just like, if people need to know, they'll go read a primer somewhere. And yeah, like I jumped in and obviously was lost when it came to some of the disasters that are referenced. Like I have some kind of, you know, just by osmosis as a gamer,

I've picked up on some of this stuff. But the precise details were a little lost. on me. But that was okay. I mean, first of all, no shortage of memos in this game. So that's, Matt, when we debuted our only in video games segment, and we talked about the extendable ladders that you see everywhere in video game worlds. Lo and behold, what made an appearance. Well, yes. Those are here too. No spoilers. But yeah, lots of ladders. But also just extendable ladders. Enormous number of memos, just an incredible paper trail. And this game is set in 2026, which is a little anachronistic just because I don't know about you guys,

but I'm not actually committing this much to paper. First of all, I don't typically write a letter with my safe combination and say, here's how to unlock all the safes and here are my combinations. I'll just leave those lying around. It kind of defeats the purpose of having a safe, I think, to telegraph what the combination is everywhere. But that's time-honored tradition. So many memos. No one goes paperless in this world for whatever reason. Like this could have been an email, especially some of the stuff that these researchers are getting up to. You'd think that they wouldn't want to document it quite this faithfully

just when the congressional hearing happens. The discovery with the documents here is just going to be so easy because none of this was verbal. Everything was committed to paper. So there's a lot of that. And so you can kind of pick up bits and pieces if you are faithful about actually looking at all that stuff, which I always am. Yeah. In the world of Resident Evil, all the money went to pharmaceutical companies. So their computers are all running Windows 98. Yeah. No one's gone paperless. I guess so. Yeah. And by the way, I should have mentioned that when you play as Grace, it defaults to first person. And when you play as Leon, it defaults to third person over the shoulder.

and I think that's conducive to the kind of gameplay that those characters feature. But when you are grace and you're a little less capable and you have fewer items and weapons at your disposal, and also if you stick with the first person perspective, which I did, then it's all very much in your face. It's scarier. That's why I kind of needed Leon as a release just to be like, let me just shoot some stuff and be a bit farther removed from the horrors. How did the story hit you guys without, again, getting into specifics, but as people who could appreciate it more than I could? I love the story. I mean, you're never really looking for,

you're never coming to the series expecting like a master work. At least that's not my perception. But I thought it was capable. There is a little bit of a surprise in there, I would say. I think, you know, to a degree we can mostly ignore the story. in this game or in Resident Evil games in general. But I do think that there is incentive towards the back end of this game to have been paying attention. So I would recommend that even if you're not here for the story, you should still kind of pay attention to what's going on.

I thought that the performances sort of elevated things beyond the actual story. The performances are by and large really great. The motion capture technology that they use, and there's a little behind. the scenes video in there where you can see some of the motion capture segments and it's really fascinating to behold. So yeah, the story is good enough, I would say. But for me, Resident Evil has always been more about the moment-to-moment experience than the story trying to convey anything particularly powerful. What did you think, Joshua? Yeah, it's fine. You know, like the, I was impressed at how interested it was in closing a bunch of loops, right?

Like we were talking about earlier, Reson Neal, it was like this big soap opera, you know, in the sense where, like, it's not like super devoted into like, you know, like characters and like development and big emotional beats. But it has never rebooted, you know. It's reconed a few things. But like for the most part, it's kept going and adding to itself. And so like when you pull back in the few times that it's done this, the response is kind of like, well, this is a little ridiculous. You know, like this world is getting a little out of hand.

Just a little bit. And so I feel like it's a bit of maintenance. You know, it's sort of like, all right, let's close some loops. Let's bring this world into a sort of back to a space that like maybe the player can hold in your head. a little bit better so that like, you know, we can move on to the next one and we can bring forward what we feel like bringing forward. You can leave behind whatever we feel isn't quite working. And I think this game is, uh, is, is quite good at that. And I also think that, like, grace is kind of like, gets enough of the spotlight to sort of like, if you don't care about

any of this stuff or if you don't know any of the background, you can sort of just like cling to her story. It's not much, but it's a complete story. Right. Yeah. It's rather self-contained within the game, whereas Leon's obviously, it's not. Exactly. Yeah. So it does mirror that experience that you might have of just like becoming a, you know, a passerby on this crazy soap opera. That's been going on for 30 years. Yeah. Agreed about the performances. Could have used 20% less stammering from Grace. I get it. It's scary. I'm scared too, but you are an FBI agent. You've got to try to finish a sentence sometimes. Dr. Victor Gideon, who is the main antagonist, is excellent. Yeah, just great. Just really distinctive, threatening, eerie, sometimes slightly relatable, maybe. But just kind of a just creepy.

Wait, what way? Just, you know, his personal hygiene, I think, really spoke to me. His fashion sense. No, I find him to be, yes, extremely unnerving and scary and distinctive. And just no shortage of that with the character design and enemy design. One kind of new wrinkle here is it's not smart zombies exactly, but it's zombies who retain some semblance of some echo of their former selves, which is something that is often explored in zombie content. But here it's sometimes plaintiffs. and haunting.

And as you wander around the hospital, the facility that Matt mentioned earlier, people who worked there are still kind of going about their business. And you have the cook chopping and stuff in the kitchen. Right. And people are still cleaning and people are yelling about it being too bright and too loud. They're like me in a movie theater or something. And so they're just like retaining some.

And it's sad. It's like, oh, you can sort of see some semblance. of who they used to be. This is tragic. And yet it's also really funny. Sometimes it's super funny. It is very funny. And it doesn't take you out of it, though.

That's the thing. It's like if it were too campy, if they just went a bit farther than it would be almost, it would be a joke. It would kind of undercut itself, but it never quite goes that far. And there are sort of like singing sister zombies who you can hear just like warbling,

through the halls. And it's, it's terrifying, really, to hear them because you can hear them from rooms away and they scream at you. And then, of course, they're just the giant mutated, you know, supersized zombies. And those are totally terrifying, too. I won't give away too much, but one that people have known about. I mean, there are a lot of like Last of Us Rat King style constructions, body horror-esque. But the star of the show in that respect, I guess, is what people are calling the girl, which is not probably the nickname I would have chose. I was kind of thinking of this creature as like a giant gollum, like Gallum, but way bigger and way worse, et cetera, and is constantly stalking you through the halls. So there's a lot of just, you know,

unstoppable enemy. You have to run. You have to find the right light switch. You have to find the right key card and there's I hate all that shit, man. It's the worst. That's the worst for me. Yeah. I mean, there are definitely times where I was just out of ammo and there is just really no way to acquire more.

There are certain sequences where, I mean, it's scarce by design and usually that's good when you're playing as grace especially. But there are sometimes where I was just like, how am I going to get by this person? Like, I don't have a melee attack right now. And there's always some way to do it, though. You can kind of, like, lure them away, and they'll chase you, and then you hide, and then you can creep around. And you feel clever when that works, but it constantly maintains the suspense. And, yeah, there are creatures in this game that will hunt your nightmares or mine at the very least.

Ben, did you feel like there was particular, like, item scarcity in this game? Yeah, I mean, so there are a couple things. I think the inventory, there is a same. sense of progression and empowerment because you can unlock abilities and level up. It's not like a skill tree situation. This isn't that long a game. It's maybe 15 to 20 hours or even shorter. It depends on how many hours you spend cowering somewhere, which is a lot in my case. But there were some things that felt kind of like quality of life issues. Like with Grace, I'm constantly trying to free up inventory slots and storing stuff.

And things would happen where, like, you can't pick up handgun ammo if you don't have an inventory slot free. And it's just like, just load the gun. Like, I have one bullet left. You could just put this in the gun directly. It doesn't have to go in the inventory. So that was sort of frustrating. That was, I think, maybe that could be. It's only been a problem for 30 years.

Right. Yeah, I'm sure. If they wanted to fix this, they would have. So I think they think that it helps, that it enhances. a suspense. And in a lot of ways, I think it does. For instance, the game doesn't auto reload after you empty a clip, which I'm sort of used to in a lot of games. You know, you fire a last round. Immediately they start reloading. Here, no, like, you've got to do that or else you're going to get God. And I kind of appreciated that because they were absolutely times where I was like, surely,

this will reload for me. No, I have to do that. And no, I have to do that. And no, I died. Especially as Leon. You got to be walking around with all your guns. fully reload. And that's the other thing is that the guns take up inventory slots, which is not really the norm, I guess, in a lot of action-oriented games. It's like, you know, you can carry the weapons and then everything else is sort of a bonus. Here you have to weigh whether you actually want to carry multiple weapons and whether ammo is actually going to be common enough for you to need to do that. And at the beginning of the game, at least, when you're short on ammo and you have a really weak handgun and the zombies are sort of bullet spongy,

at times, but on the whole, I felt like it was fairly well calibrated and I didn't think there were huge difficulty spikes. Plus, as much of a crafting hater as I tend to be, perfectly fine crafting system, infected blood-based crafting, not too complex, but pretty streamlined, not a ton of button presses required. And I appreciated that the maps were very good at showing you where stuff was. So if you saw something, but you didn't have space in your inventory to pick it up, You could just check the map to see where it was or even find stuff that you hadn't spotted. And it was very forgiving in terms of save points and checkpoints and everything. So you don't really lose a lot of time.

And that's good because especially in some of the truly terrifying sequences, when I died, I did not want to have to replay long extended creeping around in the dark. And generally you don't have to, which I appreciate it. Okay. And I guess what you were saying, Joshua, about how it's not really doing anything new for the franchise, that didn't bother me because it was all new to me. Yeah. So that's the ideal way to play this, I guess, is that, yeah, if it feels old hat to a series veteran, just this is like the first Resident Evil that you have actually directly played as opposed to sort of washing secondhand, then it's all going to seem new and fresh to you. Matt, were you at all disappointed in just the lack of innovation or pushing the franchise forward?

Because it does feel more of like a consolidation or a synthesis of existing strengths of the series more so than a reinvention. I think that if this became the series norm in terms of sort of fan servicey moments and callbacks and revisiting some things, I would have a problem with that. But I think that, you know, as you said, it's a big anniversary for the series. And this game is kind of bridging the old with the new and celebrating a lot of the past. And I didn't personally feel like it was too fan servicey, the things that it sort of revisits. I was happy to see this sort of balance of it. And I talk about balance a lot when I talk about this game because whether it's the, the character, the time you spend with the characters,

the amount they give attention to the old versus the new, this game just feels balanced in every way. And I thought that the balance of that kind of looking back versus looking forward worked well within this game. Do I want to see Capcom say, okay, that worked really well. We're only going to do that for the next, however many Resident Evil's until sales dip.

That's not what I want. I would like Resident Evil 10 to not be Resident Evil 9. I would like to see them do something different. I think they've had a lot of success in the past few games, taking things in a slightly different direction. And I hope that they continue to do that. And I hope that 9's success, which certainly seems guaranteed, it's not going to have them jump into this formula and repeat it a lot.

Because it's very successful. That's been a hallmark of Capcom just in general. I mean, Capcom's kind of putting on a clinic with how to use sort of service existing storied franchises and give people what they want, but also give people something that they weren't aware that they wanted. And then it turns out that they wanted it after all. And doing remakes that are actually deserved and justified and well implemented. And, you know, it's the year of Capcom, right? We're going to be talking about Capcom a lot on Buttonmesh this year. this is a strong start, and then we're going to be talking about Progmata, which is something new.

And then we're going to be talking about Monster Hunter Stories 3 as well. I don't know how much we'll talk about it. We'll see. We're going to be talking about. Are you aware of the Pragmatas as a Mega Man game, Truther movement? Yeah, yeah, very aware. I'm one of its strongest soldiers. Yeah, and we'll talk about Onimusha, which is coming back after an extremely extended absence. And Capcom has just excelled. really at mining this old IP and just delivering strong new entries while revisiting old beloved entries and doing justice to them and yet also not solely being defined by its past,

like easier said than done, but I think a lot of companies could learn a lot from how Capcom has managed to juggle its own timelines and its own kind of competing constituencies and concerns. So this is another good example of that. And if this game is sort of a Valentine to longtime fans, just a Jill Valentine, if you will. It's got another. It sounds like a veteran. Yeah, you'd think that I had played Resident Evil before or something.

You remember to roll out. Right. But Ben, you're like, we've been talking on this episode, on many episodes about, you know, how companies have chased that live service game And it's important to remember as we're celebrating Resident Evil Requiem that this started in its development as a live service game. Capcom had the wherewithal to say,

this isn't working, let's not do this. And they pretty much started over from scratch with this and ended up making a real gem here. And that's a big part of why Capcom has been crushing it lately is because they've had all the right instincts. Like somebody said make a live service or isn't evil. And whoever had a loud enough voice to say, hey, let's not. Yeah.

I'm glad they did. I'm glad they had that loud voice. Don't chase trends just for the sake of chasing trends. Know your strengths. And don't be just confined to them, though, is I think the key. That's the tough balance to strike because it's like, well, this is what we do well. We'll just make another one of those. And our core audience will eat it up again.

And so you don't want to be too beholden to your past, but you want to not get away from what you do well. And yeah, this feels like they straddled that line really, really well. So I don't know what you two want now from future Resident Evils, especially new mainline original Resident Evil's, or whether you were left wanting anything else from this game, Matt, you mentioned it's not perfect. I guess you're alluding to maybe the later act of the game and how you felt that the earlier portion, the more sort of slower-paced exploration-focused aspects of the game were the huge highlight and selling point for you, and that varies throughout the game. I don't know whether either of you wants to mention any other way in which this game was wanting.

I think it'll come down to just sort of like a lot of spoilery stuff. Yeah, which we'll avoid for now. people are going to have feelings about it. I don't think they're necessarily going to be negative. They're just going to be thoughts. You know, you'll have ideas. Yeah. Gaming community is famous for its just neutral thoughts.

Not taking any position on this. Just observing, just musing. I also don't want to like ding it too hard for, you know, like I did complain about like not doing anything new, but also Capcons are trying to do this for a long time with present evil, like fuse both of these gameplay styles together, right? And it's never really succeeded until now, right? Like, five was an attempt to mix the action and horror by adding co-op, right?

Six was a really, you know, kind of like, sort of like what this game looks like when you don't succeed because it tried to just, like, have separate protagonists doing each a different version of Resident Evil. And then eight, which is a game that I think mostly works is pretty good, just sort of slides from one side to the other. And I think the cool thing about Rockman, it's like, hey, you guys did it. You figured it out. You know? Good job. I think my criticism, my biggest criticism and the one that I've been hearing a lot is,

I want more. I want more of this. I think, you know, the only criticism that I hear all over is like in sort of splitting the game into two bits, you could potentially feel like you didn't have enough time with either of them. I think that's a bit of a valid argument. One of the joys of a lot of Resident Evil games is really feeling like your character abilities are evolving and your weapons are upgrading

and you're getting super confident in the way you do things. And you do get to that with each of these characters here, but you don't, it's not as extensively as in a game that has one sole protagonist just naturally. I think that's the big. criticism that that I have and that I've heard around. But I'll tell you one thing that I have no criticisms with is the way that this game looks

and runs. And I'm curious which platform you guys played on and what your experience was. I heard the Switch 2 port is incredible. I played on the Switch 2. How was it? I was shocked. To be honest, there were a handful of times. There are a few certain specific settings.

that are particularly intensive in this game where I could feel the hardware chugging a little. The frame rate probably dipped under 30 frames a second. But again, that's like less than a handful of times. And I had over a dozen moments where I was just like, oh, right, I'm not playing on a PS5. I forgot. And there are some moments where you're just like,

how is this looking like this on a switch too? Yeah. It's there are some, there's a little bit, you'll notice some artifacts. acting because of like, you know, the upscaling that's going on. You can feel like there's a lot going on under the hood of the Switch 2 port and it is largely successful. Ben, you know, I got a gaming PC recently and I was very much hoping to play this on my new gaming PC. So when I got the Switch 2 code, I was potentially a little bum, but I honestly don't feel like I missed out on the

experience playing on a Switch 2. I feel like, very satisfied with my Switch 2 experience. And I think that if you're someone who loves playing games portably and you have a Switch 2 and you have a PlayStation and Xbox, a PC, it is definitely an option for you to explore the Switch 2 port instead of those other ones. I was just amazed. What did you guys plan? I did play it on PS5.

It looked great. It sounded great. It ran great. No complaints for me. The first-person perspective really lets you appreciate how detailed everything is and how well it holds up when you're right up close. And lots of nice little touches. Usually I hate it when any sound comes out of my dual sense while I'm playing. And when I was wearing the headphones, it didn't.

But when I took the headphones off, Leon's radio calls come in from the dual sense speaker. And I thought that was actually a pretty nifty little use. of that speaker that usually sort of jump scares me, which no shortage of jump scares in this game, speaking of which, one of the, another time when the sound design really stood out was sometimes a zombie will come back to life, as zombies are known to do, but not the original resurrection, but a second resurrection, just when you thought it was safe to wander down that hallway and they come back in a even more mutated and disturbing form. And when they do, they are accompanied by just an unearthly, disgusting sound that will also haunt me forever because I would just,

it happens sort of sporadically, rarely and unpredictably. And so when it does and one of these mutated morphed corpses comes back to life, I was just never really ready for it, especially accompanied bite. that sound, which I will not attempt to recreate on this podcast. Oh, yeah, please don't. It's a really great game. And sometimes we will do a little masher pass and we'll talk about whether we recommend a game or not.

I don't think there's much suspense, given the tenor of this conversation. MASH, you will want to mash this one. You will want to play Requiem. If we were to put it on the mash meter, if we were to put a number on our affections for this game, I guess I'd go nine. I kind of want to give it bonus points for just being the game that roped me into Resident Evil so successfully.

But yeah, I can't go any lower than that. I don't think it's a perfect game. And that's why the nine is such an old standby, such a candy little score. And that actually is roughly what it's running right. now on Metacritic just slightly below that, which is, I guess, the highest score that the franchise has earned certainly for an original in a couple decades. So where would you guys go on the mash meter? I think I'm sitting between like a 9.25 and a 9.5.

But that's keeping in mind that I'm quite the fan of the series. Yeah, it's great. It's everything I wanted it to be. pretty much. Yeah. And Joshua, you seem like you have slightly more reservations

just about the lack of originality or new directions, perhaps, but where would you land? So I would say eight, but then yesterday, I found out there is other stuff to do when you are done with this game.

The end game. And it is wild. And that is edging me towards So, yeah. All right. Well, I guess we agree. The game is great. It has lived up to its billing, which is really satisfying. You know, there's just, there's so much unpredictability in gaming. And sometimes it's good unpredictability. It's a game that was on no one's radar. And then suddenly it's everywhere and it's great. But so many times it's disappointment. It's cancellation. It's something went wrong. It's this is buggy. It's broken, whatever it is. It's nice when you have a game that was on everyone's list and high on the list coming into the year as, if not necessarily a game of the year candidate, then at least a game that people were most excited for in the non-GTA category. It felt like there weren't quite as many games that you could count on coming out and being great coming into this year as there have been in other years. And so when a game just does everything you want it to do and delivers so well on the premise and does justice to a storied franchise, while also at least offering a slightly new spin on it, just got to say kudos to Capcom. I don't play a lot of survival horror games, but you just made my favorite one since another game with Requiem in the title, Eternal Darkness, Sanities Requiem.

And probably not the last time we'll be talking about Resident Evil on Buttonman. this year. This was the ninth mainline game. The eighth movie is due out on September 18th from Zach Craigor of Barbarian and Weapons fame. And as of late last year, at least, he said he had never seen a Resident Evil movie, but he has played and liked the games, which is kind of the reverse of how it usually works with writers and directors who adapt video games. He's going to be telling an original story set within the Resident Evil universe, but he just seems to have the perfect sensibility because his movies are scary but also funny a lot like resident evil so thank you for listening thank you guys for for joining me and keeping me company in this conversation i appreciate it joshua always

proud of you ben thank you thanks again proud yeah please everyone we doth our capcoms to you hey nice i can do it too nice and go check out joshua's peace which is very entertaining much like Resident Evil itself. Matt created the art for it, which is also funny and excellent. We had a little mutual love fest about how Matt loved Joshua's article, and Joshua loved Matt's art. We all love each other, and we all love Resident Evil Requiem, and we all love you, the listener, and we hope that you will reach out and tell us how much you love us and how proud you are

of me personally and other thoughts that you may have about gaming at ringerverse gaming at gmail.com. We will, of course, be back in one week when we have a couple of other major releases to discuss. We will be talking about marathon. Will it break the bungee PlayStation live service slump? Will it have profited and improved after its somewhat disconcerting testing last year? We will get into all of that. And we will also talk about a much chiller game than Resident Evil Requiem. Pokemon, Pocopia, and what else is coming up for Pokemon's 30th birthday and beyond. Last week we talked about the legend of Zelda turning 40, Resident Evil and Pokemon or spring chickens by comparison.

And I'll leave you with a line from another legend of the series, one Ethan Winters, who once said, they say that when one door closes, another opens. Well, a door closed tonight, and what a long night it was. And when one podcast closes, another opens. We'll be back with more button mash in one week. And speaking of doors, stop it. Don't open that door. What's the difference between butter and butter made from real California dairy?

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